[HN Gopher] US rail safety legislation stalled one year after Ea...
___________________________________________________________________
US rail safety legislation stalled one year after East Palestine
Ohio disaster
Author : PaulHoule
Score : 162 points
Date : 2024-02-12 19:43 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wlbt.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wlbt.com)
| Spivak wrote:
| > Members of Congress blast industry for putting profits over
| safety
|
| Headlines like this make me laugh because it sounds like
| something is getting done when it's just congresspeople with no
| actual power making grand speeches that amount to nothing. They
| really gave those profiteers a real Congressional finger wag!
| unethical_ban wrote:
| It seems odd to criticize an elected representative who
| comments on the irresponsible behavior of corporations.
| Spivak wrote:
| Because they can't actually do anything. They don't charge
| people with negligence or levy fines. The opinion of a
| congressman on this issue is only slightly more valuable than
| mine. The regulations they're proposing won't be punitive in
| any way and won't dare actually disrupt the flow of profits.
|
| And that's fine, that's the point of congress. Now if the DoJ
| had words to this effect then it might come to something.
| hospadar wrote:
| counterpoint: the amount of money that congresspeople and
| potential congress people are paid by corps and interest
| groups to get elected (i.e. "a lot") suggest that, in fact,
| their opinions _are_ much more valuable then a non-
| congresspersons.
| JoshTko wrote:
| The attitude probably reflects decades of effective messaging
| by big corporations to paint gov as inefficient and
| corporations as the only solution to problems.
| ejb999 wrote:
| Doesn't seem odd to me - if all someone (an elected person)
| does is get in front of the camera and make speeches about
| something a corporation is doing wrong - but never
| writes/sponsors a bill (and more importantly gets the votes
| to get it written into law) to fix those bad things - then
| they are doing exactly _zero_ to make things better - they
| deserve all the criticism they get.
| happytiger wrote:
| Did it "stall?"
|
| Did they "blast the industry?"
|
| Because they cashed their checks.
|
| https://www.opensecrets.org/industries//summary?cycle=All&in...
|
| Edit:
|
| They are demanding that they cover the cost:
|
| https://www.wkyc.com/article/news/local/northeast-ohio/ohio-...
|
| While the same quoted congressperson had time to get behind rail
| initiatives while safety stalled out:
|
| https://kaptur.house.gov/media-center/press-releases/kaptur-...
|
| Oh, _and found 10M_ from the Federal government to quietly pay
| for the upgrades:
|
| https://kaptur.house.gov/media-center/press-releases/congres...
|
| I am no expert here, but it sure seems like a lot of railroad
| stuff is happening and money moving around for a "stalled out"
| safety initiative. Maybe someone else can provide more context?
| refulgentis wrote:
| Who is they? Legitimately: I can't figure out if I'm accessing
| the links wrong on mobile, or if they shape shifts across the 3
| links
| rhcom2 wrote:
| Members of Congress
| happytiger wrote:
| Thanks. I'm not sure if the links are working properly.
| They are working for me but two of them as very slow loads
| on my mobile.
| tootie wrote:
| FTA:
|
| "That sentiment, was echoed by U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown,
| D-Ohio, who sponsored the Rail Safety Act in the Senate and
| held a virtual press conference this week to talk about the
| stalled legislation. Both Brown and Kaptur said lobbying groups
| and major rail companies continue to oppose the legislation,
| with the industry putting profits over public safety."
|
| I mean, you're not exposing some conspiracy. Several
| Republicans with key committee seats took a ton of money and
| are now opposing the bill. Voters know who they are and are
| free to vote them out of office, but they probably won't.
| FemmeAndroid wrote:
| When you filter by election cycle it looks like they aren't
| making any huge donations compared to their baseline. Maybe the
| baseline donations stop things like this, but I don't think I'd
| jump to that being the clear reason.
| hanniabu wrote:
| > Maybe someone else can provide more context?
|
| Corruption
| kiba wrote:
| We need investments in rail infrastructure to take trucks off the
| road and to improve safety and to keep goods moving.
|
| For some reason, our railroad are privately owned rather than
| owned by the states or the fed.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _For some reason, our railroad are privately owned rather
| than owned by the states or the fed_
|
| Who do you think built them? We have the world's largest rail
| network for a reason.
| bugglebeetle wrote:
| And yet the Chinese rail network is infinitely more
| productive, smaller in size, transports millions of people
| around a comparably sized country, in addition to the inputs
| and outputs of its massive industrial base, and is largely a
| state construction. It would seem that extent of rail is not
| the measure of value here, nor is that correlated with
| private ownership, but instead we should assess the overall
| productive capacity of the infrastructure.
| jdlshore wrote:
| You're comparing a passenger rail system to a freight rail
| system. Totally different beasts.
| bugglebeetle wrote:
| ...as the parent did when they asserted that the US has
| the largest rail network, which encompasses both, so no,
| not really "totally different beasts."
| sitharus wrote:
| Lets quickly check Wikipedia
|
| China:
|
| Total length: 155,000 km (100,000 km electrified)
|
| Total passenger/km: (1,470.66 billion passenger-
| kilometres, 2019)
|
| Total freight: 3,018 billion cargo tonne-kilometres
| (2019)
|
| US:
|
| Total length: 257,722 km (160,141 mi) (I can't find
| figures on electrified length, seems at most 2000km?)
|
| Total passenger/km: (10.3 billion, 2014)
|
| Total freight: 1.71 trillion short ton-mile, approx 963
| billion tonne-kilometres (I used wolfram alpha for that
| conversion)
|
| So if my calculations are correct - which they may not be
| - on fewer rails China transports an order of magnitude
| more passenger and freight traffic.
| anonexpat wrote:
| 94% of China's population lives in the 43% of the country
| closest to the ocean.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heihe%E2%80%93Tengchong_Lin
| e
| ses1984 wrote:
| What percent of people in the US live in the 43% of the
| country closest to the ocean?
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Your conversion is wrong. 1 mile is about 1.6 kilometers;
| 1 short ton is about 0.9 tonnes. One short ton-mile will
| be about 1.5 tonne-kilometers.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| Rail networks aren't capacity-limited by the number of
| miles of track and China has three times the population.
|
| But the premise is meaningless. It's easy for a
| government to affect the usage of something by
| subsidizing it or constraining alternatives to it, which
| has little to do with whether it would be more efficient
| or well-managed as a public agency.
| Almondsetat wrote:
| Chinese rail network is a money sink
| onepointsixC wrote:
| Infinitely more productive? That's a claim. China's rail
| has $900B in loans, and profits haven't covered servicing
| that debt for nearly a decade.
| volkl48 wrote:
| US freight rail moves roughly 40% of the cargo in the
| country, China's moves about 15% (and is in long
| stagnation/decline in terms of how much it moves). Roughly
| 80% of what moves within China does so by an endless sea of
| trucks.
|
| That's a pretty huge difference in terms of modal share.
|
| And even with the sprawling size of the US network (and
| differences in things like labor costs), US freight rail is
| still more efficient at moving cargo in terms of costs.
| bugglebeetle wrote:
| > That's a pretty huge difference in terms of modal
| share.
|
| Now do comparison of transporting people and that's
| impact on the economy
| kevingadd wrote:
| Wasn't much of the US rail network funded by a public-private
| partnership? Why should the rails be privately owned? Didn't
| the government provide a lot of the land, too?
| davidw wrote:
| The checkerboard pattern you see in Oregon's forests from a
| satellite are because the government gave away a crapload
| of land to fund railroad development
|
| https://www.google.com/maps/@43.7155994,-122.829874,73748m/
| d...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oregon_and_California_Railroa
| d...
| jacoblambda wrote:
| > Who do you think built them? We have the world's largest
| rail network for a reason.
|
| I don't know if shear size is a great way to evaluate what
| method of rail ownership is superior. The US is literally the
| third largest country on earth so it makes sense that we have
| a lot of "largests" when it comes to infrastructure networks.
|
| What probably would make more sense would be a rail density
| metric instead. Something like km of rail per sq km of land
| would work (but has it's own flaws). But that metric then
| shows a number of other countries that clearly beat the US
| despite having nationalised or hybrid rail networks.
|
| A good example would be Japan which has roughly triple as
| much rail relative to the size of their country and I doubt
| many people would argue that Japan's rail network is less
| effective than the US rail network.
| briankelly wrote:
| In the US, rail is used for freight, while in Japan it's
| used for passengers. Both are successful in their own ways
| but Japan's rail network is much more visible.
| jacoblambda wrote:
| Oh for sure but that's a very different discussion than
| just "largest rail network" as a qualifier for success.
|
| If we want to talk freight utilisation, Japanese freight
| rail usage is low because of the country's
| geography/generally easy access to water/maritime
| shipping (since shipping by water is always more
| cost/energy effective per tonne relative to rail).
|
| So a comparable example in that case would be China who
| has similar geography, a similar sized country, and a
| rail network roughly 70% the size of the US rail network
| (#2 largest network). However China moves nearly 3x more
| raw mass per year relative to the US and 50% more tonne
| kilometers per year relative to the US.
|
| Point being that US freight rail is massive because it
| geographically and economically makes sense for it to be
| so. Similar networks exist in other countries that take
| nationalised or hybrid rail approaches yet those
| countries consistently outperform US rail in basically
| every metric but shear size.
| criddell wrote:
| > shipping by water is always more cost/energy effective
| per tonne relative to rail
|
| Is that true? I always thought it was the other way
| around. Rail has relatively low rolling resistance so I
| thought it would take a lot less energy to move the same
| weight by rail compared to water.
| quickthrowman wrote:
| Try this experiment: Attempt to push a boat while
| swimming in the water, then try to push the same boat
| while it is on a trailer on land.
|
| Which one is easier to move?
| criddell wrote:
| Yeah, I can see that.
|
| At the same time, swimming speed isn't very useful for
| anybody. What are the relative energy requirements to
| move ten thousand pounds at 30 mph in the water vs on
| rails?
| jacoblambda wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_efficiency_in_transp
| ort...
|
| > | transport mode | Fuel consumption |
|
| > | ---------------------- | BTU per short ton-mile | kJ
| per tonne-kilometre |
|
| > | Domestic waterborne | 217 | 160 |
|
| > | Class 1 railroads | 289 | 209 |
|
| > | Heavy trucks | 3,357 | 2,426 |
|
| > | Air freight (approx.) | 9,600 | 6,900 |
|
| In other words waterborne freight is generally around 25%
| cheaper energy wise and far easier/cheaper to scale
| capacity relative to rail.
|
| It's also worth looking at some of the other numbers on
| that page. German numbers work out ocean freight to be
| over 3x cheaper energywise per tkm relative to rail.
| quickthrowman wrote:
| River barges are more efficient than trains, see the two
| sources below as well as the sibling comment.
|
| > Per one gallon of fuel:
|
| > A truck can carry one ton of cargo just 59 miles.
|
| > By rail, one ton of cargo can travel 202 miles.
|
| > An inland barge can carry one ton of cargo 514 miles.
|
| https://www.portoflittlerock.com/2023/10/the-benefits-of-
| riv...
|
| > The study shows that barges can move a ton of cargo 647
| miles with a single gallon of fuel, an increase from an
| earlier estimate of 616 miles. In contrast, trains can
| move the same ton of cargo 477 miles per gallon, and
| trucks can move the same ton of cargo 145 miles per
| gallon.
|
| > https://maritime-executive.com/article/barge-transport-
| wins-....
| briankelly wrote:
| Yeah I think China is a more fit comparison and
| highlights what the issue is in the US - very little
| central planning authority. People discuss the American
| "government" like it's a monolith when it's fiefdoms at
| all levels; it's not surprising we can't build anything
| anymore.
| kiba wrote:
| The problem is not the lack of centralized authority,
| it's the vetocracy, gridlock, and political resistance to
| anything that's not car-based pattern of development.
|
| Notice that we managed to build an interstate system and
| lot of other infrastructure.
| briankelly wrote:
| I was referring to the problems you describe by that. All
| that infrastructure got built with PWA era pork barrel
| politics and many of the projects were highly illogical.
| The books The Power Broker and Cadillac Desert dissect
| these issues, the latter focusing on our hydrology infra
| which is as at least as, if not way more stupid than our
| roads.
|
| You're right though that it's not exactly about it being
| centralized.
| jacoblambda wrote:
| We only managed to build an interstate system via a
| massive, centralised effort by the federal government to
| plan out and fund construction of the interstate highway
| system.
|
| The yellow book (designed by the federal govt) maps
| extremely closely to what became the final interstate
| system.
|
| The states did the actual building and own the actual
| land but the federal govt told them where to build, gave
| them the money, and otherwise forced their hand into the
| construction.
|
| I'm not necessarily saying federal control over all
| infrastructure is a good thing but it really was in large
| part due to the federal government that the interstate
| system actually happened.
| tremon wrote:
| _Who do you think built them?_
|
| Slaves?
| newsclues wrote:
| Capitalist.
|
| Exploitation and cheating sure, but the railroads are
| recent.
| skyyler wrote:
| https://railroads.unl.edu/topics/slavery.php
|
| The slaves were also recent.
|
| >Southern railroad companies began buying slaves as early
| as the 1840s and used enslaved labor almost exclusively
| to construction their lines. Thousands of African
| Americans worked on the southern railroads in the 1850s
|
| There is a temporal overlap between "slave america" and
| "railroad america".
| newsclues wrote:
| Slavery didn't account for the majority of railroads
| built
| jMyles wrote:
| > rather than owned by the states or the fed.
|
| Are those actually the only options for public goods focus
| though?
|
| I generally lean softly toward anarchic solutions, so of course
| my mind goes toward some kind of non-profit NGO or DAO rather
| than the same government structures that lead to war for oil,
| etc.
|
| > or the fed.
|
| Is there another example of a central bank owning a railroad? I
| don't doubt that it has happened historically, but this is the
| first time I've even thought of it as a possibility.
| zht wrote:
| he probably means the federal government lol
| pests wrote:
| > or DAO
|
| Oh, an entity like the original DAO that led to Ethereum
| selling out?
|
| "The Contract is the Law" until its not.
|
| Very anarchic.
| oatmeal1 wrote:
| > For some reason, our railroad are privately owned rather than
| owned by the states or the fed.
|
| Because we want them to work well? Look at how the government
| handles the infrastructure it owns.
| velcrovan wrote:
| Which government? State-owned trains in Europe and Japan are
| amazing. The US could do fine too if it cared to actually
| fund infrastructure rather than letting it whither on the
| vine.
| jdminhbg wrote:
| The problem isn't the amount of funding, the problem is
| competence administering the funding. California's HSR has
| tens of billions invested and no track laid. I'd love to
| import European or Japanese rail administrators so that the
| investment could result in trains actually running, but
| that doesn't seem to be in the cards.
| creato wrote:
| They'd run into the exact same problems getting rights of
| way. There may be incompetence in administration, but
| it's not the only problem.
| njarboe wrote:
| Brightline is a privately company building a bullet train
| from LA to Las Vegas opening in 2027. The same company
| recently completed a new bullet train from Miami to
| Orlando.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| An interesting feature of the Brightline West project is
| that it does not go deep into populated urban areas to
| save money.
|
| The terminus in Las Vegas is south of the airport and the
| Strip. The terminus in "LA" is in Rancho Cucamonga, 37
| miles east of LA and in a whole different county.
|
| CAHSR was partially sold as a downtown revitalization
| project, and so has expensive full speed approaches into
| Fresno, Bakersfield, Merced, etc.
| woodruffw wrote:
| > The same company recently completed a new bullet train
| from Miami to Orlando.
|
| Brightline is an accomplishment, but this significantly
| oversells it: the Orlando-Miami route _tops out_ at
| 125mph, which is barely HSR by any normal standard. A
| good chunk of the route is on pre-existing lines that top
| out at 79mph. For comparison, trains on the LGV Nord (31
| years old) operate at 190mph[1].
|
| I hope they continue to invest in HSR, but I don't think
| we should settle for marketing here.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGV_Nord
| briankelly wrote:
| They did bring in a French HSR operator that built rail
| in Asia, but they bailed for projects in a less
| politically dysfunctional landscape... North Africa [1].
| It's our pork barrel political machinery that's fucked
| up.
|
| [1] https://archive.is/2023.09.19-135838/https://www.nyti
| mes.com...
| eropple wrote:
| So we're talking about transportation, and I guess I have to
| ask exactly what transportation infrastructure you then mean?
| Because the only serious, broad, federally-managed
| transportation infrastructure I can think of are like,
| military airbases. Which tend to be pretty good!
|
| That's assuming, of course, you mean the US government--which
| does not own things like highways, for those unclear; it does
| have a controlling stake in Amtrak, but aside from the NEC
| (which is great IMO) Amtrak does not own the railways that
| actually serve as rail infrastructure. Because, of course,
| country governments elsewhere regularly own or have majority
| stakes in both railroads and railways, to pretty good
| success.
|
| Or, on the other other hand, maybe you mean non-transporation
| infrastructure? 'Cause frankly, the US Postal Service was
| pretty great 'til "the government doesn't work and we're
| going to prove it by ripping out big chunks of it"
| politicians got their hands on it.
| oatmeal1 wrote:
| > That's assuming, of course, you mean the US government--
| which does not own things like highways
|
| I was responding to a comment which said "states or the
| fed," so of course I was referring to those both. The
| states own the highways.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > Because the only serious, broad, federally-managed
| transportation infrastructure I can think of are like,
| military airbases. Which tend to be pretty good!
|
| I hope you're not putting forth the Department of Defense
| as a positive exemplar of government efficiency.
|
| > That's assuming, of course, you mean the US government--
| which does not own things like highways
|
| The federal government funds 90% of the interstate highway
| system. The job it does at this is kind of medium and has
| all of the usual problems that happen when you're spending
| somebody else's money, e.g. the roads are always under
| construction because the construction companies get paid if
| they're "working" (even if that means standing around) so
| finishing projects quickly is disfavored because they want
| the work to expand to fill the available budget rather than
| the other way around.
|
| The general problem with government projects in the US is
| that they put too much emphasis on false economies of scale
| and try to allocate contracts that are too large. For
| example, instead of contracting with one company for
| rolling stock and it maintenance, they should buy rolling
| stock as-needed from anyone who makes it broadly matching a
| required spec (e.g. the correct width of the track) and
| then contract with separate companies for maintenance.
|
| The most important thing, which they fail at utterly, is to
| make contracts small and simple and make it easy for
| companies that don't specialize in government contracting
| to bid on them. Because otherwise they only get companies
| that _do_ specialize in government contracting, even when
| the contract is for some fungible commodity, and end up
| paying unreasonable rates for everything.
|
| > the US Postal Service was pretty great 'til "the
| government doesn't work and we're going to prove it by
| ripping out big chunks of it" politicians got their hands
| on it.
|
| The US Postal Service had a monopoly on first class mail at
| a time when lots of things were delivered via first class
| mail. It wasn't particularly cost efficient but it
| delivered the mail and it couldn't be outcompeted by
| someone else because competing with it was prohibited by
| law.
|
| Then first class mail got replaced by email while online
| purchasing increased enough to give UPS and FedEx enough
| economies of scale to outcompete USPS for package delivery
| even with the USPS having existing trucks delivering the
| mail. Then it actually had to compete on efficiency, which
| it failed to do and ran into problems. _Then_ people
| started trying to reform it.
|
| Which never really worked because a government agency is
| constrained by political forces, e.g. public sector unions
| that capture legislators ("management") who are supposed to
| represent the general public _against_ the unions
| representing the public 's employees. If you then put it
| into competition with private companies, it will generally
| operate less efficiently and go bankrupt. Which is fine as
| long as the private companies continue to operate in a
| competitive market themselves, until someone decrees that
| we need to save the publicly operated business that failed
| in the market.
| fwip wrote:
| I'd love if our railroads ran on time anywhere near as often
| as the postal service does. Or even as often as the city bus
| does.
| njarboe wrote:
| Japan's famously on-time and efficient rail system is made up
| of many privately owned systems.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Efficient if you look at the big three JRs (Central, East,
| West).
|
| JR Shikoku, JR Hokkaido, and JR Freight are basket cases.
| switch007 wrote:
| It's tragic in the UK at the moment. The government has taken
| over some large rail operators and are busy reducing services
| and increasing costs. They're making many other detrimental
| changes to the railway system too
|
| We can't believe it but some of us enthusiasts are actually
| wanting privatisation back
|
| Public can be good. Private can be good. Public can be bad.
| Private can be bad...
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| [dupe] / Related:
|
| _Residents ' lives still in limbo a year after East Palestine
| toxic derailment_
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39337237
| Drunk_Engineer wrote:
| This "safety" legislation is mainly about requiring 2-man crews
| on trains. The unions are of course very much in favor, but it
| would do nothing to prevent derailments like what happened at E.
| Palestine.
| bluGill wrote:
| The problem should be solved with maintenance and automation.
| But that would hurt the union (though there would be more
| opportunity in maintenance.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| The biggest problem unions have seems to be that they've
| never heard of the Jevons paradox. They try to "create jobs"
| at the expense of efficiency on the theory they'll get more
| work, causing everything they do to become prohibitively
| expensive and then it gets cut or offshored.
| kyrra wrote:
| As a reminder for those that don't follow this in detail: One
| of the main pushes of this bill would be requiring at least 2
| people on all freight trains to "help improve safety".
|
| Can you guess how many engineers there were on the East
| Palastine train? 3.
|
| That obvious had no impact on this incident. As others have
| pointed out, more engineers are a security/safety theaters
| solution. It also makes unions happy, as it means they need to
| employ more people.
|
| This is a terrible bill that was reactionary at the time, and
| does nothing to actually improve safety.
|
| https://www.wsj.com/articles/railroad-crew-size-mandate-dera...
| zthrowaway wrote:
| Over the past decade the Class 1's have been working towards
| doing 1 man crew's. But they're still 2 man at minimum. This
| bill achieves nothing. This is a "hey we did something about
| it! (please don't read what's in the bill and catch us
| bullshitting)."
|
| What they should be doing is looking at the absurd increase
| in length of these trains to increase profits for the sake of
| safety, and the shortcutting of car maintenance. The latter
| which would've caught this issue to begin with.
| legitster wrote:
| Train derailments are already on a long downward trend since they
| peaked in 1978: https://data.transportation.gov/dataset/Railroad-
| Equipment-A...
|
| This legislation was kind of a hot-blooded fast-twitch response
| to the East Palestine disaster, but it's not exactly clear that
| it would have done anything other than address some of the
| superficial concerns at the time.
|
| Since then the DOT has already updated several of their
| derailment policies, the EPA has updated their procedure for
| burning off hazardous chemicals.
| zamadatix wrote:
| Another user responded here asking if this was the result of
| increased regulation considered burdensome at the time it was
| introduced and then deleted the question, presumably after
| reading more about it. The question itself is interesting
| though: the period after the 1970s saw substantially decreased
| regulation for railways in general and a loosening in how
| security regulation was approached for a massive decline in
| railroad safety issues. I.e. the market was heavily over-
| regulated at the time and prescriptive regulation had been
| having the opposite of the intended effect. I'm highlighting
| this not as one who despises regulation, quite the opposite,
| but just because it's a good point to highlight reacting to
| every accident with more regulation is not the right way to
| approach further regulation.
|
| https://railroads.dot.gov/sites/fra.dot.gov/files/fra_net/16...
| flavius29663 wrote:
| It can make sense. I come from a country(Romania) where fire
| regulations are insanely strict and complicated. If the fire
| department comes to inspect, they will 100% find issues and
| fine you. The result is that the most sane and basic
| requirements get drowned in a sea of useless regulations, so
| you end up with escape doors that are locked, missing
| alerting systems, flammable materials where there shouldn't
| be etc.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| I need a more detailed explanation of what you're
| suggesting here: I get that having too many regulations can
| create a situation where an inspector will always find
| fault, that makes sense: but unless inspectors have a cap
| on the number of issues they're allowed to report, which
| doesn't seem sane under any circumstance, why would that
| then cause more obvious basic regulations to be unenforced?
| If anything I would expect the opposite.
| gbear605 wrote:
| I can't speak for Romania, but if the outcome of any
| mistake is that you get shutdown, there's an implicit cap
| on how much you can get punished.
| woodruffw wrote:
| Some confounding factors on derailment statistics:
|
| * Individual trains are longer than ever, which means that they
| carry more than ever. That means _bigger_ derailments in
| absolute terms with a larger potential variety of components,
| even if the overall magnitude of derailments has decreased.
|
| * Deferred line maintenance and other cost-cutting measures
| (like running longer trains with just one or two engineers)
| means more _severe_ derailments (more cars off the rails, more
| extensive damage, fewer people available to detect or remediate
| problems).
| rgbrenner wrote:
| Saying "Congress" isn't advancing it, lets the people responsible
| avoid blame. While the bills have bipartisan sponsors, only
| democrats are willing to vote for the bill on the house/senate
| floor. In the senate, republicans are threatening to filibuster
| the bill, so it cant pass without a supermajority. And the gop-
| led house refuses to bring the house bill to the floor.
|
| 2023 was the least productive Congress since the Great
| Depression. Passing a total of 23 bills last year.
|
| https://www.axios.com/2023/12/19/118-congress-bills-least-un...
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| Is there some poison pill in the bill? It's a really common
| tactic for the party in power to put wishlist items in the
| "Good things for America Act" that they know the opposition
| cannot support in order to get fodder for making the other side
| look so unreasonable.
| legitster wrote:
| To just rephrase your point a bit more clearly - there is not
| even a particular partisan reaction to the bill itself - one of
| the two parties our government needs to run is currently
| collapsing in on itself so _nothing_ is getting done.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| How many people were killed or injured? Are we making an
| assumption about the severity of this disaster?
| steviedotboston wrote:
| Is "disaster" really the correct term for an incident where zero
| people where injured or died and everything in the town was back
| to normal pretty quickly?
| Overtonwindow wrote:
| This kind of deadlock should not happen. I think it's indicative
| of what has gone wrong with the United States. Congress, nobody
| is willing to give an inch, and everything is a personal fight to
| the death.
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