Reston Spring

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Reston Spring

Monday, December 9, 2013

New Silver Line delays spur questions about airport authority’s diligence, WaPo, December 8, 2013

WaPo's Lori Aratani gets to the bottom of some the causes for continuing delays in the Silver Line's startup:

In November, (MWAA Silver Line Project Manager Pat) Nowakowski told members of the airports authority board at their monthly meeting that work was continuing and that completion of the rail line — one of the biggest infrastructure projects in the country — would probably come at the end of this month.
But he said it became clear that the timeline could no longer be kept after he learned the result of tests on the system Thanksgiving week. During those tests, officials concluded that changes had to be made to the software that governs what is known as the automatic train control system (ATC), he said. The software changes required will ensure that the computers that help run the system communicate clearly with each other.
The ATC system controls train movement and speed and ensures proper spacing between trains traveling along the system’s more than 200 miles of track. If a train is traveling too fast or gets too close to another train, the system will slow or stop the train if the operator does not act.
The ATC system is critical to the safe operation of Metro’s trains. It was the failure of this system to detect the presence of a train on the tracks that was blamed in part for the 2009 Red Line crash that killed nine people and injured dozens of others.
This also is not the first time that the Silver Line’s ATC system has been an issue. In June, one of the nation’s top transportation officials expressed concern about unauthorized changes made by Alstom Signaling, the contractor responsible for installing the system. . . .
Click here to read the rest or Aratani's thorough article.

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