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.
It’s a good start, now let’s keep that momentum with some new rail lines. Maybe even passenger rail. Come on.
Maybe even some high speed rails! Acela has been a huge success in the Northeast, but we need it to become actual high speed and there are so many other places that could benefit from similar service.
Let’s do a giant catapult and net situation to go from state to state.
yeet
Acela is absolutely awful. You’re spending anywhere from $100-300 more to get to DC from NYC like 20 minutes faster.
The only actual high speed portion of Acela is in MA, and the time savings from Boston to NYC is a bit more substantial, accordingly.
I managed to snag a $70 round trip ticket from DC to Boston, months in advance, during 2021. Only time I’ll probably ever justify taking it. As a nerd that likes trains, it was fun.
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.
I did it from NYC to LA. It’s not fun. I highly recommend not doing it.
What’s not fun about it? I admit most of my idea of the romance of crossing the country on a train is from 1930s and 1940s movies, so I’m sure things are quite different.
The beds are too short if you’re 6’ or above. The food is not good. And there’s really nothing to see when you’re passing through the never ending nothingness of Middle America. It’s not like you get to hop out and walk around any of the cool looking towns you may come across. You don’t really experience anything except a mediocre, slow ass train ride.
Believe it or not, none of that bothers me. I’ve crossed America by car 3 times, so the Middle America part is fine with me and I’m under 5’10", so the bed would be okay, and I’ve had train food before on Amtrak trips from southern Illinois to Chicago and yeah, it’s not great, but it’s not terrible to me either. I guess after being raised on 12 years of school-made lunches, I can eat anything. I could also bring my own food.
Now I don’t know that I could convince my wife or daughter to come along, but you haven’t actually deterred me from the idea. I guess your mileage may vary.
Here in Europe sleeper trains went through quite a slump, DB even got rid of their whole fleet, then ÖBB started to conceptualise sleeper trains not as trains with beds but as hotels on wheels and their most expensive tickets sell so well that they increased the number of expensive seats erm cots on their train. You can also get what’s essentially capsules and a seat, no more of that “four person cabin or bust” type of attitude of ole.
Yes, you could take high-speed rail and arrive the same day, then sleep in a hotel, then do what you came to do. Or you can spend actually less and stay in a maybe modest, but definitely nice hotel for one night and arrive in the morning.
And the little things matter. If your breakfast buns aren’t crisp (plenty of room on a train for an oven) and your coffee is as bad as what Starbucks calls coffee don’t even start.
As to distance: In principle a high-speed sleeper train could do NY to LA in one night, something like 12-14 hours. Certainly not with the current rail infrastructure, though.
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Which would be fine if it didn’t take two days and had an actual schedule.
North America is also the continent of commuter trains which drive to the city from 7 to 8:30, then back from 5:30 to 7, with no trains in between and who cares if you want to stay in the city after work for a bit and shop for model planes and would like to take a train back at 9.
Noone gets used to just using the train with that kind of service quality, noone will actually get rid of their car. Also supermarket within biking distance is the bare minimum when it comes to everyday needs… walking distance would be better but isn’t realistic in super low density suburbia. Are Americans capable to mentally conceptualise a suburban supermarket without car parking? Slap a cafe and restaurant on there with outside seating (weather permitting, of course), as well as a handful of 4-5 storey apartment buildings to get some density to be able to justify a tram stop and small primary school and you have something going.
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Whoa there. That sounds suspiciously like socialism.
For freight - awesome. But as long as Amtrak is “twice the price of flying, and five times as long!” it’s never going to be able to compete.
If we nationalized freight rail, Amtrak wouldn’t have to operate around the caprice of freight rail companies.
Of course, nationalizing freight rail would be opposed by freight companies, and anything that makes rail travel tolerable would be fiercely opposed by airlines and car companies.
Yeah that’s definitely an issue, too. Amtrak uses rails owned and operated by freight companies, and Amtrak is supposed to get priority on those rails … but they don’t.
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Amtrak owns the entire route from NYC to DC. It’s slow as fuck.
Last I checked it was slower than driving in some cases.
Not even counting waiting for trains, just driving beside the trains is faster even after their high speed upgrade.
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.
As a resident of the Boston metro area, I wholeheartedly agree.
We give billions of taxpayer money each year to build and maintain roadways for cars, while letting rail companies mostly depend on profits to do so with rail. It is no wonder which has won.
*Hundreds of billions
Funding that’s sorely needed. Next we need that railway safety bill to get through the Senate! Get those Republicans out of the way!
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…
Let’s have the government bail out corporations again! What will the poor shareholders do if there investments sink. Who cares about the trash American living paycheck to paycheck.
Privatize the profits and socialize the losses. The company earnings is the rightful property of shareholders and company losses is a responsibility that society must shoulder. In other words, America only cares about our corporate overlords. They should have been investing in there infrastructure from the beginning and should be allowed to fail.
If the USA keeps trying we might even become as advanced as Japan, most of Europe, and oddly enough, China. They’ve been able to build public transport. Zero reason we can’t except for the fact we keep electing moronic conservatives.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
“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.
“Restoring passenger rail service will create jobs, improve quality of life, and offer a convenient travel option for tourists, contributing to our region’s economic growth and vitality.”
That 17-year journey has been filled with obstacles and frustration — but also moments of joy, where local champions and national advocates were able to come together around the vision of a more connected Gulf Coast region,” Rail Passengers Association President & CEO Jim Mathews said.
In one of the biggest other grants, the Palouse River & Coulee City Railroad in Washington state will get $72.8 million to upgrade the track and related infrastructure to allow that rail line to handle modern 286,000-pound railcars.
The original article contains 471 words, the summary contains 226 words. Saved 52%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
This is like $1,498,600,000,000 too little.
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This is great news, but I am sure both Republicans and people on the left will find some reason to complain about this. They always do. Being in the middle seems to draw fire from all sides.
I mean it sounds like we’re giving private rail companies money to fix their shit.
Wonder if there’s any oversight, or if this is just gonna be used on stock buybacks.
were definitely giving them money. hopefully they fix their shit.
Sounds like you’re proving the person above correct by finding a way to complain XD
