News Release

Mason researchers reviewing positive train control safety plan for transit railroad

Grant and Award Announcement

George Mason University

Duminda Wijesekera, Professor of Computer Science, Acting Chair, Cyber Security Engineering, Computer Science, Paulo Costa, Associate Professor, Systems Engineering and Operations Research, Zoran Duric, Associate Professor, Computer Science, Liling Huang, Associate Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Bo Yu, Research Assistant Professor, C4I and Cyber Center, are reviewing the Positive Train Control Safety Plan for the New Jersey Transit Railroad. They are working to confirm its compliance to federal regulations.

Positive Train Control (PTC) is an advanced system designed to automatically stop a train before certain accidents occur. In particular, PTC is designed to prevent train-to-train collisions, derailments caused by excessive train speed, train movements through misaligned track switches, and unauthorized train entry into work zones.

The researchers received $184,088 from the Federal Railroad Administration for this project. Funding began in September 2020 and will end in late December 2020.

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