Rail safetyCrumbling infrastructure to blame for growing number of derailments: Experts
Transportation industry analysts say the increase in the number of derailments is due to a crumbling transportation infrastructure and a lack of interest in funding rail transportation. Amtrak, a federally subsidized for-profit corporation, has been the target of conservative legislators who want to cut government spending. “The problem that you have — and you’ve had it since 1976 and even before — is that there’s never been an investment program that would bring the infrastructure up where it belongs on existing capacity,” says Amtrak CEO. While derailments are usually due to equipment failures, human and environmental factors can contribute to train accidents.
Tuesday’s Amtrak derailment in Philadelphia has left seven people dead and 200 injured. Derailments have increased in recent years, according to the Federal Railroad Administration’s office of safety analysis. There were two in 2012, three in 2013, six in 2014, and nine so far this year.
Transportation industry analysts say the increase in the number of derailments are due to a crumbling transportation infrastructure and a lack of interest in funding rail transportation. Amtrak, a federally subsidized for-profit corporation, has been the target of conservative legislators who want to cut government spending.
TheWashington Post notes that as train ridership increases, little is being done to modernize the rails and train cars. “The problem that you have — and you’ve had it since 1976 and even before — is that there’s never been an investment program that would bring the infrastructure up where it belongs on existing capacity,” Amtrak chief executive Joseph Boardman told theAtlantic last year. “There isn’t even an understanding about the need to increase capacity in order to continue to increase the GDP in this nation. Not only on the Northeast Corridor but all over the country.”
University of North Dakota mechanical engineering professor George Bibel wrote in Train Wreck: The Forensics of Rail Disasters (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012) that most derailments are relatively benign, and “can be compared to a person walking down the street, tripping, getting back up, and continuing on her or his way,” but a mechanical failure in a wheel caused Amtrak’s first major train accident in the spring of 1971, a month after the service opened in May. Amtrak train No. 1, “a southbound passenger train operating on the tracks of the Illinois Central Railroad between Chicago, Illinois, and New Orleans, Louisiana, derailed near Salem, Illinois, on June 10, 1971,” the National Transportation Safety Board reported. “Two locomotive units and the first seven cars were turned over on their sides. The derailment resulted in 11 fatalities and 163 injuries.”
While derailments are usually due to equipment failures, human and environmental factors can contribute to train accidents. “Poor train handling, incorrectly set track switches, unsecured cars on a hill, shifted loads, vandalism, or obstructions on the track are among the human causes of derailments,” Bibel wrote. “Derailments can also be caused by flash floods, avalanches, rock slides, and high winds.”
“While Amtrak isn’t currently in danger of being killed, it also isn’t likely to do more than barely survive,” Simon Van Zuylen-Wood wrote in the National Journal last month, when “the House of Representatives agreed to fund Amtrak for the next four years at a rate of $1.4 billion per year. Meanwhile, the Chinese government — fair comparison or not — will be spending $128 billion this year on rail.”
