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DCTA submits waiver to FRA for new rail vehicles
By Heather M. Goodwin, hgoodwin@acnpapers.com
The Denton County Transportation Authority (DCTA) is now one step closer to being able to use its new Stadler GTW rail vehicles.
On Wednesday, DCTA announced that it had submitted the rail industry's first Alternative Vehicle Technology (AVT) waiver to the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA). DCTA needs the waiver in order to use the Stadler GTW rail vehicles at the same time as its current fleet of traditional vehicles.
"This submittal is the result of unprecedented cooperation between DCTA, the FRA and the vehicle supplier," said Tom LeBeau, DCTA's vice president of rail development and capital projects. "This effort promises to transform the rail vehicle industry and the face of commuter rail in the United States by increasing the use of rail vehicles that use alternative crashworthy designs."
"The FRA appointed a rail safety engineering task force, which is a group of technical experts, who will review the application," said Dee Leggett, vice president of communications and planning for DCTA. "Once they make a decision, we'll have to wait on a formal letter. We have a good sense that once the group meets, our waiver will be granted."
In addition, the waiver will allow DCTA to introduce the Stadler GTWs sooner to run in mixed-use with the traditional cars currently in operation. Leggett said the current FRA rules state that the current DCTA rail vehicles, RDCs, cannot run on the same tracks at the same time. However, she said DCTA employs temporal separation where traditional and new vehicle fleets are always separated over the A-train corridor, so integration of the Stadler GTWs into service is not contingent upon receipt of the AVT waiver.
"What we said from very beginning was that we would run the Stadler vehicles during the day and the freight at night therefore it will be temporal separation," Leggett said. "The waiver we're applying for will allow us to run the current vehicles with the Stadler ones. So we won't have to wait until we receive all the Stadler vehicles to run them."
The Stadler vehicles are non-compliant with FRA rules because the FRA sets its standards on how much strength the vehicles have whereas European standards are based on crash management. Leggett said DCTA took the best of both worlds of safety standards between the European and U.S. standards and put them all on the new Stadler vehicles.
"Stadler is known world-wide for the quality of their products. We are excited to be able to deliver a premium rail car for our customers," said Jim Cline, DCTA's president. "Our efforts through the AVT process set the condition for future success for commuter rail expansion in North Texas and will allow us to advance the integration of these vehicles onto our system."
DCTA has officially accepted six of the 11 Stadler GTW rail vehicles ordered. The agency anticipates having all 11 cars accepted by the summer of 2012. Once DCTA receives all the vehicles, it will send the current vehicles on lease back to DART.
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