The Biden administration announced Monday that it has awarded more than $1.4 billion to projects that improve railway safety and boost capacity, with much of the money coming from the 2021 infrastructure law.
“These projects will make American rail safer, more reliable, and more resilient, delivering tangible benefits to dozens of communities where railroads are located, and strengthening supply chains for the entire country,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said in a statement.
The money is funding 70 projects in 35 states and Washington, D.C. Railroad safety has become a key concern nationwide ever since a train carrying hazardous chemicals derailed and caught fire in East Palestine, Ohio, in February. President Joe Biden has ordered federal agencies to hold the train’s operator Norfolk Southern accountable for the crash, but a package of proposed rail safety reforms has stalled in the Senate where the bill is still awaiting a vote. The White House is also saying that a possible government shutdown because of House Republicans would undermine railway safety.
The projects include track upgrades and bridge repairs, in addition to improving the connectivity among railways and making routes less vulnerable to extreme weather.
Can we get a rail that isn’t absurdly expensive so that only old people will take it for Olde time trainy fun, and that does not have freight share the tracks and take priority? Oh and if it rains, maybe the tracks are under water… And actual useful internet, and decent food options?
I would dearly love to take a train across the country in a sleeper car, but the price is insane.
It’s also super frustrating living in the Northeast, because though we do have halfway decent Amtrak service, it’s priced so high that it’s often cheaper to fly from Boston to NYC. This is because the NE corridor (basically BOS to WAS) is the only part of the entire network that’s reliably profitable, so the ticket prices I pay directly subsidize Amtrak service for the entire rest of the country.
Are train crashes a money problem? I thought it was a shitty ownership problem?
Is lack of maintenance a shitty ownership problem or money problem?
Definitely a shitty ownership problem since they’re making record profits while deliberately understaffing and giving the workers they have working conditions in which it’s impossible to do proper maintenance and safety checks.
Yup and guess who’s getting the money. Then guess how much of it they’ll spend on improving the deplorable working conditions including deliberate understaffing that are the ACTUAL main issues…
As a resident of the northeast: this is nice on the face of it, but that’s a comically small amount of money to address a decades-long failure to invest in mass transit infrastructure.
