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As Prepared Remarks of

Federal Railroad Administration

Administrator Ronald L. Batory

2018 American Public Transportation Association Rail Conference

Denver, CO

June 12, 2018

Thank you, David [Stackrow, APTA Vice Chair]. I appreciate that warm welcome.

It’s a pleasure to be here in Colorful Colorado to meet with APTA members 

alongside FTA Executive Director Matt Welbes to talk about critical issues facing 

American rail today.

High on the list of priorities is safety. And the commitment that APTA has devoted 

to safety over the decades coincides with the FRA and U.S. Department of 

Transportation’s goal to make our national transportation network safer, more 

interconnected, more reliable, and more efficient for all Americans in communities 

across the country.

In this regard, we are on a shared path. We have the expertise and the will to face 

both present day and future challenges. Someone once said, and I believe it’s true, 

that “the power of one, if fearless and focused, is formidable, but the power of 

many working together is better.”

So thank you for having me here today and giving me this opportunity to provide 

an update on the work we are doing at the FRA and DOT under Secretary Elaine L. 

Chao to move this industry forward.

Let me begin by saying that I have three loves in my life, and the one I want to talk 

about today you obviously share with me: railroads. 

My other loves—in case you’re curious—are my family and my country. I’ll save 

those two topics for another day because we only have a few minutes for me to 

speak, and having those conversations would literally take days. [Smile]
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We are, no doubt, in the midst of what Secretary Chao calls “a transportation 

transformation.” Not just for railroads but for all modes of transportation. Safety—

our core mission—coupled with technology and infrastructure are all center stage 

as we continue to grow the American economy and transportation network.

We are concerned about the safety of passengers and pedestrians as well as safety 

for crewmembers and maintenance workers who keep the trains moving across this 

great big country every single day.

At my swearing-in ceremony this year, I shared with friends, family, industry 

officials, and members of Congress that safety is an endless theme in what I like to 

call “my living dream” about railroads. 

I cannot emphasize enough that rail safety is first and foremost in everything we do 

and its practice is both non-compromising and non-negotiable. Therefore, reducing 

and eliminating risk is paramount to enhancing safety across the board.

With this in mind, I want to talk about positive train control, or PTC. Railroad 

implementation of PTC systems is at the top of our agenda and represents the most 

fundamental change in rail safety technology since the introduction of automatic 

train control 100 years ago. 

I’m glad to see PTC on your conference agenda. This technology is something I 

think about when I go to bed at night and when I wake up in the morning. 

As most of you know, PTC is designed to prevent certain train-to-train collisions, 

over-speed derailments, incursions into established work zones, and trains from 

being routed to the wrong tracks because a switch was left in the wrong position.

In other words, PTC is designed to avert accidents caused by human error. 

FRA, at the direction of Secretary Chao, has adopted a hands-on approach to 

ensure that 41 railroads—including 29 intercity passenger railroads and Amtrak—

acquire, install, test, and certify this lifesaving technology in time to meet the 

congressional deadline of December 31st.
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Here’s what we’ve been doing to aggressively stay on top of this issue to ensure 

railroads respect the statutory mandate:

• We accelerated the release of $250 million to help railroads implement PTC 

systems. We announced a Notice of Funding Opportunity, or NOFO, for 

PTC system grants last month, and applications are due no later than July 

2nd. So, if you’re a railroad, you have just under three weeks left to apply 

for a PTC grant now available under the new CRISI, or Consolidated Rail 

Infrastructure and Safety Improvements Program.

• We hosted a webinar last Monday to provide information about the NOFO 

and how railroads—including intercity passenger rail and commuter rail 

transportation—can apply for the CRISI grants. We also encouraged 

associations to hold webinars for their members. Last month, APTA and 

another association did just that, with FRA participating in each one.

• We’re hosting three upcoming symposiums at DOT headquarters in 

Washington, DC:

o The first, a PTC Statutory Requirements for 2018 symposium will 

take place this Friday for railroads requesting FRA’s approval to 

extend the deadline by two years, to December 31, 2020, to complete 

the work. In this case, railroads must demonstrate that they have met 

the statutory criteria to qualify for such an alternative schedule.

o The second, a PTC Testing and Interoperability symposium for 

railroads, will be held next month, on July 16th; and 

o The third, a PTC Safety Plan Best Practice symposium, will take place 

on August 20th.

We encourage your participation in these symposiums. All these actions followed 

very frank, one-on-one discussions that FRA had at DOT headquarters earlier this 

year with all 41 railroads subject to the statutory mandate.
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During those meetings, some of you conveyed several challenges, including 

working with a limited number of PTC system suppliers. Shortly thereafter, we 

pulled suppliers into separate discussions as well.

Overall, the discussions have been extremely helpful and have also led to a staff 

reorganization and the additional hiring of safety experts to ensure the 

congressional PTC mandate is efficiently administered. 

But we still have a long way to go. As noted in railroads’ self-reported Quarterly 

PTC Progress Reports for the first quarter of 2018, passenger railroads have made 

less progress than their freight counterparts implementing PTC systems. As of the 

end of March, PTC systems are only in operation on 25 percent of required route 

miles, versus 60 percent for freight rail. 

We hope the additional funding that the CRISI grants will provide can close some 

of that gap.

Reducing and eliminating risk extends beyond railroad rights-of-way to the 

broader public as well.

Earlier this year, FRA once again partnered with the National Highway Traffic 

Safety Administration to roll out a $4.3 million public awareness safety campaign

to educate the public about the dangers of crossings. 

Increasing public awareness is necessary so that people can make better decisions 

around highway-rail crossings and tracks. The simple truth is most trains can’t stop 

short. It can take a mile or more once the brakes are applied for all that tonnage to 

come to a screeching halt. 

The Department is both deliberate and persistent about getting this message out. 

Last year, 274 people died in grade-crossing accidents—the second annual increase 

since 2016.

This subject matter will always be close to my heart. During my career, I’ve 
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personally experienced locomotive collisions with highway vehicles. In one 

instance, it was a school bus full of children—I could actually see them jumping 

out the back door and rushing down the front steps of the bus as our train 

approached. Thankfully, that school bus emptied seconds before the train struck. 

My daughter Erin also lost a high school friend and classmate to a train-auto 

collision 20 years ago. Since my arrival to DOT headquarters, I’ve literally been 

jolted by the daily national incidents of deaths, injuries, and near-misses reported.

Therefore, I pledge that throughout my tenure as the FRA Administrator, 

increasing public awareness of rail safety will be a consistent priority of mine, not 

unlike my involvement in my past career in the private sector.

And I ask each of you to join me in this endeavor, if you are not already engaged. 

Because taken together, railroad crossing and trespasser fatalities have accounted 

for about 95 percent of all rail-related deaths over the past 10 years. 

In fact, trespassing on railroad property is THE leading cause of all rail-related 

deaths. While we’ve made progress over the past 10 years improving safety along 

railroad rights-of-way, trespass-related fatalities—including suicides—have 

increased from 638 to 740, about a 16 percent hike between 2012 and 2017.

And since 1997, more people have died each year from trespassing than in motor 

vehicle collisions with trains at highway-rail grade crossings. Again, I was glad to 

see that APTA had a session yesterday on preventing rail suicides and trespasser 

strikes because, clearly, these subjects cannot be ignored.

Congress is certainly paying attention. The U.S. House Committee on 

Appropriations, in its Fiscal Year 2018 Transportation Budget Report, instructed 

FRA to identify and study the fundamental factors that lead to trespassing incidents 

on railroad property.

We’ve also been instructed to develop a national strategy to prevent trespasser 

incidents—incorporating milestones and metrics to define success. FRA is hard at 

work on this strategy, which is scheduled to be completed by the August deadline 
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set by Congress.

Going forward, I believe safety and innovation must be coupled together. As 

mentioned, we’re already doing this with PTC. But other transformative 

technologies await us as we continue pursuing our 21st century journey. Each day 

is an opportunity to embrace technology to reduce risks and have the railroad 

industry become a safer mode of transportation. 

Aggressively embracing the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, and 

autonomous functions that can foster an environment toward minimal to nonexistent risk is a must. 

As it pertains to transformative technologies, drones—to use one example—are 

already demonstrating their value. Drone technology is revolutionizing many 

industries as companies are increasingly interested in adapting them for all kinds of 

commercial and humanitarian applications.

In the rail industry, drones have a role to play in safeguarding infrastructure and 

investigating accidents or preventing them. Again, many of you learned as much in 

a session held on this subject today.

But let me tell you briefly about a FRA partnership with police in Brunswick, 

Maine. It will be the first in the country this year to spot railroad trespassers by 

using drones in a new pilot program. The unmanned aircraft systems will be used 

only for detecting infractions and for educational purposes, not punishment. The 

point is to prevent fatalities near and on railroad tracks at several high-risk areas by 

getting a law enforcement officer to the scene.

When it comes to research projects, FRA is proud to partner with many commuter 

railroads as well on safety and innovation. A few of our current research partners 

include New Jersey Transit, Tri-Rail, the Massachusetts Bay Transportation 

Authority, Amtrak, the Northern New England Passenger Rail Authority, and 

SunRail. 

We partnered with SunRail, for example, to study the effectiveness of photo 
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enforcement technologies to detect and enforce highway-rail grade crossing 

violations in Orlando, Florida. Why? Because the city saw several fatalities at 

grade crossings after SunRail began service there in May 2014.

Volpe, the research arm of the DOT, installed the cameras in April 2016 and 

started to collect baseline data. The city of Orlando established a photo 

enforcement system and initiated warning letter mailings four months later. The 

warning letter, much like the Brunswick example, is an educational tool only—

recipients are not penalized with demerit points or fines.

Between August 2016 and December of last year, over fifteen hundred violation 

notices were issued to people driving over the tracks when the gate arms at 

crossings were coming down and lights were flashing for at least five seconds. The 

idea is to get people to stop when the lights are flashing and not speed up before 

the crossing arm drops.

This is but one deterrent to raise awareness and save lives, and we hope to see 

many more.

FRA will continue with renewed urgency to seek ways to foster and encourage the 

railroad industry to use technology to bring about continued safety improvements 

and increase efficiency in railroad operations and maintenance.

I believe whatever we achieved with safety in the past is not our finish line. More 

improvements can, will, and should be made. But at least now, we can imagine our 

safety-instilled culture of zero tolerance combined with the infinite use of 

developing technology. I know that APTA is leading and serving members’ efforts 

to evaluate, develop, and adapt to emerging technologies, and I applaud this effort.

This combination of culture and applied sciences can be a key ingredient for 

determining and developing safe, smart, and sustainable infrastructure for our 

future. 

Speaking of infrastructure, you may know by now that the Administration’s 

comprehensive infrastructure proposal has been delivered to Congress. The plan 
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involves 12 government agencies and encompasses transportation and other 

sectors, including energy, rural broadband, veterans’ hospitals, and drinking and 

waste water.

It is broad. It is ambitious. And it has ignited a necessary debate throughout the 

nation and in the Congress on infrastructure priorities and processes. The 10-year 

plan is an investment to modernize our country’s infrastructure assets—a win-win 

situation for all of us.

The goal of the President’s proposal is to stimulate at least 1.5 trillion dollars in 

infrastructure investment, which includes a minimum of 200 BILLION dollars in 

direct federal funding. 

The guiding principles are to 1) use federal dollars as seed money to incentivize 

infrastructure investment; 2) provide for the needs of rural communities; 3) 

streamline permitting and speed up project delivery; and 4) reduce unnecessary and 

overly burdensome regulations.

More background information on the plan, a publication entitled The President’s 

Initiative for Rebuilding Infrastructure in America, is available online at 

www.transportation.gov. 

I mentioned earlier that we announced a NOFO for $250 million in PTC system 

grants. Well, after funding PTC, we plan to introduce a second CRISI NOFO for 

infrastructure grants. 

That one, as well as the CRISI NOFO published this past February, will make a 

total of more than $383 million in Fiscal Year 2017 and 2018 funds available for a 

wide range of capital projects—including improving highway-rail grade crossings, 

repairing or replacing railroad assets, and relocating rail lines.

Those funds will also be available to support rail regional and corridor planning, 

environmental analyses, research, workforce development, and training.

While we’re aware that public transportation is one of the safest forms of 
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transportation, finding the resources to maintain aging systems is a constant 

challenge. We hope these grants will help the industry invest in necessary growth 

and upgrades to meet customer needs in a reliable, safe, and secure fashion. 

In closing, let me say once again that I’m pleased to acknowledge that APTA 

maintains a “safety and security first culture” that places safety, security, and the 

wellness of its passengers and workforce as a top priority. 

In the future, let’s continue to work together to encourage constructive change and 

innovation in safety, technology, and infrastructure. As someone once said, coming 

together is a beginning, keeping together is progress, and working together is 

success.

Thank you. 

Now, I’d like to open the floor to take any questions you may have.

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