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Kelly B. Huston
The Chatsworth rail disaster in 2008 caused 25 deaths and 135 injuries in Chatsworth, Calif., on Sept. 12, 2008.
By Justine Sharrock, Laurie Udesky and Stuart Silverstein
FairWarning.org
Less than four years after a California train disaster spurred passage of major safety legislation, railroad companies are pushing hard to relax the law’s chief provision.
They have won over key Republicans, and extracted a major concession from the Obama administration, in their bid to scale back and delay a system to prevent crashes such as the head-on collision that caused 25 deaths and 135 injuries in Chatsworth, Calif.
The Rail Safety Improvement Act, passed in late 2008 soon after the Chatsworth disaster, mandated the $13 billion project and stuck railroad companies with nearly all of the cost. The law calls for installation of a technology known as Positive Train Control, or PTC, that automatically puts the brakes on trains about to collide or derail.
Railroads are required to install PTC by the end of 2015 on an estimated 70,000 miles of track used by trains carrying passengers or extremely hazardous materials such as chlorine.
The technology’s champions include the National Transportation Safety Board, an independent advisory and investigative agency. It has advocated PTC for more than two decades to prevent accidents resulting from human error, the main cause of rail crashes.
Investigators with the agency have identified 21 train wrecks since late 2001 that, they say, would have been averted by PTC. In all, the accidents caused 53 deaths and nearly 1,000 injuries.
“PTC can prevent these human errors from causing collisions, hazmat releases, passengers killed and injured, and train crews being killed,” said Steven Ditmeyer, a former rail industry executive and federal official who now teaches in Michigan State University’s railway management program.
Serious train crashes, he said, “are very rare events, but they still occur.”
PTC supporters such as Paul Hedlund, a lawyer for many families of Chatsworth victims, say they are appalled by efforts to relax the mandate. It’s a “scary step backwards,” Hedlund said, calling existing protections “horribly archaic.”
Since 2008, he added, “We haven’t had another crash of the magnitude of Chatsworth that would be affected by this but we are going to.”
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
The 2005 rail crash in Graniteville, S.C., killed nine people and caused the evacuation of 5,400.
But the railroad industry and its allies, arguing that the project is unaffordable, have put up stiff resistance. They also maintain that the technology still needs to be refined, even though Amtrak already operates a similar system from Boston to Washington, D.C.
PTC critics have argued for delaying the installation deadline by three years, exempting as much as 20 percent of the track and allowing railroads to use other safety systems that might be cheaper, but also less effective.
The industry is bolstered by a political climate that is hostile to federal dictates, a factor behind the executive order President Obama issued early last year to streamline regulations. They have extra leverage because federal agencies are divided on the merits of the PTC mandate.
PTC opponents also are drawing ammunition from a 2010 report by the Government Accountability Office. The GAO assessment didn’t address PTC’s effectiveness but said technological hurdles could delay completion of the project beyond the 2015 deadline.
“What you hear from all the railroad companies is that everyone supports PTC in theory, but the realities of how difficult it is financially and technologically to install [mean] it can’t happen by 2015,” said Matt Ginsberg, director of operations for the National Railroad Construction and Maintenance Association, which includes contractors that work on PTC installation.
The industry’s strategy, he added, is that “instead of an outright repeal, they will slowly chip away at it, making small little tweaks that will make a big change overall in the effect of the rule.”
Leading the resistance are the Association of American Railroads, which represents freight haulers and Amtrak, along with the American Public Transportation Association, which represents commuter rail systems. They have called PTC the biggest federal mandate the industry has faced in more than a century, and say they anticipated that the government would step up its financial support.
To deliver their message on PTC and other issues, railroad interests spend heavily on lobbying. According to the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, the railroad industry poured $73.4 million into lobbying in 2009 and 2010, and another $8.75 million in the first quarter of 2011.
The industry also has retained dozens of lobbyists, including the firm of former Senate powerhouses John Breaux, D-La., and Trent Lott, R.-Miss.
Meanwhile, as political currents have shifted and PTC has fallen out of the spotlight, the technology has fewer forceful advocates.
Former U.S. Rep. James L. Oberstar, a Minnesota Democrat who led the push for PTC in the House and who argued for it since the 1990s, was voted out of office in 2010, when Republicans took control of the lower chamber.
The Democrat who perhaps was most pivotal in getting the rail safety act through Congress and signed into law was Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California. Days after the Chatsworth crash in September 2008, she said the failure to install PTC would amount to “criminal negligence.”
Today, she still favors PTC but no longer is a leader on the issue and is not a member of the panel with jurisdiction over railroads, the Commerce Committee. Feinstein’s office quoted the senator as saying that she has urged colleagues to maintain the current deadline.
PTC systems include GPS and wireless communications technology and central control centers. They can monitor trains and stop them if they enter the wrong track or are about to run a red light.
According to the National Transportation Safety Board, one of the accidents that PTC would have prevented was the freight train-commuter train collision in Chatsworth. The NTSB investigation blamed the accident on an engineer on the commuter train who ran a red light while text-messaging on a cellphone. (Metrolink, the rail system that operates the Chatsworth commuter line, hopes to finish installing its PTC system by mid-2013.)
The NTSB said the January 2005 rail crash in Graniteville, S.C., that killed nine people and injured 554 also would have been prevented by PTC. The crash punctured a chlorine tank car, releasing a toxic, greenish cloud that led to the evacuation of about 5,400 residents.
However, the agency responsible for enforcing the deadline has expressed ambivalence about PTC. The Transportation Department’s Federal Railroad Administration concedes that PTC increases safety. But the agency says PTC would save only about four or five lives a year, not nearly enough to justify the cost – though the agency analysis was completed in 2005, before the Chatsworth disaster.
PTC advocates say the agency’s analysis ignores the enormous business benefits that the technology could provide by, not only preventing accidents, but also by coordinating train traffic more efficiently and cutting shipping times.
Still, after the Transportation Department spelled out its rules for enforcing the PTC law, it was sued in November 2010 by the Association of American Railroads. The industry group accused the agency of issuing “a regulation that imposes a staggering and unjustified burden” that went beyond the intent of Congress.
Among other grievances, the industry said federal officials wrongly required railroads to put PTC on track that by 2015 will no longer be used to haul chlorine or other extremely hazardous materials.
The Transportation Department, to settle the litigation, offered to reduce the amount of track required to have PTC. The proposal, expected to be adopted in some form this spring, would remove 7,000 to 14,000 miles of track from the mandate, a cut of about 10 percent to 20 percent.
In an Aug. 23 announcement, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood characterized the move as being in line with the Obama administration’s initiative to streamline regulation.
NTSB officials, however, say the proposal also could have a pernicious effect. They say it could crimp regulators’ flexibility to require PTC on troublesome track not specifically designated by the statute.
For instance, regulators can insist on PTC when they are concerned about the safety of track where freight trains haul, say, ethanol – a dangerous material, but not one of the extreme hazards specified in the law. But the head of the NTSB, Deborah Hersman, said her agency is concerned that the “ability to identify other high-risk corridors will be hampered” because, under the proposed change, the railroads no longer would have to provide the government with as much risk data.
Separately, House Republicans have advocated relaxing the PTC requirements. One of the leaders is U.S. Rep. John Mica of Florida, chairman of the House Transportation Committee.
According to Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, Mica is one of the biggest recipients of railroad industry campaign contributions, with $182,298 since 2008.
He is working on a long-term surface transportation authorization bill that is regarded as a likely legislative vehicle for key breaks sought by the railroads. Lawmakers are expected to resume working in earnest on the authorization bill by the beginning of February.
Mica has voiced support for extending the PTC deadline by three years and allowing trains to use so-called non-technological safety systems.
Such systems, unlike PTC, can’t automatically counter human error, which the Transportation Department says causes 40 percent of train accidents. Mica has described his goal as to “protect against overly-burdensome regulations and red tape.”
Another vocal critic of PTC is U.S. Rep. Bill Shuster, R-Pa., chairman of the railroads subcommittee.
According to The Center for Responsive Politics, railroads were the top-contributing industry to his 2008 and 2010 election campaigns. Shuster has received $165,800 in campaign contributions from railroad interests since 2008.
He has criticized the PTC mandate ever since it was adopted. At a March hearing, Shuster advocated extending the deadline beyond 2015 and reducing the amount of track covered, while calling the existing requirements “regulatory overreach.”
Talk of accommodating the industry, however, infuriates union leaders. “It’s hard for me to believe that anyone can go to Congress and say with a straight face that seven years after the bill passed is ‘not enough time for us to do this,’’’ said James Stem, legislative director of the United Transportation Union. “But that’s what’s going on.”
Frank Kohler, severely injured in the Chatsworth train wreck.
It’s also distressing to crash victims such as Frank Kohler.
Kohler was one of those injured in the Chatsworth disaster. He woke up after the collision lying on the ground with his head split open; he suffered a brain injury that, Kohler says, causes him to get confused and has ended his 36-year career as an emergency responder and registered nurse.
If PTC has been in place three years ago, Kohler said, he would have arrived home safely. Kohler added, “I would still have my professional life intact and I would be a productive member of society.”
FairWarning is a nonprofit, online investigative news organization focused on public health and safety issues.
Leave a Comment:
" But the agency says PTC would save only about four or five lives a year, not nearly enough to justify the cost – though the agency analysis was completed in 2005, before the Chatsworth disaster."
So exactly how many lives 'saved' would justify the cost? I'm curious just exactly what dollar amount they put on a human life? Just how much does a life go for these days?
Industry, no matter what kind it is, has ALWAYS worked against SAFETY Regulations -- even when Industry doesn't have to pay anything at all. There are still some people alive today who remember how hard the Airline Industry fought against those "black boxes", as well as on-board anti-collision warning systems.
But how much is a Human life worth? Take the amount paid to the lobbyists working against all safety regulations and systems, and then divide by the number of people killed in "accidents" that could have been prevented had those regulations and systems been in place and implemented from the beginning. That's how much one Human life seems to be worth to the "people" who own/run/are in charge of these Industries.
not nearly enough to justify the cost
Would it be enough to justify the cost if YOU were in the train about to crash?
Corporate industry is only only concerned with how much money they can make at the expense of others. A human life is no exception. It is called business as usual for these companies.
Depends on whose life you are talking about DSB. No doubt you would give up everything you had to save your own life if death was eminit, but I am sure there is a limit to what you would give up for someone Else's life.
Again the artical is talking about prevention and not actully saving someones life. So what is the dollor amount for prevntion? I know a lot of people that won't even stop smoking to help prevent the loss of thier own life let along someone elses.
PTC is probably a good idea, but I don't think it justifys the cost. It is just another knee jerk reaction to a tragedy.
Maybe they should spend less money on lobbyists and more on meeting the deadline to have this crap installed! Just a thought.
The problem with that question is the implication that we will spend any amount of money to save one life. That's simply not true. Maybe the smarter question is a consideration of our available funding, and how to best deploy that money so as to make our railroads as safe as possible. Remember: Even though the railroad industry is expected to pay for this, they won't. Their customers will, and so on down the line until the end consumer is reached. If the cost of delivering goods via rail exceeds the cost of delivering those same goods by another mode, many shippers will flee to those other modes. The loss of income to railroads could, in the end, reduce funds available for the safe operation of those railroads. At the same time, the alternative modes of transport may be more threatening to life and safety than the railroads. Although our trucking industry has a marvelous safety record, I suspect that a comparison of miles-ton of cargo carried would reveal that rail has a significantly better track record (got to love those puns). IOW: If customers flee to trucking their goods, your wife and kids may be put at risk by higher truck traffic. And that ignores the cost to our highway infrastructure as greater demands are placed on it. There are no simple answers, and your implied question, "just exactly what dollar amount [do] they put on a human life?", treats the decision too narrowly. --mark d.
texasbob
Given the sorry condition of our rail system PTC is a great idea . Not only is it suppose to help prevent collisions but also derailments . Derailments seem to be the larger safety issue here . How many tank cars have gone off the tracks , caught fire or spilled toxic chemicals . You see there is more than one major safety issue here .
bob
It seems to me, the 100 million dollars spent on "Lobbying" would have paid for more than a few lights and safety issues. But lobbying is more important than lives. I hope they have another horror of a train wreck and someone sues these companies for billions for fraud to the American people.
Somewhere we need to decide what is more important to US, profits or living. I prefer the latter.
Human life is worth:
F x L = X > PTC
F is for fatalities per crash, multiply that by L which is the average lawsuit per fatality. If X is cheaper then the cost of adding PTC, they won't do it. This is how they justify not doing it, you and the rest of us are just dollars amounts.
dsb,
While you ask a reasonable question, I would just ask you to respond to the same question. The article states that over 10 years PTC would have prevented 21 train wrecks resulting in a total of 56 deaths and 1000 injuries. That would place the cost of preventing each of those deaths/injuries at $12.3 million dollars. While I like an emotional argument as much as the next guy, and I certainly want YOU to spend 12.3 mill to save me, from a pure cost/benefit, econometric model, I'm not sure a single life is worth 12.3 million. The question isn't how much we are willing to spend to save ourselves or someone we love. That's a purely emotional argument, only theoretical in nature, and of course the answer is - no amount is too great. The question is; how much are you willing to spend to save someone you have never and will never meet or know and who will have absolutely no effect on your life.
To texas bob's point however; if we factor in the cost saved by preventing derailments and their associated losses, the cost per life saved/injury prevented might drop significantly. As bob suggests however, there is not enough information in the article to assess those costs rationally.
Bob, according to Wikipedia (agreed not a real reliable source) there were 15 train related accidents in the US last year, so I don't think this is really a large number of accidents when you consider the number of trains we have on the rails. However I think the railroad industry should take a serious look at PTC and see if the number of accidents it would prevent would justify the cost. I am betting that it would not, but I do not have all the facts.
I really like to position most posters are taking on this issue. Seems that our country is waking up to the "balls-to-the-wall for the bottom line" corporate ideology, and pushing back.
What safety system(s) do the Europeans employ? Seems we can learn much from them, instead of reinventing the wheel, so-to-speak.
dsb
Sadly, very sadly; in these days the value of a human life, or any life for that matter, is worth nothing. Many among us, have no value for their own life, let alone anther's life.
In the story, one of the accidents reported not only killed a few people but also required that 5400 people get evacuated from a town in the path of a noxious chlorine gas leak. But does not include the cost of that evacuation or any cleanup required as a result of that chemical spill. and that is just one accident with one rail car of chlorine. while the lives of people that may be saved as a result of this regulation are very important, the property that won't be damaged or the toxins that won't be spilled need to be taken into account as well. I vaguely remember a similar battle between regulation and business when seat belts and then air bags became required in all cars in the U.S.
@dsb
Asking "How much is one life worth?" is similar to asking "If it only saved one life, wouldn't it be worth it?" The difference is that the first question (yours) asks each individual to set their own price on a human life, but implies that they are not spending enough on safety. The second (many others) implies that human life is precious beyond all cost, to which I reply, "No." Human life is precious, but not beyond all cost. It is a criterion for safety, but not the only criteria. If that were they case, the speed limit on all highways would be 5 miles per hour.
Some perspective - The article identifies 56 deaths in 10 years that would have been prevented by PTC. There are some 300 million people in the US. That equates to an annual death rate from rail crashes of 0.0019 per 100,000 people in the US.
There are 400,000 deaths per year in the US DIRECTLY related to the use of tobacco. That's an annual death rate of 133 per 100,000. Yet our government continues to keep tobacco use legal and to subsidize its growth and distribution. There are 45,000 traffic fatalities per year, over half of which are related to the use of alcohol. For less than 60 billion dollars the developed nations of the world could build the infrastructure necessary to provide potable water to EVERY person on this planet. Doing so would save millions each year who die from starvation and disease related to not having water available. The US alone could have funded these projects for what it cost us to fight the Iraq and Afghanistan wars for 2 months.
Anyone on this post relating their discussion to the "cost of a human life" should give the above some consideration.
Makes sense to me Jeff..
@Lusitania
If defending lawsuits over the loss of human life is cheaper than PTC, the inequality should be X < PTC.
The cost of compliance is $13 Billion. Over the last decade, compliance with this mandate could have saved 1,000 from injury and 53 from death. If each injury averaged a payout of $1 million (it wouldn't happen) and each death a payout of $10 million, that would total $1.53 Billion. That is 12% of the cost of compliance. They will never do it.
This article simply proves what I've been saying all along. The Democrats can be as high and mighty and "FOR THE AVERAGE MAN" as they want to be in speeches, but the fact that Obama conceded to the wishes of the railroad along with the Republicans just shows that both sides are in it for the money. I'd be willing to bet that the Railroad companies will Hedge their bets, and send money to both sides for this coming election. Not that we'll ever hear about it of course.
We need to get rid of the "Political" Politician. We don't need term limits to limit them. Vote anyone out after 8yrs. That will reduce the power of the lobbyists when they don't have this one or that one in their pockets.
The real issue is how much money are we willing to spend for each life saved. For those who argue in favor of this system and think we should do whatever we can to save lives, I say you need a dos of economic reality. Companies regularly place a value on human life every time they evaluate the safety of a product. They look at the cost of making safety improvements against the likelihood of something going wrong that these improvements would stop and the likely damage award should someone be injured or killed. A perfect example of this is the automobile industry. The technology exists to make cars far safer than they are today. However, the auto manufacturers must balance the safety of the car against the cost to manufacture the car. You can make cars as safe as tanks, but they would be so expensive that no one would be able to afford to buy them. The same applies to PTC in the railroad industry. Yes, it would make train travel safer. However, how much will installing this system cost and how much will that impact the ticket prices for the commuters who rely on the trains to get to work and how much will it impact the freight rates they need to charge shippers for moving goods - meaning a corresponding increase in what consumers will have to pay for those goods. It is easy to say that we should spend whatever we need to in order to prevent these rail accidents, but in the real world there are economic considerations. Does it really make sense to spend $13 billion to install a system that will only save an average of five lives a year?!?! The emotional answer is of course we should, but the reasoned economic answer might be that it just does not make economic sense. If you were to say that the system would be obsolete or need to be replaced in say 25 years (an extremely generous life expectancy for a technology system) you would be looking at spending $104 million for each life saved ($13 billion / 125 lives saved = $104 million/life). Is it really worth it!?!? I know that this sounds cold hearted, but the reality is that companies do this kind of math every day.
Save lives, control guns.
Once again proof that our government is owned by big corporations.
I risk sounding awful here, but no one mandates that anyone has to travel by train any more than it is mandated that you have to travel by car. These devices aren't being mandated into cars, which over the years kill way more people than died on the train. In the last 12 years there has only been 53 deaths by train accident, yet thousands of deaths in vehicles in the same amount of time. The cost of these PTC devices will still be stuck on those that use the trains, ticket cost will go up and so will transit cost of goods, thereby causing the price of the goods to rise as well. It's not to say that the lives weren't worth saving, economically it just is not sensible to spend $13 Billion dollars on this project. Those that use the train system will be forced to pay for this, not the companies that own the train systems alone.
Loss of life is always unfortunate. But that money would be better spent on upgrading the infrastructure. Such as gates on every crossing. In addition to providing rail service to all regions. Millions of Americans have been affected by the loss of rail service. I have seen this first hand.
They have called PTC the biggest federal mandate the industry has faced in more than a century, and say they anticipated that the government would step up its financial support.
Another fine example of an American Corporation expecting welfare on the backs of the American Taxpayer. Would this company share it's profits back with the people? NOT
To deliver their message on PTC and other issues, railroad interests spend heavily on lobbying. According to the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, the railroad industry poured $73.4 million into lobbying in 2009 and 2010, and another $8.75 million in the first quarter of 2011.
So.. this corporation says "I think the best way around this one is to spend $100 Million Dollars (oh and add a surcharge on all railway ticket prices to pay for it), hire some former Congressmen as Lobbyist, and then attempt to 'buy' Congressional favor (republican and democrat alike), change the safety laws, and/or get corporate welfare to get it accomplished. Oh and forget safety concerns.. we'd rather run the risk of costing people their lives that making it safer.
Can anyone else see the problem here?
There is one problem here that I have not seen brought up. There are three main causes of an accident / derailment. 1. Mechanical Failure (broken wheel, broken axle, bad bearing) 2. Track Failure (broken rail, bad bridge, washout), and a much, much smaller 3. Human factors (dumb / distracted engineer, neglegent signal maintainer, or public auto / truck driver in front of / hitting train)
The 15 Billion dollars we are talking about spending here only has major effect on item 3. PTC does nothing to prevent Mechanical Failures, and will only detect Track Failure where new track circuits are installed as a result of PTC (current signal systems are already track circuit based) sooo, if you are all seeing this as the great prevention to all derailments, this is not it!!! If you want to get serious about derailment prevention you are also going to look at increasing train inspections, automated train inspection systems, predictive failure analysis, etc. as well as spending more money on track inspection and electronic rail flaw inspection.
In my opinion we are putting the money in the dead wrong place. Wheel Impact Load Detectors (WILD), Hot Bearing Detectors (HBD), Hot Wheel Detectors (HWD), Acoustic Bearing Detectors and video train inspection systems are all mature technologies, available right now, and will do a hell of a lot more to prevent derailments than the PTC system being developed on the fly right now as an overlay to the safe signal systems we already have in use today.
Thank you, kcrailroader, for your informed post. As someone else said, this is what occurs when a knee-jerk reaction occurs.
This whole life and death issue is warped, as there are two guarantees in life: "Death and Taxes". The amount of money and taxes we spend on trying to keep dying people alive is ridiculous. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for trying to find ways to reduce the number of unnecessary deaths, BUT there has to be some REASONABLENESS attributed to such a decision! Spending billions of dollars to save a few is not reasonable as there's simply is not enough money in the wold to save everyone! Although tragic, there are no guarantees in life, whereby every single one of us is at risk of dying the moment we close our eyes at night or open them in the morning...that's how this planet operates, so get used to it!
How many die in automobile accidents a year due to the negligent drivers? So maybe the government should FORCE every driver to pay $1M for a car, thereby limiting the deaths of automobile accidents! Trust me, the very posters on here claiming "every life is worth saving regardless of the cost" would be the FIRST to kick, scream, and threaten the positions of those who voted in such a law! So why is it OK to FORCE railroad companies to spend 12 times that to save maybe 50 people over the next 10 years for accidents that may or may not even happen?!?! Geesh, I'm positive there are cheaper ways of reducing these deaths, but my question would be is WHO doesn't profit from it?
Our founding father's were right...they had no faith in the People governing themselves.
Folks,,what we are seeing in this article is the reality of politics and profits...and what our lives mean to either politicans or companies seeking higher profits. Which is very little to nothing. High money talks and politicans suck it up.
What gets me is that the very same people arguing against this are usually the ones arguing FOR giving law enforcement and particularly TSA more and more power (i.e., law-and-order Republicans). They will usually use the "pretend the extreme is the alternative" argument, such as, "You mean to tell me you'd rather be blown up by a terrorist?". So, let's use that argument here: "You mean to tell me you'd rather have your children crushed by a train?"
Railroads have a history from day one of refusing safety advances. The fact is, they were the first industry to control government in this country. The congress is so used to turning tricks it wouldn't know how to lead with a string and a map.
If we leave companies alone they will keep us save and come up with all of these safety measures on their own . After all we have only had 53 deaths and a 1000 or so injuries since 2001 on the railways and they only have until 2015 to implement the changes ,14 yrs years is way to fast definitely in the knee jerk category .
We should also cut back on the airline regulations too because even though its never been safer to fly US airlines. They would make more money if they were allowed kill a few people. Look at Africa or the former Soviet countries they do not have nearly the same amount of regulations and they only have a few more crashes than we do .
While we are at it maybe we should loosen the regulations on Cruise ships ,they could do away with those expensive life boats .They are not needed because they can just drive the boat up on the shore if they start to sink .They do not even need expensive Captains ,they should just have the Captains stay at home and call in the orders on the cell phone . Look at the money that would save !
SUKmeBollix
Mandating that every home in America have a sprinkler system installed would save more lives in a month than this would save in a decade.
No Angry guy, what we and others are asking is if it's REASONABLE to spend over 12 billion to save a few lives for collisions that may or may not occur in the future? Would you find it reasonable for the government to force you and all other drivers to pay $1 Million for every car just to save a few lives? Of course not, whereby I'm sure you would scream bloody hell if they even attempted such an action, yet this is effectively what they ARE DOING to the railroad companies!
This is why we have INSURANCE, so in the event such a collision takes place, you agree to accept a certain amount based upon the type of injuries you sustain, including death. This applies to all modes of transportation, including automobile and planes so you're not forced to pay a substantial amount "up front" for a collision that may or may not even taken place.
What no one is willing to discuss or talk about is that these types of deaths have been significantly REDUCED whereas over an entire decade only 53 people have died in train collisions, which is miniscule compared to those who have died in automobiles and planes collisions! I'm not saying the railroads stop finding ways to reduce these collisions and deaths however, I absolutely believe there are far less cost-effective ways of achieving this, like airbags in automobiles have, without financially burdening the riders, companies and their consumers who rely on the railroads for transporation services on top of still paying for the insurance that's already included in the cost of their tickets! It's just not right or fair.
And so I would offer the same counterargument against all the "security theater" at airports. The odds of being blown up by a terrorist are so low that all the searches and irradiation are an unnecessary waste of time, money and dignity. It's just not right or fair.
I also find railroads' claims about their having to pay the costs to be laughable. We all know they won't pay a penny; they'll simply pass the costs on to their customers. Now, if they would say this, rather than saying "you're forcing us to pay for it", maybe they'd have more credibility.
Capitalism would really be great if it wasn't for one little detail. GREED... Bottom line... If it's cheaper to kill you then it is to provide a safe place for you to work or travel or shop or whatever. Guess what? You're dead.
Investors.com, Posted 11/16/2011 05:27 PM ET
Energy Policy: Killing the Keystone XL pipeline may help one of the world's richest men get richer. North Dakota's booming oil fields will now grow more dependent on a railroad the president's economic guru just bought.
Stop us if you see a pattern here. About the time George Soros — Hungarian billionaire and key donor to leftist groups and the Democratic Party — invested heavily in the stock of the state-run Brazilian oil company Petrobras, President Obama was curbing U.S. offshore oil production and the U.S. Export-Import Bank announced a $2 billion loan to Petrobras to finance deep-water drilling off the pristine beaches of Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.
As he was imposing curbs and moratoria on U.S. offshore drillers, President Obama wished the Brazilians well in the hope we would someday be Brazil's best oil customer.
Apparently, oil tankers coming from Brazil are better and safer than a ine from Canada, whose best customer we will not be if they ship their tar sands oil to China instead.
Angry guy...you provided no argument. I agree with what you refer to as "security theater", which is essentially what this is. Will the PTS absolultely 100% guarantee that there will never ever be another train collision causing injury or death?!? NO, it's just another costly security measure to placate the public in believing the governments looking out for our best interests, while secretly padding anothers.
Where do you think a railroad company derives it's income from? Unless they're in the business of growing "money trees" their revenue comes from their riders and customers who pass it on to the consumers, so course they'll end up paying for it! This is a well known FACT, not something they or any person/company for that matter, needs to admit to. Geesh.
Trust me, if we attempted to "dummy proof" every conceivable factor, natural or man-made, that could cause injury or death, then no one would be able to afford any form of transportation by land, air or sea! Understandably, society expects those who own, operate, or utilize transporation to do so in a lawful, safe and non-risky behavior, which is what the railroads have done while only incurring 53 deaths over a decade v. the thousands committed by automobiles. My question to you is, if they're demanding railroads decrease their deaths at a cost of $636 Million per decedent, then the government should force AUTOMOBILE OWNERS to incure the same cost for security measures on the roadway which amounts to approximately 36,000 deaths annually (360,000 a decade)...do the math and argue that.
I absolutely agree that the TSA is a farce and a complete violation of our rights. We spend millions of dollars a year on the incredibly small odds that a terrorist will be able to get on a plane and blow it up. The TSA has not prevented one terrorist attack.
@dsb
Maybe they should just stop providing the service? Would you prefer that? It's not a matter of "how much a human life goes for", that's a moronic response. I'm sure the car you drive could be made a hell of a lot safer but would you still be able to afford it? Why not bitch about those things since you seem to believe any amount of money is justified for the sake of "safety".
Tinto De Verano
You're fcking joking right? "In these days"?? If you think things are bad now you should have been around 50, 75, 100 years ago. "These days" things are safer and human life is held in higher regard than EVER before. Try to get a clue before you make a further @ss of yourself with such ridiculous statements.
john537,,,,,
This is about rail roads, not guns, try to stay on topic. And just so you know,by current federal statistics, CARS kill far more people every year than either guns, planes or trains by far. Save lives, control cars. Moron.
Welcome to the United Businesses of America. A government by the corporations, for the corporations, and bought by the corporations.
"Investigators with the agency have identified 21 train wrecks since late 2001 that, they say, would have been averted by PTC. In all, the accidents caused 53 deaths"
I hate to sound callous, but $13 Billion to save 5 lives a year is not cost effective. It works out to $245 Million per life saved over 10 years. That money will have to be paid with much higher ticket prices.
By comparison, the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards are estimated to have saved over 20,000 lives at a cost of about $10 Billion, or a cost per life of only $500,000 each, which means that imposing these standards on train passengers will cost about 500 times as much for each life saved.
If the concern is saving lives, I suspect that we could put that $13 Billion towards something that could save 10s of thousands of lives. Every safety feature costs money, and this will result in a largely useless hit to our economy. To put it into perspective, we could reduce the number of deaths from lightning strikes by requiring that people walk around with lightning rods on their backs that trail to the ground, at a cost of perhaps $150 Billion, but would it make sense?
There is a constant 'trade-off' calculation between cost and safety that engineers make in safety regulations - this is no different.
It's hard for me to believe , that they can't come up with a way , to automatically brake trains , for less than , 13 billion dollars....
The question not asked here is how much will this system cost to operate annually? It isn't just lives as others have mentioned earlier, but dangerous spills and explosions. Evacuating towns, if there is enough time is costly enough, but what happens if there isn't time?
It was also mentioned the cost of passenger tickets and cost of per ton of cargo moved. All those costs in the end is reflected in the cost to the end consumer (all of us) and that being said, shouldn't the tax payer be asked to foot part of this cost since at the end of the day we will be paying not only for the goods transported but the lives if just one accident occurs that there is no time to evacuate a town not only of just 5500 people, but what about much more populated areas?
I believe a system like this is needed and should be at least partially footed by the government (tax payers/consumers) to set up. The industry can foot the cost of running it. If more time is needed, fine, give the extension, but lets make sure the extension is being watched so they don't intentionally slow it down. If new technology(or existing technology) is needed or can be used, they (the government) should be flexible enough to allow implementation that system.
The problem with making that kind of statement is it's not all that valid. Yes, the initial cost compared to deaths may be that high, but the cost of keeping PTC working after installation is FAR lower. By installing it, you continue to save people. It's not a one-time thing. So even if the initial cost is high, the end cost is far lower. If it was $12 million in 10 years, it's down to around $6 million in 20. If you continue to use rail in 100 years, you're down to $1.2 million. And it continues to decrease from there. Now, my example doesn't take into the cost of maintaining the system, but the cost should be relatively low, so the example is still valid.
Then, when you add into other costs associated with the train wrecks that could have been prevented... replacing the train cars, replacing the lost goods, repairing any damages, cleaning up any spills, paying for any evacuation costs, etc. And add in the cost of lobbying against PTC. In the end, you're probably looking at knocking off 30-40% of the initial cost just in savings to the railroads from reducing the wrecks. So your cost per life may end up really being only a few hundred thousand dollars. Far less than what I quoted.
Railroads could counter some more of the cost by fining the train operators who don't apply the brakes, requiring that the PTC system brake for them. It doesn't have to be a huge fine, but $50 per offense will probably add up. And not only will that help cover some of the costs, it will also promote safer operation of the trains.
Based on this research (I can't verify accuracy): D.J. Forkenbrock / Transportation Research Part A 35 (2001) 321±337
It looks like the average societal cost of rail wrecks in one year (1994) was over $3 billion. With inflation, that's close to $5 billion in 1 year of wrecks. And that's just FREIGHT. It doesn't include PASSENGER rail wrecks. So just based on that, in a 10 year period, PTC would have saved them almost $50 billion. You'd think railroads would want to save that kind of money.
Of course, according to that document, railroads only paid about 1/3 of the costs. The rest was paid by others... whether that's the government (town, state, federal) or business owners or the common person, 2/3 had to come from somewhere else. So I suppose the railroads would have only saved around $16 billion in 10 years. But society would have saved twice that.
@The Angry Guy
What gets me is how people of any given ideology make a bunch of garbage assumtions so they can critisize those of a differing ideology without basis.
@Riamus
The problem with your figures is that they do not take into account that this system will only be used on 70k miles of track. I can't find an exact number for miles of track in the US, figures range from 140k to 244k. So the savings you mention would be, at best, half of what you figured and at worse a little better than one quarter. Also you are using a statistical sample of just one year, Was that a "bad" year for train wrecks, a good year or average? I also question your 60% inflationary adjustment over a 17 year period; it seems a little high to me.
I work in the railroad industry so I have a different perspective. I see lots of posts talking about the costs of human lives. IF you were to force PTC, freight costs would rise and customers would turn to trucks. Trucks would flood the highways resulting in death and destruction being transferred to the highways making them drastically more dangerous. Lives saved in the railroad industry would be lost on America's highways so no net gain in lives would occur. You'd damage America's railroad industry in terms of jobs but jobs would open up in the medical industry to cover increased traffic accidents. Government has no right to tell private business what is right for them. Private business is efficient. It doesn't want costly accidents either. Let private business find a solution that is efficient for all. The ONLY group that consistently benefits from implementing PTC is the political class who are making under the table deals.
I hope all they get at most is a small delay. If theres another accident that could have been prevented, it will be on the heads of whomever stood in the way of these safety measures. Hear that politicians? It will be on your heads.
Politicians take NO responsibility for their actions and WE THE PEOPLE keep voting for the same fools year after year.
I really think that people should pass a reading comprehension test on issues before being allowed to vote on that issue. Same goes for people we vote for. We should take a test on what the Politician voted on in office before we can reelect him or what the challenger stands for before we can elect him.
NO going to the Pols and voting for a pretty face. Know something about the issue or do not vote.
I imagine the 24 hour news lobby is opposed as well. Train crashes are good for at least a couple days in the hourly shriek rotation.
Our railroad system is the envy of many third world countries, a marvel of corporate neglect.
There is alot on their heads already and they dont give a crap as long as the money flows in from the lobbyists.Is it not ironic that we have the current pool of Repub candidates go on about saving the life of the unborn but yet they dont give a toss about those of us that are already living
Isn't it more than a little odd that these multi million dollar locomotives don't even have GPS on them?
Railroads largely operate under the radar.(no one paying much attention) trains are getting longer and longer all the time. as much as two miles long.
The train wrecks of the future will get bigger and bigger as well ! and more deadly all the time !!!
Corporateshill;
Clearly, you have not been in the cab of a locomotive in the last twenty years. Locomotives do have GPS. They also carry event recorders, just like the airliners. What do you call under the radar? They only transportation industry with equal the regulations to rail road is the airlines. Freight trains max out at just over 1 mile in length. I know when your sitting at a crossing and a train is creeping by at 15-20 mph, it seems much longer, but, it isn't. All the bold type does not make your sentence true.
Over all, trains cause fewer deaths than the automobile or airplanes. What the statistics tell us, is most deaths occur when people drive their car in front of or into the side of a train they "didn't see" or tried to "beat" to a crossing. You can put all the safety equipment you like on a train, it will nothing to stop the idiots who pull in front of them or drive into because they are inattentive or reckless. You can't idiot proof the world.
Sorry Nic,
I was a little too vague. I'm an engineer for 35 years now. Locomotives are tracked by GPS, but that data isn't displayed for the engineer. Doesn't seem to big a jump to me, to go from tracking, to not allowing 2 trains to occupy the same space. Why isn't a GPS Garmon type screen available to me?
Under the radar meant that, the gov makes the rules but, seldom is seen any regulators in the field to enforce the rules. And most people have no idea whats' going on with trains.
It's true that trains are much less dangerous than other transports, but this is really about entering the 21st century.
Right near my home, 2 sidings are being lengthened from 8000 ft to 12000 ft to accommodate trains nearly 2 miles long. They are getting longer all the time.
Another example of short-sighted people whose "bottom line" is simply money, not the total social cost.
Let them have their delay.
In the meantime, let's set a "minimum liability" for any loss of human life, or for any permanent disability, for certain classes of accident occurring on any track that lacks PTC. I'm thinking in terms of $2 billion per person killed, and $500 million for permanent disability. This liability would be due immediately upon determination that the track lacked a functional PTC system, and that the accident was in an applicable class, even if no civil or criminal court action had yet taken place. If the track owners cannot put up the money, then they would be put in receivership immediately, with possible loss of proprietary equity.
This way, the railroads would be forced to consider the true social cost of their failure to follow the rule of "safety first".
Something should be done, I agree, but non the less, you sound like a complete and total "IDIOT".
Really Zev? Do you really think a persons life is worth 2 bill? You sound like a lawyer hoping for a big payout. Its not the railroads who would pay the bill you propose, its the customers who would have to pay for the rate increases. So everything the railroad transports would have to increase in price. Total social costs would be worse than you think. Food, energy all would increase in price = people on the margins of our society would do without = more people would die because of your "safety measures", congratulations.
Zev - please enlighten us on how you calculated the social cost of a single person at 2 billion. Your post is emotional, rhetorical blathering and of no value.
There was a punitive element going into that calculation.
Mad, calling Dr. Zev an "idiot" is simply juvenile. Not following up your insult with an alternative gives your comment a 'No Value' rating.
This is a safety issue and has the potential to take many human lives. If the PTC system is not adopted then another procedure should be implemented because the loss of one single human life is too costly, in my opinion.
@Dr Zev - even considering punitive damages, that number is still egregiously high. The Supreme Court has ruled that punitive damages in excess of a 10:1 ratio over compensatory damages is unconstitutional. Assuming the average person with a Bachelor's degree will make 1.8 million dollars in their lifetime (a fair compensatory amount), the maximum constitutional amount a person should be able to receive in punitive damages would be 18 million.
Thank you Dr Zev!!!!!!
Really? Then let's treble that for automobile drivers, as I'm sure you're aware they cause far more deaths per year than trains do! So ask yourself, would YOU willing to pay 6 billion if you accidentally kill someone with a car? If not, then maybe you're the one who's "short sighted" whereas I absolutely believe there are many cost-effective ways to reduce these colllisions, but for, there's no profit in it. Find out WHO profits from the PTC and bet it will lead to some hefty campaign donors...no differently than how the government enforced "low flow toilets", at public's cost of course.
Remember that we know from the OJ Simspon civil award that the life of a 20-something waiter is worth $35 million.
Do you hate the RR industry? Many more deaths occur on the highways each year from commercial trucks than from trains but I don't see you supporting the same harsh measures for trucking companies. The truth is we need both and they both need to be profitable in a capitalistic economy. I always thought freight trucks sharing the same road with passenger cars was a lethal mix. The government has given states money for high speed rail which is very safe but some states, including Florida, didn't want it and their share went to other states. Maybe your blame should rest with the Govenors of the states that refused this upgrade. Taxpayers subsidize the airline and trucking industry why not the RR in the same ratio?
Who actually owns the track and roadbed?
The railroads maintain such things (for better or worse).
Mechanical failure and sometimes utter stupidly seem to account for a large number of the fatalities.
A friend of ours (Casey is is first name, no less!) has been a train engineer for over a decade. Every fatal accident he has had any involvement in was caused by a vehicle driver failing to heed crossing signals and gates. There are bad sections of track, generally those used seasonally on an irregular basis for such things as logs from the forests. In general, the trackage condition in our state is adequate for freight, but not good enough for high speed passenger trains. This is a far cry from the past, when the railroads provided most of the long distance transportation, and the track had to support steam engines.
Jakrabt_Oxford MS
Sorry but mad is correct. Both you and Dr. Zev seem to be suffering from magical thinking and innumeracy. You don't spend 13 billion to solve a 2 billion(outrageously high estimate) dollar problem.
There is not one person on this earth whose life is worth 2 billion dollars. Society could not function under such assumptions. In fact i would say that if your life was even marginally affected in a negative way by such rules you would never stop complaining.
How many lives could be saved by doubling the total taxes paid by your average American and applying the money to infrastructure improvements?
Dr, Zev; So your answer in nationalization of the rail system. Marvelous, put the tax payer on the hook, just what we need another bill. According to Workers Compensation tables, you life, if lost on the job is worth $125,000. In these tables you are the sum of your parts, each of which has a dollar value. Look it up. The cost per life in a rail road accident is already many times greater than that.
Why Dr., do you not rail against the number one cause of death in the U.S. by many times, the automobile? Interestingly enough the vast majority of deaths due to trains is associated with idiots in cars pulling front of a train or driving into the side of one at crossings. Events like Chatsworth are quite rare. More people die in this country per day in car crashes, than were killed in this train wreck.
The PCT system will do absolutely nothing to prevent the hundreds of cars driven in front of or into trains every year. You can't idiot proof the world. There is not enough money to do so and any determined idiot will figure out a way around them anyway.
So they really don't mind the mandate, they just want us taxpayers to cover the cost?
To dsb & Freedom4 - I'm with you on this [I put that in just so you don't think I'm being negative in what I'm about to write].
How many lives does it take to justify a safety measure? Well. let's see. Do you know how large municipalities, counties and states figure out when it's time to install traffic lights at an intersection, or paint pedestrian cross walks on a street? The standards employed for those decisions are based on the number of deaths or serious injuries have occurred at that location in recent years. When the toll rises above some arbitrary number, a number chosen usually several years in the past, then, and actually I mean not "then" but a few years in the future, the responsible agency or department will spend the money to get that safety measure implemented.
Of course there are reasons for that system, reasons involving the truism that they can't make everything safe all at once because they don't have unlimited money. But they certainly could make dangerous places safer faster than they do if they didn't spend that couple of million dollars somewhere else making something a little more convenient for a developing neighborhood.
It is of course necessary that funds be budgeted and dispersed via a large scale plan aimed at covering all aspects of governmental responsibility but they definitely could, if safety were the higher priority, reorganize that plan to focus on safety and life preservation instead of mere convenience.
Doing that, however, would reflect on electability - or at least the politicians think it would - and so the politics takes precedence over the lives lost while waiting for a crosswalk to be painted on the busy street where dozens of people every day have to either jaywalk to get to the grocery store or walk three blocks down the street to cross at an existing crosswalk and then three blocks back to the store - and then repeat that trek in reverse to get home - often with their kids in tow.
I'm not saying anyone's the bad guy here, it's just that our priorities need straightening. If we prioritized safety, the delay for convenience would be a bit longer but the delay would in reality be unnoticeable - and the decrease in tragic deaths would be stunning.
$13 billion seems like a large amount to have the railroads absorb simply to prevent collisions only between trains. It would do nothing to prevent derailments which can be caused by several factors, nor would it prevent crossing accidents because of the stopping distance that trains require. Most railroads are solvent but not rich by any means. The costs would be prohibitive and increase the price of everything to everyone, since so much is shipped by rail.
I agree IKnowThat....that traffic lights and stops signs are only installed in certain places based on the frequency of accidents at that location...and not until then. And what will be next...mandating some kind of system in cars and trucks so they automatically won't collide. And who's to say this system will even work as described.
Considering the fantastic subsidies that the taxpayers have provided for truck transport and aviation, it seems reasonable for Congress to appropriate some funds to help pay for the biggest federal mandate in history. The history of federal and state governments favoring highways and airports over rail systems (which actually pay taxes instead of soaking up public money) goes way back. It seems that the governments and unions have been hell-bent to wipe out the railroads since the 1950s.
Statistically speaking, it is much safer to transport the hazardous materials by rail than by truck. And rail transport is much more efficient in the use of fossil fuel than trucks on the highway. If we are serious about reducing carbon footprint, there should be federal mandates (or at least incentives) to move freight off the highways and on to rails. Federal support to pay for 1/2 of this safety tech improvement seems reasonable, considering what Congress has invested in highways, airports, and air traffic control.
Mailman I agree with you, accept for the union part. You have to understand that unions were instrumental in bringing fair wages and labor practices to the working people, which also improved safety for the workers, customers and consumers. Like any citizen, government official or corporation---unions/members can become just as corrupt or corruptable which is why they and every citizen, government and corporation needs to have checks and balances in place. However, it doesn't negate the long fight the unions undertook for the common worker to flourish after centuries of oppressive working conditions.
Remember, when things become too comfortable and you remove the very mechanisms, such as unions or safety inspections, that brought about major changes to the betterment of society, it can easily revert back to the way things used to be. Please know I am not pro-union, as I've never worked for one before, but I am fundamentally aware of the saying "Those who don't remember history are doomed to repeat it" often do as generations pass; society becomes too complacent and will slowly regress / backslide by losing much of what was hard earned by it's ancestors.
In this case, the railroads have vastly improved their safety record, and like you said, probably SAVED many lives by having commodities shipped via rail, rather than the roadway, thereby reducing automobile collisions. I believe there are better ways to improve safety through training, communication, or making slight modifications to existing systems without contantly throwing good money after bad for an unachievable goal---0 deaths, ever.
Too many live in the land of la la. Sorry, but life is a risk in and of itself, whereby there's a zero guarantee you will live forever, just like there's a zero guarantee there will never be another fatality on a railway, roadway, ocean, air....
Why is it always coming down to having to fight against our own government for the strict rules and regulations they put on everyone? People cannot exist, let alone live, in a condition where everything that we do is judged in some way and encumbered by rules, regs, fees and permits. How about letting us just walk or drive down a freaken street without your noses up are arses! They pretend it is for the good of all, but they know the more laws, the more money they will have from John Q!
That makes so much sense, you should run for Congress ...
Carol -
And the other side of the coin is those people out there among us who are ready to sue, and an insurance industry with profit goals. Seat belts in cars was pushed by the insurance industry to reduce the amount of money they had to pay out - under the disguise of "saving lives".
The flip side of the seat belt coin is now a population that feels overly 'safe' in their cars and pays no attention to their driving. (Do we dare talk about the things that people do while driving??) This country has a plethora of 4000 pound "missiles" being steered by complete idiots.
Railroad ownership has had a long and inglorious history of resisting certain types of change, whether to knuckle couplers, automatic airbrakes, limited hours of service, non-telescoping passenger cars, or other safety-related improvements that could fill a small catalog. Give ownership a chance to reduce costs, say by reducing crew size, however, and now there's a major priority for ownership!
Maybe John Mica should spend some time not with the front-office folks but with the train crews.
Funny- you all complain about how a 3rd world country like China has high speed rail and "accidents" like they are incompetent, yet we have many more accidents, at low speed, people are killed and yet you blame it all on regulations. Do you read the flotsam that you spew? This safety system should be mandatory and should have been implemented when created and proven yet we allow MORONS in Washington to dictate how many lives it is worth. The U.S. is a podunk third world country run by idiots, elected by you.
Mica should be thrown in prison for taking bribes. A perfect example of how third world countries operate.
Thank you for the comment from the Chinese military.
I understand how people would think this was a no brainer but 13 bill for 50 some odd people? Plus nobody mentioned the maintenance costs. Not everything the govt does is bad but really there needs to be a cost benefit study over these crazy federal mandates. Congress likes to pass these kind of bills because they dont have to pay for them, but we as the customer do. If the railroad had to buy this system then they would have to pass on the cost, so again the everybody but congress gets the bill.
Exactly, If we are gonna turn into the USSA, we need to use Scientific Socialism and a reality based cost benefit model for our decisions.
Whether we like it or not, we are bankrupt as a nation and in a year or two, if you ask someone what a life is worth, it will not be much. LOL!
The question is what is rare occurrence? I read about train derailments a lot. But what are the causes? Is it human error, maintenance issues or just plan equipment failure.
John Scott-299785-
Access the National Transportation Safety Board website, and you can get detailed information. As far as your question of causation, the answer is all three, but all three are interwoven.
They cant afford to upgrade but can afford to spend massive sums for lobbying every year? Railroads are subsidized by the federal government ( us ) with obscene amounts of money. Have been since their inception. These are filthy capitalist pigs are their finest.
only Amtrak gets subsidized
After reading the article and trying to understand all the organizations, politics, lobbying-(money laundering) and of course the big government waste ... how do they find the time to move the train down the tracks?
How crazy is that? Typically GOP America!
They don't want to make things more secure?
Even if it only safes ONE life, it is worth it - maybe it is YOUR life, that will be safed!!!
Did you read the article before you posted your GOP hate? It stated:
"with major concessions from the Obama administration"!!!
Your prez isnt making things any more secure than GOP. *sheesh*
"Volker the Sheep"
Considering the railroad industries poor track record over the years this comes as no big surprise. The loss of life and injuries in the rail industry was so high at one time that O.S.H.A. was created by the government to address the issue specifically!
False - The railroad industry is regulated by the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) of the Department of Transportation. Until about 7 - 10 years ago, if OSHA did show up on a RR site we could tell them to go pound sand. They are making some inroads into regulation of the RR industry on things like fall protection, but I don't worry about them like I do the FRA Inspector.
OSHA only came about since 1970, the FRA and its predecessors with the old Interstate Commerce Commission have been regulating the railroad industry since 1900 with the Railway Safety Appliance Act
Thank you for clarifying this matter. It will no doubt help others to better understand the situation as it really is as well.
$13 billion to save us from some jackass texting on his phone while driving a train and missing a red light?
No thanks - typical government overreaction and instinct to waste time and money on both the improvement and their legislation of the actual laws around it.
The system sounds good, but penalizing the industry by forcing them to install it by an arbitrary deadline decided by politicians with no experience in the industry, and making them pay for it all too, is counterproductive.
If government wants even safer railroads and has a pet project picked out to solve the perceived problem, then it should invest in the project.
How many people die from running red lights on city streets? Where is the government's liability in those accidents, and why don't they have a system to make that safer? Or would more people complain if your car's brakes were automatically engaged when you were about to run a light?
All transportation systems have safety systems and warning lights and interlocks and various things designed to help the human operators make the right decisions. But it comes down to those operators not being negligent or stupid when doing their job. You want to pass a law to prevent things like that accident from happening, pass one that punishes negligence and stupidity on the part of people themselves.
Hey, let's get rid of all traffic signals on our streets too! They cost taxpayers a lot of money and they don't really save lives! A stop sign costs must cheaper and they do the same thing!
[end sarcasm]
God bless the innocent!
I suppose we want more Captains of the Costa Concordia, just do what you want and Damn the lives of the innocent!
While the railroad industry should always strive to ensure safety, the number of lives lost in the past decade is relatively very small. The companies will not put enough of their profits into upgrading safety when the vast majority of their passengers don't consider it a big concern. The bottom line is what matters to these companies, and safety simply isn't going to improve that since most people have great confidence in the system. While they should be forced to set aside a certain amount of their profits to address the safety concerns of the few, arbitrarily telling them they have to install a specific system that is so costly isn't a very good way of going about it. In the end more people would rather the company keep the same level of safety and simply use the profits to improve capacity and efficiency so that their tickets cost less than to have a ticket twice as expensive and be ensured that the train is more safe.
I am sure that those passengers crushed in the bowels of that Cruise Ship agree with your logic!
Ya, and that Captain should have been hung from that ship by now. Personal responsibility, don't hide behind no corporation. Corporations aren't humans! LOL!
Corporations not humans?? Ask US supreme court about that!! But remember who's is charge there too!!
Ya, corporations, Unions and NGO's are not human. Make the officers fully accountable and lock their arses up when they break da law. None of this fine BS. LOL!
At the surface, I think the legislation is by all intent good. And 13 Billion dollars is a whole lot of money. What I don't understand is why this effort is not being segmented in a manner that puts the controls in the areas where lives are at greater risk. Seems they would focus their efforts to implement the system on trackage near or inside of metropolitan areas.
That said, the rail system that criss-crosses the country probably sees fewer accidents than any other mode of transportation. The use of this rail system has been largely relegated to the freight industry. And, thanks to the airline industry and its lobbyists, this mode of passenger travel has been forced to the sidelines.
But the biggest hypocrisy I am seeing is the comments about the chemical spills caused by these trains - yet we got folks who want a major pipeline running smack through the middle of the country. Accidents will always occur - so how is it that one is just wrong and the other is acceptable?
My point is that it really is "us" who put the dollar amount on human lives. It seems a pipeline that will deliver oil to a refinery that might reduce the cost of gas by 5 cents is an acceptable risk. But tell that to the 11 families who lost fathers, sons, husbands on the BP Gulf disaster.
Of course our reactions are all socio-economic blah, blah, blah. The point is: how many lost lives are acceptable to get what we want?
Wow, wonder if the owner of the nations largest train set Mr. Warren "I'll match any Republican on Washingtons Capitol Hill donation to pay down the countries debt" Buffett is part of this nasty Obamian decension?
Stuff like this doesn't hit home unless you lose a loved one because of short cuts...
What if you lose a loved one in a car accident due to unavailable public transportation?
dsb - I saw a statistic after 911 that stated that a human life here in the USA was about 2.3 million dollars. That figure was gotten from the average that the airline industry paid out for wrongful death cases. I believe this is the ammount that was paid individually to the families who lost loved ones in 911.
Companies like the auto industry and others will typically only correct safety issues when the cost of not fixing the problem costs more than fixing the problem.
Welcome to America.
Every live most certainly isn't worth 2.3 million bucks but I bet trial attorneys think so....and they're going to get 60% of that.
I am a retired RailRoad Engineer , I ran all types of RailRoad Trains for 26 years ,We had two old proverbs # 1 the operating rules were written in Blood # 2 Blame it on the dead guy . With the technology available today , you could stop a train with GPS and an Electric garage door opener from anywere in the country, if you wanted to, The problem is inflated contracts , kick backs , outright fraud , inferior components, and to put it bluntly GREED. Any time money starts to flow into a prodject it starts to mysteriously disappear and the theft starts at the top. Before the ink is dry on the legistration the people who knew about it first have there hands in the till,with shell corporations that handle and inflate the price of the equipment so a $35 dollar item costs $350.oo dollars . It will never end Chenz46
Hmmmmm....seems there is a correlation between "greed" and "opportunity". Greed is how us folks who actually have to work see the pilfering. Opportunity is how the suits and ties see it.
No its greed. and if you pay peanuts you get .....
Do you know how many regulations can be piled on top of each other that can "save lives"?
And when you go against oppressive regulation that does very little but costs a ton of money, you are greedy and putting money over lives.
Sorry, folks. But if I was put into office I'd have Interstate highway checkpoints every 20 miles to ensure people aren't driving drunk, the wrong way, or falling asleep at the wheel. You'd have to pay for it as well. $5 a checkpoint to pay for the staffing of the point, their pensions, and the construction and maintenance costs of the stop point.
If you don't like it, you are a greedy moron putting lives over money.
Don't forget the system that automatically applies the brakes on cars when the light turns yellow and there is enough space to stop before entering the intersection. And the automatic governors to limit speed to the posted limit. And the system to automatically stop the vehicle or report to police when someone is drunk, texting, dashboard dining, applying makeup, drinking coffee, or smoking while driving - all of which have caused accidents and many fatalities. All of these safety features are technically feasible and very expensive.
Include the periodic inspections to ensure that all the mandated safety devices are functional (with random surprise inspections to prevent tinkering.)
Did the article mention what the costs for PTC would be? I have heard estimates of $80,000 - $100,000 per locomotive. It would cost the Railroads billions. You think it costs a lot to ship goods by rail now, wait until they have to recoup their costs for PTC. By the way, is the trucking industry going to have to install a similar system on every truck that that travels the interstate system? My guess is more people are killed and injured each year by trucking mishaps than are killed in rail accidents caused by human error. It's just when a train is in a wreck it it generally more spectaclar.