From the article, it appears adoption of PTC has been hampered by Amtrak developing it&#x27;s own system, funding issues and slow approval from the FCC:<p>&quot;In much of Asia and Europe, engineers are protected by a technology known in the United States as positive train control, or P.T.C. Connected by digital radio waves or GPS signals, P.T.C. transponders in the track maintain constant contact with computers in the cabs of oncoming trains. If the transponders determine a train is traveling too fast, the locomotive’s brakes are triggered automatically. Amtrak has been working on its own in-house version of P.T.C., called the Advanced Civil Speed Enforcement System, or Acses, for almost a decade. But owing to insufficient funding and a row with the F.C.C., which Amtrak said had been slow to approve the use of the requisite radio bandwidth, its actual implementation has been piecemeal.&quot;<p>Later on in the article it confirms that PTC has been rolled out on the line where the accident occurred, but a national rollout out will potentially take until 2020:<p>&quot;In late May, Joseph Boardman, Amtrak’s C.E.O. and president, promised that the installation of P.T.C. on the Northeast Corridor would be completed by the end of 2015, a pledge he has kept: Today, the system is active on all routes, with the exception of substantial stretches of track owned by the State of Connecticut. (A spokesman for the Connecticut Department of Transportation said it hoped to have P.T.C. installed on all state-owned track by 2018.)
It will be some time before a national rollout is complete. In November, President Obama signed into law an extension to the Rail Safety Improvement Act of 2008, giving railroad companies — which had complained about the cost of implementation — until 2020 to bring the technology online.&quot;