Amtrak Crash Hits Home for Lawmakers-- Who Respond By, Yes, Cutting Funding

a reply to: ketsuko

SS is paid already and is a fund, Food stamps I never had the need for it I don't care about that, the EBT cards are nothing but a huge scam at the expenses of the tax payer and a waste of money, education well that is already gone to crap with the cuttings for years.

But I don't remember tragedies of so many people dying because lack of SS, food stamps or cuts on education.

yes, yes, I been sarcastic.

originally posted by: ketsuko

originally posted by: angeldoll
a reply to: derfreebie

This one is about Congress doing its job, especially in the House Appro-
priations Committee. I'm not stumping for X v. Y, or who's to blame for
killing at least six people and injuring at least 150 more. That thread's
out there already. This is no rant, it's an expose' of our ineptitude at
electing people who don't just argue like lawyers (oh wait-- 70% ARE).

Congress. You get what you pay for folks. I hope next go-round people who can see further than their back pocket get elected. Surely, there's a lesson to be learned every day from this inadequate, incompetent bunch.

That's really funny.

When Congress cuts, I'm accused because I am looking at my back pocket, you know, my own self-interest. When I have the chance to elect a Congress that will make rampant hand-outs and I vote for the Congress that cuts, I get yelled at for not looking at my own back pocket, you know, my own self-interest.

You can't have it both ways. Either I am to be selfish or I am not.

Now, that's funny! So you cut or you cut? : )

This is undoubtedly the most dysfunctional congress in our history, and I'll be damned if I can find the first thing about it that's funny.

On Topic: If the Conductor was speeding to make time, then it's way messed up. But we don't know yet, if he tried to brake, or if he didn't. Waiting on that Black Box, I guess...........

What happened in Congress seems like a slap in the face, salt in the wounds, but what else is new?

a reply to: Zaphod58

I do the same thing!! I got so panicked one time that I almost caused an accident..I was sitting at a stop light (under the overpass) and as the big trucks rolled above I just kept hearing a shaking/thundering noise. I had all my kids in the car..and just panicked. I though for sure the thing was coming down..so I cut out into the other lane to get just ahead of the overpass..causing a mercedes behind to grind to a screeching halt. I felt really bad for almost giving the other driver a heart attack..but I felt like I was having one myself. It's so sad that I feel we put our lives at risk just driving down the road.

The roads themselves really suck. I don't know where 1/2 of you live..but here in (IN) the roads are BAD! I swear my car is screaming every time I go for a drive some place..lol..There are potholes big enough for a person to hide down in. It's like playing a video game while driving..course obstacles or something. It's just so sad the condition of our great states.

a reply to: ketsuko

I have to kind of disagree. I used to live in souther Illinois..and most of the people around those parts travel to St. Louis, Evansville, Chicago, Nashville or Paducah for weekend entertainment. They do have Amtrak going to chicago..but I don't think they have commuter trains going any other place. All of those cities are within 45mins - 3 hours. They could put in little bullet trains for weekend travel or twice a day through the week for people that work in those cities. I would love to just ride the train into the bigger cities rather than take the boring ass highway all the way. Im sure a lot of states are like that too. People from the smaller cities/towns going places throughout the week, and the weekend. It would take a lot of cars off the road.

I'm fairly certain that lack of money isn't going to blamed...

How much does someone want to bet they'll blame the guy in control of the train. They'll find out he was depressed or not taking medication he was supposed to. They'll use him as some kind of scapegoat to cover up whatever really happened.

If one person takes the fall, it keeps everyone from looking more deeply into the crash.

originally posted by: SlapMonkey
I think that's because it's not really good business here in America. Driving and flying are so prevalent that rail is taking a back seat--and that's okay. We don't always need to compare ourselves to other "developed countries" and feel an obligation to do everything that they do.

I remember riding on an Amtrak train once as a kid--probably 25 years ago or more. It was neat, but I never had a desire to do it again. I sure do love driving cars, though...

There's a different reason for it. Individual travel is good for short distances of low population density. Flying doesn't really care about density as much as number of hubs (so a nation with many cities better uses air travel than a nation of two cities). Rail is good for medium distances (as it's faster than a car but slower than a plane) of high population density.

The US is fairly rural which makes road travel the most economical choice. Even if we had a rail system who would want to spend 2 days by rail to go from LA to NY when they can take a plane in 5 hours?

originally posted by: KawRider9
a reply to: Aazadan

Are you serious?

Computer controlled devices screw up all the time.

This case is about human error, not the crumbling infrastructure and lack of funding to fix it. And to say this could have been avoided if a computer was in control is highly naive.

I'm a computer programmer, I'm well aware of how devices screw up. Sometimes it's a hardware failure and sometimes it's a software failure. That said, a well tested system isn't likely to have a software error and hardware failures are usually easily detected. The whole point is that the conductor is your backup to the machine having a problem.

This crash was caused by the conductor going too fast into a curve, had there been better safety systems in place, which is part of having better infrastructure, the train would have known it was going too fast and would have either slowed itself down or set off an alert for the conductor to slow down.

Machines sometimes fail but human error happens far more frequently than that.

originally posted by: Neopan100
a reply to: Zaphod58

I do the same thing!!

I got so panicked one time that I almost caused an accident..I was sitting at a stop light (under the overpass) and as the big trucks rolled above I just kept hearing a shaking/thundering noise. I had all my kids in the car..and just panicked. I though for sure the thing was coming down..so I cut out into the other lane to get just ahead of the overpass..causing a mercedes behind to grind to a screeching halt. I felt really bad for almost giving the other driver a heart attack..but I felt like I was having one myself. It's so sad that I feel we put our lives at risk just driving down the road.

The roads themselves really suck. I don't know where 1/2 of you live..but here in (IN) the roads are BAD! I swear my car is screaming every time I go for a drive some place..lol..There are potholes big enough for a person to hide down in. It's like playing a video game while driving..course obstacles or something. It's just so sad the condition of our great states.

Overpasses are relatively safe, most of the highway system is newer so those structures haven't had time to be worn down as much by age. Bridges on the other hand can be downright scary. If you want something to keep yourself up at night, look into the state of our dam's... some states have simply stopped inspecting them at all under the logic that if they aren't failing now then they never will where as these same dam's at their last inspection was "failure imminent".

The reason we ignore this stuff is because it's expensive. We live in a society that buys on installment plans and we expect a quantifiable ROI but we need to buy the bridge upfront, for a later generation to benefit and we cant even measure the economic impact of that bridge.

Liberals...never ones to let a good tragedy go to waste.

Nevermind that the train was at double the speed limit, IN A TURN!!

MORE MONEY!! Obviously this will solve EVERYTHING!!

UGH.

originally posted by: marg6043
a reply to: Lgbtlivesmatter

The stimulus money was spend many years ago, in my neck of the woods we got one mile of road paved, and four big city signs, I think the sign that said "this road was build with stimulus money" cost more than the pavement used for the road.

We got all new sidewalks and ramps going up to the sidewalk from the street at every street corner!! WooHoo!!

How in the world did we ever survive with the old ones? I mean all those poor people that had to walk on the sidewalks, THE HUMANITY!!

originally posted by: marg6043
a reply to: SlapMonkey
I rode the systems in NY back in the 70s when I was a very young with my cousins it was smelly (urine) dirty and nasty.

Then I rode the system from DC to NY, back in the 90s, it was nice, clean and I love it.

The reality is that I think a good rail system works really well in the 200- to 300-mile radius around heavily populated central hubs like D.C., or Los Angeles, where vehicle traffic is the epitome of suck. That said, I can't agree that it is the best thing for long-distance travel, and I certainly don't believe that, in either case, taxpayers should be propping it up.

originally posted by: SlapMonkey
The reality is that I think a good rail system works really well in the 200- to 300-mile radius around heavily populated central hubs like D.C., or Los Angeles, where vehicle traffic is the epitome of suck. That said, I can't agree that it is the best thing for long-distance travel, and I certainly don't believe that, in either case, taxpayers should be propping it up.

Roads are propped up with public funds, and even the airlines are pretty heavily subsidized. I see no reason why rail shouldn't be. It's important to have travel infrastructure, and it's also important that it remains in public hands as the barrier to entry is so high if it were private.

That said, most rail in the US should be local subway systems, until we can get high speed rail that crosses the country at 400 mph it's not a viable alternative to flying.

a reply to: derfreebie

The problem is corrupt idiots, and companies. They should have two watchmen for the trains to make sure none screw up.

Also what about the environment "people like you" love so much? Having to always work on these roads is a stupid waste, and it ruins the environment. If the workers worked smart and fixed only what was broken, then we would have no problems.

This was likely a problem from lack of safety precautions, and human stupidity, yet you jump to blame infrastructure and those who did not want to throw more at the waste. The expose of ineptitude is displayed by those who believe more spending will make up for not doing the job right. We spend enough on infrastructure, we need to manage the spending properly.

a reply to: cyborg41

Umm, they do fix only what is broken. They actually don't have the money to fix everything that's broken, so what's most broken gets prioritized while things that are less broken are let slide until they become catastrophic. Power lines, dams, bridges, half the roads in the country... all are in critical condition.

a reply to: poncho1982



We also got Four big signs that said Welcome to The town I guess the old ones were not good enough.

I don't get this at all, 1 person holds the responsibility and he was in control of the train. Even if this out of the blue story about something hitting the train is true, the fact remains that the engineer was operating the train at excessively high speeds for the area.

He was speeding, and this is not a car so it doesn't accelerate and brake instantly so this bs about an object hitting the train is a whole separate issue, unrelated to a train crash. If he was doing the correct speed, the train would have stayed on the tracks regardless of any small object hitting the window. This isn't like someone dropping a brick off a bridge onto a car, this is a train, locked on rails...

a reply to: cyborg41

On the highway I see truckers hauling as s all the time, with the pedal to the metal. If I'm already doing 70 in a car and a tractor trailer sails past me, something is wrong, that truck has its pedal nailed to the floor. Try braking all of a sudden in that thing.

a reply to: Brainiac

Watch for magic 1000 damage massive beer bottles!

originally posted by: ketsuko
...a rail line that hardly anyone uses...

Where did the 238 passengers come from then?

Whenever I'm in 30th Street Station, the longest line is always people waiting to go to New York.

originally posted by: Aazadan
Roads are propped up with public funds, and even the airlines are pretty heavily subsidized. I see no reason why rail shouldn't be. It's important to have travel infrastructure, and it's also important that it remains in public hands as the barrier to entry is so high if it were private.

This is where we differ in philosophy--you say something like, "Everyone else is getting tax dollars, so rail should, too."

I say that airlines and bus lines and anything else getting tax dollars should cease receiving them and go all private.

Roads are a completely different issue, and I do think that those are something that should be paid for out of tax dollars...but those dollars shouldn't be used as leverage, like, say, making the states keep their legal drinking age at 21 or risk losing federal tax dollars to care for their interstates.