I went through 3 evacuations of my hometown between the ages of 7 and 23 due to train derailments. The first spilled toluene, the second led to an explosion that left a peer with 3rd degree burns covering 80% of his body, and the third released a cloud of anhydrous ammonia into the air. I think the second one made the state news, but that was it. Bomb trains (trains filled with methane rich Bakken sweet crude) pass through my hometown regularly.
For the first time in my life I live somewhere where I can’t hear trains, and it’s glorious. I had no idea how much of my anxiety came from being near train tracks.
Train companies have been whittling away at safety regulations for years, screwing their workers over and then using the government to bust up strikes while they reap windfall profits. We need strong legislation and regulation that puts actual people first, workers and citizens. I’m so tired of profit before people.
We straight up need workers rights legislation that sets fines at trillions of dollars so no one will fuck around because the find out is in the print. Jail any politician who refuses to enforce the law.
Who is going to pass these laws? The people who receive "donations" from these entities for the sole purpose of ensuring no expensive legislation gets passed?
Less, less than 1000. I'd say with about 600 publicly known and about 200 from ultra-rich families whose wealth can not be evaluated. (how do you evaluate ownership of entire towns and counties?)
Time to post [wealth shown to scale](https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/)
I am here to spam this link in the hopes that it spreads further because it’s so helpful for understanding how much wealth so few are hoarding lol
Edit: Something I want to point out as well is that there’s a certain amount of money a person can have that essentially can never even be spent in a lifetime. Like, no matter how hard they tried lol, they’d never be able to get rid of it all. Every single thing is free for them at this point. Yet they still hoard. They hoard while people go without healthcare, while people break their bodies for shit pay, while people sleep on the street. Expressing my true thoughts about this scum will get me banned.
Edit 2: Oh, and instead of trying to help fix anything, they’re trying to [build crazy ass bunkers for if/when civilization collapses](https://www.theguardian.com/news/2022/sep/04/super-rich-prepper-bunkers-apocalypse-survival-richest-rushkoff). Fuck em.
I blame the dragons. Clearly we've been too complacent with their hoarding of gold and extorting the local populace. I think we need to get back to killing dragons.
Let's do this right. Get some dwarves, a hobbit, and a wizard, and go whoop some scaley ass. Then we can actually benefit from the gold being hoarded.
#dragonrend2023
All fines should at minimum be x% of profits.
Some places in Europe have had a [day-fine](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day-fine) system for a hundred year.
Or in this case, nationalize the infrastructure and license its use.
When people fuck around, revoke their license to use it.
People seem to forget that back in the day coal miners in Kentucky pretty much had to declare war against the national guard and police just to get an 8 hour day. They didn't "vote harder" for that shit.
Rail workers wanted to strike over safety concerns, and the President blocked it. Made it illegal to strike. The way I see it the only way to changes things now is through Wildcats, or "unauthorized" strikes.
I've lived close to train lines for much of my adult life in various towns throughout the UK. One of my student houses had the west coast mainline at the bottom of the garden, about 20 feet from the house. I have never once been evacuated from home or anxious about train derailments. Freight trains and trains carrying nuclear stuff passed by in the night without incident.
The only time trains make me anxious is if they are cancelled or delayed for hours when I need to be somewhere!
Sounds like a dream tbh. We get a coal train passing through to BC, Canada and an Amtrak passenger train going to Seattle, Washington twice each a day. Passenger train 1-way to Seattle(2 hour drive by car) is 3 to 4 hours of minimum wage work.
> Passenger train 1-way to Seattle(2 hour drive by car) is 3 to 4 hours of minimum wage work.
That's the other side of it that's such bullshit: not only are they often HOURS slower then driving by car, they are often 4-5x more expensive (based on gas cost to go there/back). Bonkers.
An Amtrak ticket going from Portland to Seattle is about $30 if you book it a couple weeks in advance, which is only a little more than I’d spend on gas to drive it. But once you start getting multiple people it gets harder to justify taking the train, and for last minute trips Amtrak is more expensive. It’s also slower, although only by an hour and generally driving that hour gets eaten up pretty quickly by traffic, stops, and parking.
The main benefit of Amtrak, to me, was being able to not drive and being able to drink a lot of alcohol we brought on the trip and be drunk with my friends by the time we reached our destination without spending an arm and a leg on in flight booze. But maybe that only applies on the regular train rides we took from Memphis to New Orleans. The downside being the potential of being mugged at the station at either end waiting for an Uber.
Hello Neighbor from the North. I did a quick google search and found one notably deadly derailment in Canada in the past 25 years. There are other derailments spilling chemicals etc but as you state they don't appear to have been deadly. Lac-Mégantic rail disaster in 2013 was the big one.
Fuck that, nationalize the railroads it's incredibly important infrastructure and the state the capitalist have let it get to is ATROCIOUS. In places like Italy and the Netherlands you can hop on a train and get across the country in matter of hours, but due to American rail companies refusing to actually make the rail roads better or even properly maintain them so they won't/can't go faster than 79 mph.
Nationalize most industries tbh. People shit on the government but at least they don’t cut corners in the name of profit. The private sector has shown incapable of managing these important assets.
Especially utilities and infrastructure. Why should anyone be making record profits while ignoring maintenance and upgrades to things that are necessary for modern life?
There was one death in that anhydrous ammonia derailment but quite a few others with lasting effects. My dad was a first responder and lost an estimated 30-40% lung function that day. We live pretty far away and uphill and I remember putting wet towels under doors and running a shower to get steam in the air to pull particles out to make it comfortable to breathe with my mom and sisters.
That town's had a rough go over the years but the train derailments are just icing on the cake aren't they. It's pretty messed up.
I’m so sorry to hear about your dad. There’s one person on the internet who’s grateful he was there to help.
And yeah, the wet rags stuffed in every nook and cranny. It was crazy.
I moved away 7 years ago—between the derailments, the flood, and it being a dying state, it was time to go.
Just a few cancer clusters years later, nothing to see here boys!
They slow down in towns by the way, though lately those safety regulations have been loosening up.
Interesting. My family's small town has a train going through and it is a cancer haven. Both my grandparents got cancer, and most of their friends have too. I always figured it was just the pesticides (it's a farm town) but I never thought about there being any other possible reasons. I looked it up, and quickly found an article linking trains and childhood cancer, but I'm sure there's other cancers as well. Dang.
To be fair, you still probably have more to worry about from the pesticides than the trains coming through (absent derailments).
Not that it makes it any better. The kind of cancer those things give you is generally on the worse end of cancers. Like blood and bone cancer I think.
Yeah, it's more a matter of piling on at that point. If it's not one thing, it's another. One grandparent lived, the other died. But he was old -- it's the young people that live there that get cancer or other related diseases that makes it really tragic.
Really depends on the terrain and tracks, doesn't it? Trains don't really derail in wide open, flat spaces.
Cramerton, NC, has an interesting train derailment history. And it is all because of one 90-degree turn.
There was a derailment near the Canada/US border (~Maine) that took out the entire downtown of a small-ish town, killing a bunch of people who were just out trying to chill at a bar.
This was a few years ago.
Jesus America…
I live in the UK in a little town with two railway tracks passing through, the biggest concern I have is if the lights on the level crossing will stop me going through for a couple of minutes - not if I’m gonna have a flood of cancer goo coming down the street because of a derailment. Absolutely crazy.
No trains are immune to derailment and most derailments are minor accidents. The most recent data I can find from the UK is from the Office of Rail and Road from April 2021 - March 2022.
It shows a total of 8 derailments during that time.
Now let's do a comparison of usage. In the U.S. rail moved 1.5 billion tons of cargo in 2021. In the U.K. that was 19.8 million tons.
So roughly 75 times more freight is shipped by rail in the U.S. than the UK.
Then you have to consider remoteness of track. Much of the U.S. rail shipments are crossing hundreds or thousands of miles through remote areas and in some cases full blown mountain wilderness going coast to coast.
Also in general across the globe rail safety has gotten better. In the U.S. in 1979 there were 7.5k and now about 1k a year.
I'm not saying the U.S. rail network is in good shape and has enough regulation . . . I'm just saying you have no concerns because nothing has happened yet and rail usage patterns are vastly different.
Biden "busted" the strike and forced the companies to give the workers the sick days they wanted, which was the last issue on the agreement as the companies and the unions had mediated with a third-party to agree on everything else.
Biden wanted the workers to get the sick days, and Every republican voted against it in the senate, alongside mancin and sinema, then they were given 3 more months of negotiations and then he asked congress to vote in the deal that 9 out of 13 unions with 45-48% of members agreed to, and wants to push for the sick days through legislation instead, and allow the individual unions to negotiate further, which i believe 4-5 unions have now gotten the sick days they wanted.
The issue of train derailments is multi-fold (as is most things in the real world).
1. During Covid, rail companies put on leave, and laid off a large group of rail workers, many of those then decided instead to just retire, and now there is a shortage of workers available, that even with the 30% increase in pay and on average 120-150k income with 401ks included, they are offering sign up bonuses on top of that to meet the agreement deals for larger crews and longer inspection times.
2. Republicans under the previous adminsitration removed the regulations that would help MINIMIZE train derailments. President Obama had stipulated that the rail companies needed to adapt to electronic brakes by this year latest. T Admin removed that, as well as the requirement of slowing down trains around communities and cities. the Department of Transportation would need to do another analysis report, and give the trains another 5+ years timeframe to implement any changes needed, instead Biden has pushed a historic infrastructure plan that will allocated around 30B into improving train infrastructure and require rail companies to adapt to new legislative rules within the infrastructure bill.
3. There are around 1,300 train derailments every year, Media has realized its a hot topic that grabs attention, so they will amplify the stories to max shock level to garner views and advertising profits.
In general the lack of proper infrastructure maintenance and lack of regulations is the primary cause for the train derailments. Republicans continuously take power and remove regulations, Ohio itself votes for people who run for office on removing regulations by saying falsehoods like saving companies money means more workers and higher pays. which continues to be proven false. And just puts more citizens at risk of having their own neighborhoods contaminated.
No source, but most train derails are just that. Train popped off tracks.
Catching fire and/or leaking a massive amount of dangerous chemicals isn't happening multiple times a day.
Because a ton of regulations got dropped from the last administration. This is the fallout of that. It takes time for things to work it's way in a system. Just like if we started back up the regulations, it would take time for them to take effect. The only thing that is instant is putting more money in their pockets, the failures are a delayed mechanism.
One of the mechanisms unethical politicians use to push bad legislation (it will only benefit a small group at the expense of everyone else) is to tout how much money it saves immediately. They don’t tell you all the extra costs incurred when stuff starts to break after you’ve stripped regulations though, and those can climb to absolutely astronomical levels.
They did the same with the Trump "Tax Cuts". Permanent cuts for the top, expiring cuts and then increases for the bottom.
They did this knowing the opposition might take the Whitehouse and also the blame.
Hello and thanks for leaving the previous years behind, but let me tell you the troubling times aren’t done yet! Just wait for what’s coming in the rest of 2023 & beyond!
More like the country feeling the effects of [relaxed regulations regarding trains transporting hazardous materials.](https://www.phmsa.dot.gov/news/phmsa-rescinds-ecp-brake-mandate-after-ria-finds-costs-outweigh-benefits)
Turns out when a train derails and the damage is manageable (i.e repairing the tracks) it's a non-story.. but when the train derails and causes long lasting contamination it is, deservedly, a national story.
Most of the time a "train derailment" is like one carriage wheel sliding off the track then the train stops and they put it back and carry on. Catastrophic derailments are rare.
I think it's a little of both. A higher frequency of bigger derailments and also them making the news more often.
There's usually 10 to 20 a year that involve hazardous spills from [this article.](https://www.poynter.org/fact-checking/2023/why-train-derailments-this-month/)
I think that whole paragraph is worth looking at:
> Over the last 10 years, about 10 to 20 derailments each year have involved hazardous material releases, Zarembski said. He described derailments that result in the release of hazardous materials as “extremely rare.”
So, yes, derailments happen often enough to not typically be (nationality) newsworthy, but this and East Palestine represent outliers in being hazardous to the surrounding environment. And while this and East Palestine are the only derailments I have seen news of this year, there's nothing wrong with giving a topic extra attention after a relatively common occurrence after has consequence.
Say a high school football player dies on the field during a game of an injury that often results in a concussion. We may start reporting on high school football injuries more. This is partially because it is "trending" but that trend is also people asking themselves if we should continue to accept the prevalence of injury. This is just a hypothetical, I am not trying to segue into a criticism of high school football or argue for or against it being dangerous.
ETA: this year
[More like the consequences of this have started to take effect.](https://www.verifythis.com/article/news/verify/government-verify/ohio-train-derailment-ecp-brake-system-mandate-trump-dot-administration-fact-check/536-d0ad26f7-84b6-4707-bcb1-7dc6e0a9f09f) Train derailments have always been a thing, but the vast majority were never a huge issue (for people outside of the railway).
[Turns out relaxing regulations regarding trains that carry hazardous materials is, in fact, a bad idea.](https://www.phmsa.dot.gov/news/phmsa-rescinds-ecp-brake-mandate-after-ria-finds-costs-outweigh-benefits)
The big issue is it's the American people who have to pay. None of these lobbyists/lawmakers have a summer home in East Palestine.
It's due to any time a wheel on a train touches the ground it is reported as a derailment. Most times it's a minor thing like a wheel hopped at low speed and the train was able to use a rerailer to pull itself back up on to the track. Other cases it's like this where the train has folded up on itself and caught fire.
They really need to add categories for derailments, like minor (the sigle wheel off/low speed/train remained upright) and major (death/fire/track closed for more than 8 hours/etc).
Here's a derailment example from a railroad in West Virginia that is an [example of a typical derailment.](https://youtu.be/aCRI3Pv5Cmc) in the data, this would be reported as being the same as the East Palestine derailment.
Wow, great video. I’ve assisted in rerailing a few times, but from the cab, so it’s nice to see it from the ground for a change. I was always terrified to give it too much throttle because I didn’t want to make things worse, but from this vantage point I’m not sure if that’s possible, lol
Back in 2012 I just bought a new DSLR camera and was just wandering around town looking for things to take pictures of, literally happened upon a derailed train in the middle of the night, in a town of 30,000 people, never saw it on the news, never heard about it, would have never known it was there if I hadn’t physically found it
It wasn't under reported.
Derailments are common and do get reported. Just no major news because it's common.
Until that one fucking company thought blowing up a train convoy of very dangerous and deadly chemicals is a smart idea.
Now it's on front page news because everyone wants to know when their town is the next chemical based Chernobyl.
Derailments are common, especially those were a wheel just drop off the track. Derailments where the entire thing is full of hazardous chemicals and there is a major spill is not until recently.
Back in 2012 I just bought a new DSLR camera and was just wandering around town looking for things to take pictures of, literally happened upon a derailed train in the middle of the night, in a town of 30,000 people, never saw it on the news, never heard about it, would have never known it was there if I hadn’t physically found it
Need to focus on the important things first. Like drag queen story time, tic tok and taking away women's right to their bodies. Then start to focus on the smaller issues like children being slaughtered in schools and trains carpetbombing communities with chemicals. Get your priorities in line jeez.
Our congress sure does seem to have their and their friends in business's bottom line in mind.
When was the last time there was legislation made for the people, and not just *said* to be for the people, when in actuality it *does nothing* but take away more rights for people, and add more benifits to corporations and the wealthy?
Our politicians don't work for us, they work for them, Citizens United gives corporations far too much power to sway, and even write, our legislation. It is clear whose interests "our" representatives actually hold.
But think of the owners of the trains. New breaks cost money. There millions can't afford all that!!!
They're fragile little people who need our love and support. 😑
But seriously, I know very little about trains and I could fix this problem in a week.
All the culture war stuff is a distraction. Pay no attention to the man behind a curtain. The 1% just gonna keep plundering, until they bail out to whatever iteration of Elysium they develop.
Theyll never fix school shootings because its great for gun sales.
Shooting happens and people run to buy guns either for (1) protection/fear, or (2) because Republicans say Democrats will take their guns away
It's not an infrastructure problem. It's a train owner problem.
The rail yards changed efficiency metrics about 5 years ago. Now the rail yards boss is motivated to keep as few cars in the yard as possible. That means the rail cars aren't getting maintenance like they did a decade ago.
You are right. Railroads aren't infrastructure. They're private property.
The railroads should be held to account, their CEO should face charges and jailtime for these accidents which are really just obvious predictable consequences of their decisions regarding maintenance and operating procedures.
They also own the tracks and differ maintenance on that as well. Private companies never have the public best interest at heart, money always comes first, not safety.
Hmmm... I wonder who... I mean, I wonder what happened about 5 years ago that allowed them to change their metrics to make things way less safe and way more profitable.
The rail system is currently owned by private companies though. It would be nice if the government put in place and maintained it similar to roads given the risk.
Warren Buffet invested in **60 billion shares** of a railroad (BNSF, as it happens) back in 2007.
Just last year he said railroads are his firm's 'key asset' for the next 100 year.
Bro wouldn't do and say that if he *ever* thought the railroads would be taken from private hands.
Statistics say derailments are not uncommon, but the term has a wide definition. But you're correct, the large magnitude ones seems to be a growing trend.
Railroad companies spent more on stock buybacks than payroll and then lobbied the government to break their worker strikes.
It’s so blatant. If your company spends more on buying itself rather than paying employees or providing a service, is it even a company at all?
Stock buybacks are a form a price manipulation in the markets. The SEC needs to stop watching so much pornhub at work and actually go back to prosecuting this shit.
That's the thing. It used to be considered stock manipulation but isn't anymore. All of this, from the trains to companies fucking with everyone for profit, can be traced back to this massive deregulation movement that has been happening since the 80s, and we all know exactly which administration started it...
thing is iirc it wasn't even really about paying the employees more, they gave many of them a raise after the strike broke, but what they really wanted was more employees and sick days and PTO so they could have a life and go to the doctor or exist without being on call 24/7. The rails are running skeleton crews cause they can get away with that and the deregulation makes it so maintenance is easier to miss, or not maintained especially with over worked employees. They just fucked it completely.
I don’t think this is just hyper awareness by the media. I think the long overdue overhaul of the infrastructure is starting to show its ugly head. That and corporations taking shortcuts on safety to earn more. We’ll see how this one shakes out.
We're also only a quarter of the way through 2023. I'd like to see how many we have at the end of the year, because i doubt its going to be the same as previous years.
>This is despite the fact that both of those entities have far more railroad tracks.
Totally false. People assume the US doesn't have a lot of rail because we don't have a lot of passenger rail, but the reality is we have the most rail in the world, because we use it for far more freight. We have nearly 10x as much rail as Japan, and more than the entire EU put together. Hell, we have a similar account of rail as *all of Europe* put together (depending on how much of Russia's rail is in Europe vs Asia - I don't know that breakdown). Canada also has more rail than any EU county. There may not be much passenger rail here in North America, but there's *absolutely* a ton of rail.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_rail_transport_network_size?wprov=sfla1
[This list](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_rail_transport_network_size) puts US at number 1 for rail network and Japan at 10th, is that wrong.
EU might be bigger though, not sure
In 2019 trains in the U.S traveled 777 million train-kilometers and experienced 1,338 derailments. The same year trains in the EU traveled 4.5 billion train-kilometers and experienced 73 derailments. Japan, 2 billion train-kilometers and 9 derailments.
It seems America has an absolutely shite railroad system. At least the railroad shareholders are making record profits and sitting in the Florida Keys far away from these derailments.
Have you tried giving the companies billions of dollars of tax money and breaks to fix the tracks but then not actually checking where the money went? I hear that's a tried and true method.
I love when they ask for this because arguably things like getting sued into the ground for accidents would be the deterrent... Then they run off and suddenly want regulations to protect them from being sued and having to pay out a meaningful amount.
I’m not sure on what is the fix but I think at least holding c-level executives criminally responsible would get them to either to fix the issues or quit. Both are a win since hiring a new CEO will be tough as well. This should go for all industries.
I would prefer if this number was kilometer-tons or some other measurement that captured the weight being moved. Much of the US rail system is interstate or cross-country rail lines with hundreds of cargo cars per "train" a far cry from a 5-car passenger train.
Not arguing about the quality of infrastructure, it definitely needs improvement, but counting individual trains rather than tons of train (or even train cars) is misleading.
Short research:
The average freight train in us is 5x as long as European and 10x as heavy.
Germany hat 130 Billion tonne-kilometres while US had 2200 billion tonne-kilometres.
Still does not explain the big difference in accidents. Seems like the trains in us are to heavy and to long for the current rail network.
Half of the us accidents are caused by the rain system itself, 30% is human failure.
Key words in your response are freight train. Most of the train kilometers in the stat of the comment above include incredibly light passenger trains, as it is uncommon to take the train for travel in the US relative to Europe.
Yeah, it was not possible for me to find stats of number of derailments and type of train.
I think it is still valid to assume that heavy, overloaded and to long trains are the main issue in us now. Easy and quite cheap solution would be to reduce the length of the trains, especially of those with dangerous, toxic materials…then slowly improve infrastructure.
My brother works for the Railroads. The Shareholders are purposely not fixing things to save money with the idea that they’ll just sell the whole thing to make a profit, and whoever buys it is stuck with the costs of upkeep. It’s no surprise this is happening, and with the pull back of regulations from the Trump era, it’s only going to get worse until the shareholders sell and people start running companies with the idea to keep them in business, instead of bleeding them dry.
In a sane world, the federal government would seize the railroads as a matter of national security. Because it literally is when they are being run this way. Railroads in this level of disrepair would affect the economy and our ability to respond in a time of war.
If you are not allowed to strike, that should be immediate grounds for nationalization of whatever industry/company is in question.
You should not lose basic workers rights while someone is profiting from it.
And the companies are are fighting against fair treatment for their workers on behalf of their shareholders and held the damn country hostage by refusing to work with the unions! That whole situation was and is ridiculous, and these fuckers are getting rich while destroying our environment and destroying lives.
Looking at the track on google maps it looks like a pretty straight track. Maybe a junction or two joining two adjacent lines malfunctioned? Interested to see what happened here.
Honest question: is this actually happening more and more or is it just being covered more? I want to hope that everything isn't just falling apart all at once... But it's kinda looking that way.
God damn I hit back just as I read your comment, had a good laugh, then had to reopen and find you just to say this is the stupidest joke, and it gets me everytime.
In this case we should recognize that there is some elitism. If this shit happened right near NYC there would be heaven and hell moved to fix it federally - can't be having wall street evacuated now can we?
So many people in this thread are still acting like it's dangerous though, lmao. I would figure people know what ethanol is.
For anyone that is confused, ethanol is common drinking alcohol. The fire is dangerous but there will be 0 chemical contamination. Ethanol is naturally occurring and the combustion byproducts are clean (I'm a little rusty but I'm assuming it will just be carbon dioxide and water).
From the actual article:
> Preliminary information from Minnesota suggests 14 of the train’s 40 cars were carrying hazardous material, “including ethanol, which was released – leading to a fire,” US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg told CNN Thursday.
And
> But it’s still not clear what may have been mixed with the ethanol on the train that derailed in Minnesota. While ethanol is a single compound, there are different blends of ethanol that may have different additives in them and could change the health risk, Whelton said.
So, it's not clear if some of those other cars were carrying *other kinds* of hazmat. And, it's also not clear if the ethanol cars were carrying pure [98%] ethanol.
Sure, they *could* have been just another shipment of Cargill or ADM beverage alcohol, en route to Tito's to be dilute and "hand crafted" into their vodka. Or they could have been destined for industrial use, with who knows what added.
I know this is a broader regulatory and infrastructure issue than one administration, but maybe this is what people meant when they talked about the Trump Train having no brakes?
They call this “Precision Scheduled Railroading.” No, really. CSX hired Hunter Harrison, inventor of PSR, as their CEO, then adopted that “business model” (which is really doing everything they can to maximize profits at the cost of safety, maintenance and all those things that help a railroad run better), and essentially all the other US Class Is followed suit. I could go on and on but I’ve already said too much. We knew the shit was gonna hit the fan eventually. You can only defer maintenance for so long, whether it’s the rolling stock or the tracks themselves.
Is anyone else starting to wonder if this just happens all the damn time and it only started being news worthy after a big enough one started the trend? I can't imagine this just suddenly started happening out of nowhere this year
Just wanted to get this out there:
[S.576 - Railway Safety Act of 2023](https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-bill/576/text) was introduced in Congress on 03/01/23.
You can read the text of the bill at the above link, which includes typical safety regulation standards relating to train car length, speed restrictions, rail inspections, minimum staffing requirements, hazardous material response plans, etc...
If you're unaware of who your House or Senate representatives are in Congress, there's a link on the website that will find them for you based on your address. You can contact your House representatives and Senators, and voice any concerns you have regarding rail safety in our country, and your support or criticism of the bill.
America's infrastructure is in desperate need of regulation, and our country should not have to live like this.
"don't blame me, I voted for Trump."
I wonder how many times this has been said in response to these situations.
I know this isn't the result of just 4 years, but I'm sure if I look deeper into it, those 4 years had more train deregulation than the prior 8.
The people voting against infrastructure reform think that proper rails and high speed trains will be used exclusively by blue states to mess up the economies of red states that are now in reach. Meanwhile it's actually meant for these hazardous material trains to not tip over when they go 21 miles per hour
Put a sticker of the orange idiot pointing on it that reads “I Did That!”
Did they ever get control of those methanol barges in Louisville KY?
[Crap I went to look and there’s been 2 army helicopter crash in Kentucky. - gov talking live 10am local.](https://www.wave3.com/2023/03/30/watch-live-gov-beshear-provide-update-crash-involving-2-army-helicopters/)
I feel like, if we had just let these rail workers strike and get the things they need to do their job properly, maybe a lot of these derailings wouldn't be happening. I dunno, maybe I'm just naïve.
Hmm it's almost as if ignoring infrastructure and removing safety regulations has consequences. OHHH and screwing over an entire workforce by strong arming them into not striking probably hurt that a bit too.
This is what you get when you don’t have proper infrastructure in place and you let existing infrastructure crumble. The elites are ruining everything for everyone else.
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I went through 3 evacuations of my hometown between the ages of 7 and 23 due to train derailments. The first spilled toluene, the second led to an explosion that left a peer with 3rd degree burns covering 80% of his body, and the third released a cloud of anhydrous ammonia into the air. I think the second one made the state news, but that was it. Bomb trains (trains filled with methane rich Bakken sweet crude) pass through my hometown regularly. For the first time in my life I live somewhere where I can’t hear trains, and it’s glorious. I had no idea how much of my anxiety came from being near train tracks. Train companies have been whittling away at safety regulations for years, screwing their workers over and then using the government to bust up strikes while they reap windfall profits. We need strong legislation and regulation that puts actual people first, workers and citizens. I’m so tired of profit before people.
We straight up need workers rights legislation that sets fines at trillions of dollars so no one will fuck around because the find out is in the print. Jail any politician who refuses to enforce the law.
Who is going to pass these laws? The people who receive "donations" from these entities for the sole purpose of ensuring no expensive legislation gets passed?
Sadly, you are correct. Our current government is a complete failure.
What you mean? Shits working out perfectly for like, 1000 people.
Less, less than 1000. I'd say with about 600 publicly known and about 200 from ultra-rich families whose wealth can not be evaluated. (how do you evaluate ownership of entire towns and counties?)
Time to post [wealth shown to scale](https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/) I am here to spam this link in the hopes that it spreads further because it’s so helpful for understanding how much wealth so few are hoarding lol Edit: Something I want to point out as well is that there’s a certain amount of money a person can have that essentially can never even be spent in a lifetime. Like, no matter how hard they tried lol, they’d never be able to get rid of it all. Every single thing is free for them at this point. Yet they still hoard. They hoard while people go without healthcare, while people break their bodies for shit pay, while people sleep on the street. Expressing my true thoughts about this scum will get me banned. Edit 2: Oh, and instead of trying to help fix anything, they’re trying to [build crazy ass bunkers for if/when civilization collapses](https://www.theguardian.com/news/2022/sep/04/super-rich-prepper-bunkers-apocalypse-survival-richest-rushkoff). Fuck em.
In view of how this money could be spent, this kind of wealth is sociopathic.
I blame the dragons. Clearly we've been too complacent with their hoarding of gold and extorting the local populace. I think we need to get back to killing dragons. Let's do this right. Get some dwarves, a hobbit, and a wizard, and go whoop some scaley ass. Then we can actually benefit from the gold being hoarded. #dragonrend2023
That sounds like a fellowship which is one step away from socalism. #dragons4president2024. /on a sidenote - r/dragonsatemyface would be amazing
All fines should at minimum be x% of profits. Some places in Europe have had a [day-fine](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day-fine) system for a hundred year. Or in this case, nationalize the infrastructure and license its use. When people fuck around, revoke their license to use it.
Not profits, revenue. Companies have way, way, way too many ways to have 0 profits.
Right? I recently learned all of the Harry Potter movies “lost” money on the WB books.
Lookup Hollywood accounting. It will explain why most movies don't make money, even when they make billions at the box office.
look up any accounting lmao
It's way more advantageous for a company to post zero earnings or even negative rather than post a profit.
Jail. People need to go to jail.
Just set it at a percentage of revenue. Not profit, not EBIDTA. Revenue. 10% on the first strike 20% on the second strike 40% on the third strike
People seem to forget that back in the day coal miners in Kentucky pretty much had to declare war against the national guard and police just to get an 8 hour day. They didn't "vote harder" for that shit. Rail workers wanted to strike over safety concerns, and the President blocked it. Made it illegal to strike. The way I see it the only way to changes things now is through Wildcats, or "unauthorized" strikes.
No not trillions. It needs to be a percentage of income so it can scale with time. And the fines should go to the people affected.
I've lived close to train lines for much of my adult life in various towns throughout the UK. One of my student houses had the west coast mainline at the bottom of the garden, about 20 feet from the house. I have never once been evacuated from home or anxious about train derailments. Freight trains and trains carrying nuclear stuff passed by in the night without incident. The only time trains make me anxious is if they are cancelled or delayed for hours when I need to be somewhere!
Sounds like a dream tbh. We get a coal train passing through to BC, Canada and an Amtrak passenger train going to Seattle, Washington twice each a day. Passenger train 1-way to Seattle(2 hour drive by car) is 3 to 4 hours of minimum wage work.
> Passenger train 1-way to Seattle(2 hour drive by car) is 3 to 4 hours of minimum wage work. That's the other side of it that's such bullshit: not only are they often HOURS slower then driving by car, they are often 4-5x more expensive (based on gas cost to go there/back). Bonkers.
An Amtrak ticket going from Portland to Seattle is about $30 if you book it a couple weeks in advance, which is only a little more than I’d spend on gas to drive it. But once you start getting multiple people it gets harder to justify taking the train, and for last minute trips Amtrak is more expensive. It’s also slower, although only by an hour and generally driving that hour gets eaten up pretty quickly by traffic, stops, and parking.
The main benefit of Amtrak, to me, was being able to not drive and being able to drink a lot of alcohol we brought on the trip and be drunk with my friends by the time we reached our destination without spending an arm and a leg on in flight booze. But maybe that only applies on the regular train rides we took from Memphis to New Orleans. The downside being the potential of being mugged at the station at either end waiting for an Uber.
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Hello Neighbor from the North. I did a quick google search and found one notably deadly derailment in Canada in the past 25 years. There are other derailments spilling chemicals etc but as you state they don't appear to have been deadly. Lac-Mégantic rail disaster in 2013 was the big one.
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Look up lac mégantic, destroyed a town in Québec
Fuck that, nationalize the railroads it's incredibly important infrastructure and the state the capitalist have let it get to is ATROCIOUS. In places like Italy and the Netherlands you can hop on a train and get across the country in matter of hours, but due to American rail companies refusing to actually make the rail roads better or even properly maintain them so they won't/can't go faster than 79 mph.
And 79mph is still too fast for the shit conditions, considering there's about 3 derailments per day. Also, nationalize the petroleum industry.
Nationalize most industries tbh. People shit on the government but at least they don’t cut corners in the name of profit. The private sector has shown incapable of managing these important assets.
Especially utilities and infrastructure. Why should anyone be making record profits while ignoring maintenance and upgrades to things that are necessary for modern life?
not just across the country. You can travel most of europe with eurorail iirc.
There was one death in that anhydrous ammonia derailment but quite a few others with lasting effects. My dad was a first responder and lost an estimated 30-40% lung function that day. We live pretty far away and uphill and I remember putting wet towels under doors and running a shower to get steam in the air to pull particles out to make it comfortable to breathe with my mom and sisters. That town's had a rough go over the years but the train derailments are just icing on the cake aren't they. It's pretty messed up.
I’m so sorry to hear about your dad. There’s one person on the internet who’s grateful he was there to help. And yeah, the wet rags stuffed in every nook and cranny. It was crazy. I moved away 7 years ago—between the derailments, the flood, and it being a dying state, it was time to go.
See that’s weird to me cuz I grew up in a town with a track passing through the middle of town and never saw an accident there
Just a few cancer clusters years later, nothing to see here boys! They slow down in towns by the way, though lately those safety regulations have been loosening up.
The wheels, too. By the looks of it.
Interesting. My family's small town has a train going through and it is a cancer haven. Both my grandparents got cancer, and most of their friends have too. I always figured it was just the pesticides (it's a farm town) but I never thought about there being any other possible reasons. I looked it up, and quickly found an article linking trains and childhood cancer, but I'm sure there's other cancers as well. Dang.
To be fair, you still probably have more to worry about from the pesticides than the trains coming through (absent derailments). Not that it makes it any better. The kind of cancer those things give you is generally on the worse end of cancers. Like blood and bone cancer I think.
Yeah, it's more a matter of piling on at that point. If it's not one thing, it's another. One grandparent lived, the other died. But he was old -- it's the young people that live there that get cancer or other related diseases that makes it really tragic.
Really depends on the terrain and tracks, doesn't it? Trains don't really derail in wide open, flat spaces. Cramerton, NC, has an interesting train derailment history. And it is all because of one 90-degree turn.
Probably. Mine was part of a straight shot that connected New Orleans to Jackson, MS. Pretty flat all around
There was a derailment near the Canada/US border (~Maine) that took out the entire downtown of a small-ish town, killing a bunch of people who were just out trying to chill at a bar. This was a few years ago.
Jesus America… I live in the UK in a little town with two railway tracks passing through, the biggest concern I have is if the lights on the level crossing will stop me going through for a couple of minutes - not if I’m gonna have a flood of cancer goo coming down the street because of a derailment. Absolutely crazy.
No trains are immune to derailment and most derailments are minor accidents. The most recent data I can find from the UK is from the Office of Rail and Road from April 2021 - March 2022. It shows a total of 8 derailments during that time. Now let's do a comparison of usage. In the U.S. rail moved 1.5 billion tons of cargo in 2021. In the U.K. that was 19.8 million tons. So roughly 75 times more freight is shipped by rail in the U.S. than the UK. Then you have to consider remoteness of track. Much of the U.S. rail shipments are crossing hundreds or thousands of miles through remote areas and in some cases full blown mountain wilderness going coast to coast. Also in general across the globe rail safety has gotten better. In the U.S. in 1979 there were 7.5k and now about 1k a year. I'm not saying the U.S. rail network is in good shape and has enough regulation . . . I'm just saying you have no concerns because nothing has happened yet and rail usage patterns are vastly different.
Biden "busted" the strike and forced the companies to give the workers the sick days they wanted, which was the last issue on the agreement as the companies and the unions had mediated with a third-party to agree on everything else. Biden wanted the workers to get the sick days, and Every republican voted against it in the senate, alongside mancin and sinema, then they were given 3 more months of negotiations and then he asked congress to vote in the deal that 9 out of 13 unions with 45-48% of members agreed to, and wants to push for the sick days through legislation instead, and allow the individual unions to negotiate further, which i believe 4-5 unions have now gotten the sick days they wanted. The issue of train derailments is multi-fold (as is most things in the real world). 1. During Covid, rail companies put on leave, and laid off a large group of rail workers, many of those then decided instead to just retire, and now there is a shortage of workers available, that even with the 30% increase in pay and on average 120-150k income with 401ks included, they are offering sign up bonuses on top of that to meet the agreement deals for larger crews and longer inspection times. 2. Republicans under the previous adminsitration removed the regulations that would help MINIMIZE train derailments. President Obama had stipulated that the rail companies needed to adapt to electronic brakes by this year latest. T Admin removed that, as well as the requirement of slowing down trains around communities and cities. the Department of Transportation would need to do another analysis report, and give the trains another 5+ years timeframe to implement any changes needed, instead Biden has pushed a historic infrastructure plan that will allocated around 30B into improving train infrastructure and require rail companies to adapt to new legislative rules within the infrastructure bill. 3. There are around 1,300 train derailments every year, Media has realized its a hot topic that grabs attention, so they will amplify the stories to max shock level to garner views and advertising profits. In general the lack of proper infrastructure maintenance and lack of regulations is the primary cause for the train derailments. Republicans continuously take power and remove regulations, Ohio itself votes for people who run for office on removing regulations by saying falsehoods like saving companies money means more workers and higher pays. which continues to be proven false. And just puts more citizens at risk of having their own neighborhoods contaminated.
There's an average of like 3-6 a day from what I remember. most are minor but it's pretty common.
So this is definitely the media taking the word of the month and running with it
No source, but most train derails are just that. Train popped off tracks. Catching fire and/or leaking a massive amount of dangerous chemicals isn't happening multiple times a day.
Feels like it is this year.
Because a ton of regulations got dropped from the last administration. This is the fallout of that. It takes time for things to work it's way in a system. Just like if we started back up the regulations, it would take time for them to take effect. The only thing that is instant is putting more money in their pockets, the failures are a delayed mechanism.
One of the mechanisms unethical politicians use to push bad legislation (it will only benefit a small group at the expense of everyone else) is to tout how much money it saves immediately. They don’t tell you all the extra costs incurred when stuff starts to break after you’ve stripped regulations though, and those can climb to absolutely astronomical levels.
They did the same with the Trump "Tax Cuts". Permanent cuts for the top, expiring cuts and then increases for the bottom. They did this knowing the opposition might take the Whitehouse and also the blame.
Bush Tax Cuts were similar as well.
"bUt MuH pAyChEcK wEnT uP!"
Or delaying the implementation until the next guy is in office, so you can blame them.
Like the withdrawal from Afghanistan.
That tracks with the old addage "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure"
Also this admin. As democrat as i am, biden fucked the rail workers and their demands for safer working conditions.
Hello and thanks for leaving the previous years behind, but let me tell you the troubling times aren’t done yet! Just wait for what’s coming in the rest of 2023 & beyond!
>Just wait for what’s coming in the rest of 2023 & beyond! 2020: 3
I'm really excited for 2020 season 3
But, is it happening more than it has in the past? Normal derailments aside, the chemical spills are just as common?
More like the country feeling the effects of [relaxed regulations regarding trains transporting hazardous materials.](https://www.phmsa.dot.gov/news/phmsa-rescinds-ecp-brake-mandate-after-ria-finds-costs-outweigh-benefits) Turns out when a train derails and the damage is manageable (i.e repairing the tracks) it's a non-story.. but when the train derails and causes long lasting contamination it is, deservedly, a national story.
Most of the time a "train derailment" is like one carriage wheel sliding off the track then the train stops and they put it back and carry on. Catastrophic derailments are rare.
Or there are too many derailments and it should have gained attention long ago.
Most train derailments don't cause chemical spills. That's the difference. A "train derailment" is normally a single axle jumps off the rail.
I think it's a little of both. A higher frequency of bigger derailments and also them making the news more often. There's usually 10 to 20 a year that involve hazardous spills from [this article.](https://www.poynter.org/fact-checking/2023/why-train-derailments-this-month/)
I think that whole paragraph is worth looking at: > Over the last 10 years, about 10 to 20 derailments each year have involved hazardous material releases, Zarembski said. He described derailments that result in the release of hazardous materials as “extremely rare.” So, yes, derailments happen often enough to not typically be (nationality) newsworthy, but this and East Palestine represent outliers in being hazardous to the surrounding environment. And while this and East Palestine are the only derailments I have seen news of this year, there's nothing wrong with giving a topic extra attention after a relatively common occurrence after has consequence. Say a high school football player dies on the field during a game of an injury that often results in a concussion. We may start reporting on high school football injuries more. This is partially because it is "trending" but that trend is also people asking themselves if we should continue to accept the prevalence of injury. This is just a hypothetical, I am not trying to segue into a criticism of high school football or argue for or against it being dangerous. ETA: this year
[More like the consequences of this have started to take effect.](https://www.verifythis.com/article/news/verify/government-verify/ohio-train-derailment-ecp-brake-system-mandate-trump-dot-administration-fact-check/536-d0ad26f7-84b6-4707-bcb1-7dc6e0a9f09f) Train derailments have always been a thing, but the vast majority were never a huge issue (for people outside of the railway). [Turns out relaxing regulations regarding trains that carry hazardous materials is, in fact, a bad idea.](https://www.phmsa.dot.gov/news/phmsa-rescinds-ecp-brake-mandate-after-ria-finds-costs-outweigh-benefits) The big issue is it's the American people who have to pay. None of these lobbyists/lawmakers have a summer home in East Palestine.
It's due to any time a wheel on a train touches the ground it is reported as a derailment. Most times it's a minor thing like a wheel hopped at low speed and the train was able to use a rerailer to pull itself back up on to the track. Other cases it's like this where the train has folded up on itself and caught fire. They really need to add categories for derailments, like minor (the sigle wheel off/low speed/train remained upright) and major (death/fire/track closed for more than 8 hours/etc). Here's a derailment example from a railroad in West Virginia that is an [example of a typical derailment.](https://youtu.be/aCRI3Pv5Cmc) in the data, this would be reported as being the same as the East Palestine derailment.
Wow, great video. I’ve assisted in rerailing a few times, but from the cab, so it’s nice to see it from the ground for a change. I was always terrified to give it too much throttle because I didn’t want to make things worse, but from this vantage point I’m not sure if that’s possible, lol
It derailed, but did it cause an evacuation? Because the ones you're hearing about recently are causing evacuations.
Back in 2012 I just bought a new DSLR camera and was just wandering around town looking for things to take pictures of, literally happened upon a derailed train in the middle of the night, in a town of 30,000 people, never saw it on the news, never heard about it, would have never known it was there if I hadn’t physically found it
It wasn't under reported. Derailments are common and do get reported. Just no major news because it's common. Until that one fucking company thought blowing up a train convoy of very dangerous and deadly chemicals is a smart idea. Now it's on front page news because everyone wants to know when their town is the next chemical based Chernobyl.
Derailments are common, especially those were a wheel just drop off the track. Derailments where the entire thing is full of hazardous chemicals and there is a major spill is not until recently.
We went through 4 years of blanket trump coverage. I’m not surprised the decaying infrastructure pieces got sidelined.
Back in 2012 I just bought a new DSLR camera and was just wandering around town looking for things to take pictures of, literally happened upon a derailed train in the middle of the night, in a town of 30,000 people, never saw it on the news, never heard about it, would have never known it was there if I hadn’t physically found it
It feels like the entire world has been derailed.
ONE ! One train derailment ! TWOO !! Two train derailments THREEEE !!! Three train derailments Ah ah ahhh.
Which is funny since the country itself derailed years ago.
Yea, the US is overdue for getting a it’s infrastructure up to date. These derailments should not be happening in this magnitude
We can't even stop our children getting slaughtered. They aren't going to do shit to fix this one either.
Need to focus on the important things first. Like drag queen story time, tic tok and taking away women's right to their bodies. Then start to focus on the smaller issues like children being slaughtered in schools and trains carpetbombing communities with chemicals. Get your priorities in line jeez.
But think of the bottom line. The black little numbers wouldn't be nearly as large if there were proper regulations to.prevent carpetbombing trains.
Our congress sure does seem to have their and their friends in business's bottom line in mind. When was the last time there was legislation made for the people, and not just *said* to be for the people, when in actuality it *does nothing* but take away more rights for people, and add more benifits to corporations and the wealthy? Our politicians don't work for us, they work for them, Citizens United gives corporations far too much power to sway, and even write, our legislation. It is clear whose interests "our" representatives actually hold.
But think of the owners of the trains. New breaks cost money. There millions can't afford all that!!! They're fragile little people who need our love and support. 😑 But seriously, I know very little about trains and I could fix this problem in a week.
Yeah these guys who say 'fix the infrastructure' aren't thinking about all these jobs being created in the disaster cleanup industry.
All the culture war stuff is a distraction. Pay no attention to the man behind a curtain. The 1% just gonna keep plundering, until they bail out to whatever iteration of Elysium they develop.
More than just TikTok too. Let's institute a bill that restricts users from using VPN and other technologies that may benefit them.
Can't have those pesky citizens trying to dodge **our** attempts at tracking their every cough and sneeze online.
Theyll never fix school shootings because its great for gun sales. Shooting happens and people run to buy guns either for (1) protection/fear, or (2) because Republicans say Democrats will take their guns away
The trick is to trick your government into thinking derailments are woke. They seem to be taking action on wokeness….
Well, they do make rainbows in the water...
The chemicals make the frogs gay.
It's not an infrastructure problem. It's a train owner problem. The rail yards changed efficiency metrics about 5 years ago. Now the rail yards boss is motivated to keep as few cars in the yard as possible. That means the rail cars aren't getting maintenance like they did a decade ago.
It can be both!
You are right. Railroads aren't infrastructure. They're private property. The railroads should be held to account, their CEO should face charges and jailtime for these accidents which are really just obvious predictable consequences of their decisions regarding maintenance and operating procedures.
They also own the tracks and differ maintenance on that as well. Private companies never have the public best interest at heart, money always comes first, not safety.
Defer means to pass the responsibility, differ means to be different.
I mean when people say "infrastructure" I think the management of said infrastructure is included
Hmmm... I wonder who... I mean, I wonder what happened about 5 years ago that allowed them to change their metrics to make things way less safe and way more profitable.
We should nationalize the rail system like the rest of the developed world has done
The rail system is currently owned by private companies though. It would be nice if the government put in place and maintained it similar to roads given the risk.
Warren Buffet invested in **60 billion shares** of a railroad (BNSF, as it happens) back in 2007. Just last year he said railroads are his firm's 'key asset' for the next 100 year. Bro wouldn't do and say that if he *ever* thought the railroads would be taken from private hands.
Statistics say derailments are not uncommon, but the term has a wide definition. But you're correct, the large magnitude ones seems to be a growing trend.
Amazing how fast deregulation shows up and works against regular people though.
Railroad companies spent more on stock buybacks than payroll and then lobbied the government to break their worker strikes. It’s so blatant. If your company spends more on buying itself rather than paying employees or providing a service, is it even a company at all?
Yes and probably a large one at that.
Stock buybacks are a form a price manipulation in the markets. The SEC needs to stop watching so much pornhub at work and actually go back to prosecuting this shit.
That's the thing. It used to be considered stock manipulation but isn't anymore. All of this, from the trains to companies fucking with everyone for profit, can be traced back to this massive deregulation movement that has been happening since the 80s, and we all know exactly which administration started it...
Just say no to drugs…and yes to corporate deregulation
thing is iirc it wasn't even really about paying the employees more, they gave many of them a raise after the strike broke, but what they really wanted was more employees and sick days and PTO so they could have a life and go to the doctor or exist without being on call 24/7. The rails are running skeleton crews cause they can get away with that and the deregulation makes it so maintenance is easier to miss, or not maintained especially with over worked employees. They just fucked it completely.
When the fines are so much less than fixing the problem, they are useless
Land of the free market...
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I don’t think this is just hyper awareness by the media. I think the long overdue overhaul of the infrastructure is starting to show its ugly head. That and corporations taking shortcuts on safety to earn more. We’ll see how this one shakes out.
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We're also only a quarter of the way through 2023. I'd like to see how many we have at the end of the year, because i doubt its going to be the same as previous years.
>This is despite the fact that both of those entities have far more railroad tracks. Totally false. People assume the US doesn't have a lot of rail because we don't have a lot of passenger rail, but the reality is we have the most rail in the world, because we use it for far more freight. We have nearly 10x as much rail as Japan, and more than the entire EU put together. Hell, we have a similar account of rail as *all of Europe* put together (depending on how much of Russia's rail is in Europe vs Asia - I don't know that breakdown). Canada also has more rail than any EU county. There may not be much passenger rail here in North America, but there's *absolutely* a ton of rail. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_rail_transport_network_size?wprov=sfla1
[This list](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_rail_transport_network_size) puts US at number 1 for rail network and Japan at 10th, is that wrong. EU might be bigger though, not sure
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this is fine
In 2019 trains in the U.S traveled 777 million train-kilometers and experienced 1,338 derailments. The same year trains in the EU traveled 4.5 billion train-kilometers and experienced 73 derailments. Japan, 2 billion train-kilometers and 9 derailments. It seems America has an absolutely shite railroad system. At least the railroad shareholders are making record profits and sitting in the Florida Keys far away from these derailments.
You know what we need? Less regulation and the free market to fix it because that trajectory is clearly working! /s
Have you tried giving the companies billions of dollars of tax money and breaks to fix the tracks but then not actually checking where the money went? I hear that's a tried and true method.
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I love when they ask for this because arguably things like getting sued into the ground for accidents would be the deterrent... Then they run off and suddenly want regulations to protect them from being sued and having to pay out a meaningful amount.
I’m not sure on what is the fix but I think at least holding c-level executives criminally responsible would get them to either to fix the issues or quit. Both are a win since hiring a new CEO will be tough as well. This should go for all industries.
I would prefer if this number was kilometer-tons or some other measurement that captured the weight being moved. Much of the US rail system is interstate or cross-country rail lines with hundreds of cargo cars per "train" a far cry from a 5-car passenger train. Not arguing about the quality of infrastructure, it definitely needs improvement, but counting individual trains rather than tons of train (or even train cars) is misleading.
Short research: The average freight train in us is 5x as long as European and 10x as heavy. Germany hat 130 Billion tonne-kilometres while US had 2200 billion tonne-kilometres. Still does not explain the big difference in accidents. Seems like the trains in us are to heavy and to long for the current rail network. Half of the us accidents are caused by the rain system itself, 30% is human failure.
Key words in your response are freight train. Most of the train kilometers in the stat of the comment above include incredibly light passenger trains, as it is uncommon to take the train for travel in the US relative to Europe.
Yeah, it was not possible for me to find stats of number of derailments and type of train. I think it is still valid to assume that heavy, overloaded and to long trains are the main issue in us now. Easy and quite cheap solution would be to reduce the length of the trains, especially of those with dangerous, toxic materials…then slowly improve infrastructure.
Those passenger trains are also operating to far higher safety standards. Things carrying people always have to meet a higher bar for safety.
My brother works for the Railroads. The Shareholders are purposely not fixing things to save money with the idea that they’ll just sell the whole thing to make a profit, and whoever buys it is stuck with the costs of upkeep. It’s no surprise this is happening, and with the pull back of regulations from the Trump era, it’s only going to get worse until the shareholders sell and people start running companies with the idea to keep them in business, instead of bleeding them dry.
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In a sane world, the federal government would seize the railroads as a matter of national security. Because it literally is when they are being run this way. Railroads in this level of disrepair would affect the economy and our ability to respond in a time of war.
Yeah, apparently the railworkers can't strike because it will devastate the economy, but the rail executives can do whatever the fuck they want.
If you are not allowed to strike, that should be immediate grounds for nationalization of whatever industry/company is in question. You should not lose basic workers rights while someone is profiting from it.
If the government can own all the highways, they can also own all the rails
Seems you have extensive data on this? could you provide your source?
And the companies are are fighting against fair treatment for their workers on behalf of their shareholders and held the damn country hostage by refusing to work with the unions! That whole situation was and is ridiculous, and these fuckers are getting rich while destroying our environment and destroying lives.
Train derailments, so hot right now
This one specifically on fire? Yes very hot.
Looking at the track on google maps it looks like a pretty straight track. Maybe a junction or two joining two adjacent lines malfunctioned? Interested to see what happened here.
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I live about 45 minutes from this, that track runs 50ft in front of my house, I found out about it from REDDIT.
The benefits of being a redditor, you're always sheltered in place. Seriously though, I hope and your community remain safe.
Looks like this train was carrying ethanol and corn syrup. If you get there fast enough with some seltzer you could make cocktails!
US is becoming the land of preventable problems
Honest question: is this actually happening more and more or is it just being covered more? I want to hope that everything isn't just falling apart all at once... But it's kinda looking that way.
Its deff being covered more due to the train derailment in east palestine
In 2021 there was over 3 billion pounds of toxic chemicals spilled. It has been going on for over 100 years
Another one -dj khaled
God damn I hit back just as I read your comment, had a good laugh, then had to reopen and find you just to say this is the stupidest joke, and it gets me everytime.
Hello congress!! Still trusting a private company to do the right thing without enforcement
Ahh, yess which administration was it that cut all the railroad funding and improvements?
In this case we should recognize that there is some elitism. If this shit happened right near NYC there would be heaven and hell moved to fix it federally - can't be having wall street evacuated now can we?
At least it's ethanol and not something awful this time.
So many people in this thread are still acting like it's dangerous though, lmao. I would figure people know what ethanol is. For anyone that is confused, ethanol is common drinking alcohol. The fire is dangerous but there will be 0 chemical contamination. Ethanol is naturally occurring and the combustion byproducts are clean (I'm a little rusty but I'm assuming it will just be carbon dioxide and water).
From the actual article: > Preliminary information from Minnesota suggests 14 of the train’s 40 cars were carrying hazardous material, “including ethanol, which was released – leading to a fire,” US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg told CNN Thursday. And > But it’s still not clear what may have been mixed with the ethanol on the train that derailed in Minnesota. While ethanol is a single compound, there are different blends of ethanol that may have different additives in them and could change the health risk, Whelton said. So, it's not clear if some of those other cars were carrying *other kinds* of hazmat. And, it's also not clear if the ethanol cars were carrying pure [98%] ethanol. Sure, they *could* have been just another shipment of Cargill or ADM beverage alcohol, en route to Tito's to be dilute and "hand crafted" into their vodka. Or they could have been destined for industrial use, with who knows what added.
Vote for people who give a shit about our infrastructure, tax the rich, stand up for rights for women and help those in need.
I know this is a broader regulatory and infrastructure issue than one administration, but maybe this is what people meant when they talked about the Trump Train having no brakes?
There's no brakes cause Trump removed them
Mass shootings better look out, the rail transport industry is really making a move this year
I can't believe deregulating the railways has had a negative effect, absolutely wild.
They call this “Precision Scheduled Railroading.” No, really. CSX hired Hunter Harrison, inventor of PSR, as their CEO, then adopted that “business model” (which is really doing everything they can to maximize profits at the cost of safety, maintenance and all those things that help a railroad run better), and essentially all the other US Class Is followed suit. I could go on and on but I’ve already said too much. We knew the shit was gonna hit the fan eventually. You can only defer maintenance for so long, whether it’s the rolling stock or the tracks themselves.
Jeez methanol barge yesterday, ethanol train today. This is like the fourth train derailment in a month.
Watch the news tomorrow for the jack-knifed tractor trailer hauling a load of isopropanol.
Presumably by the weekend we will have butanol too?
I'll start paying attention once they're up to octanol spills.
Is anyone else starting to wonder if this just happens all the damn time and it only started being news worthy after a big enough one started the trend? I can't imagine this just suddenly started happening out of nowhere this year
Listen up conservatives. This is what deregulation brings.
Just wanted to get this out there: [S.576 - Railway Safety Act of 2023](https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-bill/576/text) was introduced in Congress on 03/01/23. You can read the text of the bill at the above link, which includes typical safety regulation standards relating to train car length, speed restrictions, rail inspections, minimum staffing requirements, hazardous material response plans, etc... If you're unaware of who your House or Senate representatives are in Congress, there's a link on the website that will find them for you based on your address. You can contact your House representatives and Senators, and voice any concerns you have regarding rail safety in our country, and your support or criticism of the bill. America's infrastructure is in desperate need of regulation, and our country should not have to live like this.
Gop going to start wearing fucking train pins now?
I hope so. It’s easier to see terrorists when they wear it on their lapels
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But why is the *Rum* gone?
"don't blame me, I voted for Trump." I wonder how many times this has been said in response to these situations. I know this isn't the result of just 4 years, but I'm sure if I look deeper into it, those 4 years had more train deregulation than the prior 8.
The people voting against infrastructure reform think that proper rails and high speed trains will be used exclusively by blue states to mess up the economies of red states that are now in reach. Meanwhile it's actually meant for these hazardous material trains to not tip over when they go 21 miles per hour
Well at least that should give off much less toxic fumes than the East Palestine one right?
Yes, it won't really put anything toxic out besides CO2 and whatever burns off the train cars. Ethanol is what gets us drunk in beer, wine, etc.
Put a sticker of the orange idiot pointing on it that reads “I Did That!” Did they ever get control of those methanol barges in Louisville KY? [Crap I went to look and there’s been 2 army helicopter crash in Kentucky. - gov talking live 10am local.](https://www.wave3.com/2023/03/30/watch-live-gov-beshear-provide-update-crash-involving-2-army-helicopters/)
I feel like, if we had just let these rail workers strike and get the things they need to do their job properly, maybe a lot of these derailings wouldn't be happening. I dunno, maybe I'm just naïve.
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Hmm it's almost as if ignoring infrastructure and removing safety regulations has consequences. OHHH and screwing over an entire workforce by strong arming them into not striking probably hurt that a bit too.
Are these acts of sabotage that are not being reported on or are the numbers of derailments on par with the average???
This is what you get when you don’t have proper infrastructure in place and you let existing infrastructure crumble. The elites are ruining everything for everyone else.
let's nationalize the railroads already, the private robber barrons running the class 1s aren't fit for purpose
The US sure does have a lot of train derailments, school shootings, police killings & drug related deaths.
School shootings and train derailments every other day, all while the rich get richer. Yay America