Apportioning Blame for the Amtrak Tragedy

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/31/opinion/amtrak-derailment.html

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To the Editor:

Re “Derailed Infrastructure” (editorial, Dec. 25): The rail tragedy near Tacoma, Wash., was preventable. Why did it happen?

Congress is the primary culprit. For many decades, it has appropriated billions to develop, implement and operate our air traffic control system, and it has spent even more trying to make an inherently unsafe mode of transportation — highways — a little less unsafe. But railways are essentially told to “fix the problem with your own dollars.”

Railroads in Europe began to focus on “crash avoidance” back in the 1930s, and today most rail systems throughout the world manage to prevent such accidents. In Japan, the high-speed Shinkansen system has operated since 1964 without a single significant-injury accident.

In the United States, we pay far too little attention to crash avoidance. Congress and the Federal Railroad Administration are responsible. And the media is guilty of failing to educate.

DAN MCFARLING, ALOHA, ORE.

The writer is a director of the Association of Oregon Rail and Transit Advocates, a rail passenger association.

To the Editor:

The recent Amtrak accident may indeed provoke renewed concerns about the state of America’s infrastructure. It also underscores the deficiencies in funding, which is necessary to maintain and upgrade the country’s aging transportation systems.

There are a number of reasons for this deficiency. Primary among them is the nature of our market economy. It favors new products and services that make old ones obsolete and can create large investment returns in relatively short order. That is why government is so central to infrastructure investment; it can override financial market considerations.

American capital markets don’t like investing in old businesses (except perhaps real estate) unless there is a new twist. Automation could be such a twist. Perhaps new technologies involving driverless cars (and eventually pilotless airplanes) will find their way into mainstream rail applications and generate the investment interest necessary to support broader rail modernization.

MATT ANDERSSON, OAK BROOK, ILL.

The writer is a former transportation consultant.