Latest Derailment: Amtrak Should be Renamed Obamatrak
In the last year, there have been five Amtrak train wrecks. Four of these wrecks resulted in deaths.
As with school shootings, Muslim terror attacks, and train wrecks to name a few, President Trump inherited Obama’s messes.
Obama promised “roads and bridges” and preached of America’s “crumbling infrastructure,” yet he did little to fix it. Worse yet, he did nothing to address human error, and now we get another deadly Amtrak wreck.
According to Express UK,
The train, estimated to be carrying 139 passengers, was travelling from New York to Miami before the fatal crash at roughly 2.30am.
Social media posts have referred to “walking wounded” being seen on the tracks after the collision between Charleston Highway and Pine Ridge Road.
A police spokesman has confirmed 50 people were taken to hospital with injuries ranging from “scratches to more severe broken bones”.
He was unable to clarify if any injuries are life-threatening, but added there are no more people on the train.
This particular train was Amtrak Train 91, operating between New York and Miami. The train collided with a CSX freight train at around 2.35am in Caye, South Carolina.
There is no report on who is to blame, but I suspect the “government” train is the culprit, as this isn’t the only run-in with CSX Amtrak has had.
On the evening of June 27, 2017, two CSX workers were fatally struck by a southbound Amtrak train approaching Union Station in Washington, D.C. after exiting a stopped freight train to check out a technical issue.
Recall this Amtrak train wreck, where the vehicle was taking its maiden voyage? As CNN reported,
Amtrak Cascades 501, carrying 86 people on its initial journey with paying customers, was on a new section of the route from Seattle to Portland when it derailed Monday. The National Transportation Safety Board, which said a cause of the accident will be determined later, said the train was going 50 mph over the limit when it went around a curve.
Scary to think that Amtrak likely put its best engineer for the train’s maiden voyage. And that clown drove the train 50 mph over the recommended speed limit.
You can bet the report of what caused this accident will be squashed like most government reports. Let me save us all some money and reveal the culprit: operator error, and not just the guy driving the train.
I can only imagine how President Trump sees these tragedies.
My bet is Trump sees the unnecessary loss of life, and billions of wasted money.
Because after the billions spent on America’s rail system, it remains the least trustworthy train system in the civilized world.
The president’s proposed budget for Amtrak is as follows:
– An overall Amtrak budget of $1.4 billion, $1.1 billion for the national network, and $328 million for Northeast Corridor grants.
– $500 million for Federal-State Partnership for State of Good Repair grants.
– $25 million for Consolidated Rail Infrastructure and Safety Improvements Grants, down from $68 million in 2017.
– No funds for high speed rail in California.
– $1.75 billion for the Federal Transit Administration Capital Investment Grant program, including $1 billion for funding grant agreement projects, and $145 million for core capacity projects. FTA’s “Small Starts” program receives $182 million.
Ironically, Amtrak gets bigger budget considerations after tragedies like the one today.
Out of curiosity, I searched “Japanese train wrecks” on Google.
I had to go back to April of 2005 to find the last major train wreck. Even more surprising, I could only find 8 total train wrecks in Japan in researching this topic. And keep in mind that Japan runs mostly super high-speed trains.
In America there have been 16 train collisions and 12 derailments since the Year 2000.
