Ken Valenti

klvalent@lohud.com

Metro-North and Long Island railroads plan to speed up the implementation of an advanced rail safety system called positive train control by spending $11.3 million to adapt 1,310 train cars for it within three years.

The work is one step in a plan to install the federally-mandated system that uses global positioning satellites to track trains.

The money would extend a $428.5 million contract approved in November with Bombardier Transportation and Siemens to bring positive train control to the nation's two largest commuter railroads. The system, the vanguard of rail safety, can automatically slow a train when it enters a zone with a lower train speed limit.

"We support this technology and we want our customers to begin benefiting from it sooner rather than later," said Thomas Prendergast, chief executive of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, parent agency to both railroads.

The MTA board was expected to vote on the expanded contract Wednesday.

Congress has set an end-of-2015 deadline for railroads to install the system, but an August 2013 report by the Government Accountability Office recommended flexibility on the timing. A bill in the Senate would extend the deadline to 2020.

Metro-North was told to step up the installation after a fatal Dec. 1 derailment in the Bronx. It plans to begin installing the first phase this year and the work must be certified by the Federal Railroad Administration before later phases could be installed, a railroad spokeswoman said.

"It's not something you buy off the shelf; it's a complicated system," said the spokeswoman, Marjorie Anders. "And everybody's trying to buy it at the same time. We're competing for the same talent pool with every other railroad in America."

The additional money will speed up the refitting of 474 cars for Metro-North and 826 for LIRR by up to two years. The work would be finished in April 2017.

U.S. Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, D-Cold Spring, said he was "not interested in having a deadline that we're all going to fail to meet," but that before moving it, he would want to see "a real plan with real deadlines."

He called the extension of the contract "a step in the right direction."

Metro-North has been upgrading other safety systems, partly because of federal orders following accidents including the Bronx derailment, which killed four people and injured dozens. The southbound train toppled off the tracks after approaching a 30 mph curve traveling 82 mph.