Photo by Malcolm Tredinnick via Flickr

Today, the LA City Council will be voting to endorse two federal bills. It's only symbolic in nature for the city to do so, but it helps when the bills hit the House and Senate or the differences committees.

Federal Railroad Safety Improvement Act of 2007 (H.R. 2095) has already been passed--the House did last year and the Senate did by a unanimous vote on August 1st. The bill will "require rail lines to install positive train control systems, which automatically bring trains to a stop if engineers do not comply with signals, no later than Dec. 31, 2018," the Daily News explains. It now has to go to a differences committee where senators and representatives work out differences in the versions of the bill each chamber approved and then onto the President.

The second bill is the Rail Collision Prevention Act that was authored by both of California's Senatora, Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer. That bill requires Positive Train Control systems to be installed on "high-risk" lines by Dec. 31, 2012 and all other major rail lines by 2014, four years earlier than the Railroad Safety Improvement Act.