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.
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.
No. You get the status quo with all those funds being absorbed by contractors for operating costs. Nothing substantive will change. Did I mention budget overruns? Those also.
Whoa there. That sounds suspiciously like socialism.
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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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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!
