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Rail mandate deadline could impact agriculture

Mike Steenhoek

The director of the Soy Transportation Coalition says the approaching deadline of a government mandate on railroads could impact agriculture.

Mike Steenhoek tells Brownfield Positive Train Control (PTC) was developed to increase safety on the nation’s railways.

“What the technology does is allows trains to be controlled remotely.  It would allow a train engineer to be overridden remotely by central control, if central control determined the engineer was negligent.”

Congress established a deadline of December 31st, 2015 for PTC installation. Steenhoek says there is widespread acknowledgement that more time is needed.

“Because the technology was unproven and a lot of it was new.  So there’s currently a debate about whether to extend Positive Train Control’s deadline for implementation.”

He says agriculture and other industries hang their hat on the reliability of the supply chain, and if an extension is not provided, there would likely be portions of the rail network unable to transport ag products.

The mandate and potential extension will be decided by Congress.

“The concern that we have is the current atmosphere within Washington D.C. is very much ill-suited to get anything productive done right now.”

Steenhoek says the lack of resolution to the PTC debate is creating uncertainty at a time when agriculture is facing low commodity prices amidst huge crop production.

 

 

 

 

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