There was a really good comment on reddit that I duplicated here (with references to original): https://e40.github.io/2023-02-18-train-safety.html
It explains why there are so many derailments these days.
It explains why there are so many derailments these days.
Yet, most of the nays came from the GOP and in the house most GOP voted against the bill?
How does all this work?
[0] https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-joint-res...
That's it.
> I didn't know that the government could do this.
It's explained in the "whereas" clauses. The Constitution gives Congress the power to regulate interatate commerce, which is pretty much all they need.
> Is that the same thing as making it "illegal to strike" as the linked comment suggests?
Yes. The unions are being forced to accept the deal. The union now can now be held liable if they try to organize a strike. Unofficial strikes (wildcat strikes) are illegal in the US.
https://theintercept.com/2022/11/30/rail-workers-strike-hous...
The bill that did pass with bipartisan support was a compromise due to this bill failing. It is extremely disingenuous to suggest that the democrats, who voted overwhelmingly for a bill that satisfied more rail worker demands, hold most of the fault for the strike break.
The GOP correctly realized that by voting against rail workers, they could force democrats to also vote against rail workers in order to avoid a general rail strike which would be disastrous to the economy and laid at the feed of the Biden administration. This is the realpolitik world we live in, and peoples health will suffer due to it.
Oh and democrats do share some of the blame, just not the majority. Joe Manchin did vote against the bill supporting rail workers.
There's no downside for them for this behavior. The Dems already hate them, and if anything their base will reward them for it.
https://youtu.be/qQTjLWIHN74?t=466
It would appear that the issues with Amtrak can be traced back to freight rail as well. See 07:46 onwards for more details.
https://twitter.com/mike10010100/status/1627344918220767232
The complaints about precision scheduled railroading are valid though. Every foamer has been talking about it. And again as your link shows this derailment (like many) had absolutely nothing to do with the overturning of the breaking rule that has frustratingly grabbed everyone's attention. (I guess everyone loves a simplistic explanation that blames government officials even if it's wrong.)
And longer trains derailing means that the impact will be more spectacular, which would explain why we are seeing more news coverage of these fewer absolute derailments.
https://twitter.com/mike10010100/status/1628072318491668500?...
On top of that longer periods of stress on a particular part of rail due to the longer trains is probably uncovering new failures in problem spots especially if heating is involved in the problem. Longer train = more time for a piece of rail to heat up.
I think the metric of concern would be total consecutive time the rail is loaded or something like that.
All the rail companies should be required to spin off their track ownership into new and separate companies, which can now sell access to those and other possible rail providers.
It’s necessary to get some competition in the space.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lac-M%C3%A9gantic_rail_disaste...