Railroad safety

National Public Radio (Dec. 7) -- A commuter train crash that killed four passengers in New York is raising questions about whether a high-tech safety system could have prevented the derailment. Across the country, all railroads are supposed to install and implement the high-tech positive train control systems by the end of 2015. But rail industry experts say it's proving to be a very difficult task. "This is a massive systems integration problem," says Chris Barkan, executive director of the Rail, Transportation and Engineering Center at the University of Illinois. "We're talking 60,000 miles of track that have to be fitted with complicated new hardware and software. There's something like 20,000 locomotives that will need the onboard equipment."