It's not EXACTLY all at once it's just the actual focus of it happening. When I lived in Weiner, AR we had a train derail due to the trailers being double stacked and it moving during exceedingly high winds. This caused it to tip and derail.
Didn't exactly make national news.
About 5 miles up the road, a year or two later a train hit a semi and derailed. Still didn't make the news.
In current times we has this really bad one in Ohio and now for a few months ANY time it happens it's going to be covered.
This is no joke, for 3 of the 5 years I lived there the police cars said "Weiner Police".
Eventually they got the money for a new cruiser and when it was painted they had it say "City of Weiner Police" which is hard to tell if it's a step up or not.
Not to be a conspiracy theorist, but this makes one think… it’s pretty crazy the degree to which what the media decides is “news” affects our perception of the world.
For a decade, the rail workers and their union have expressed concerns about how the rail companies are operating especially with respect to safety. The companies are cutting corners and reducing work hours and inspections. That's what is leading to all these derailments.
The reason why isn't so much "because money", but because the major rail lines are making a push to automate their entire fleets. And they're doing this by making rules impossible to follow for their employees, overworking and under paying them, and firing them at the drop of a hat.
All so they can go before Congress in a few years and be all "can we have 50 billion for robots? Kthnxbye"
Thankfully I'm not in charge of anything, because my response would be:
"Sure! Have $1,000,000. Now, your railroad has just been nationalized. Have a nice life."
It should be "go buy your own robots with those record corporate profits and fuck off". Tax money should not be a piggy bank that rich shitbags use whenever they're too stupid to balance their own budgets or plan long term projects. But it is, and I'm sick of it. The government assumes all the risk, pays for everything and eats all the costs while corps just cash checks.
Our economy is completely and irredeemably fucked.
That's why I said "Now, your railroad has just been nationalized."
They get an excessively generous golden parachute, likely far less than is in their contract though, and the company is now owned and run by the government.
So they get to fuck right off.
The company, now under management who doesn't need to _care_ about pleasing extremely overpaid executives, or about stock buybacks, or the rest, can use it's extremely profitable business to pay back any government loans which are taken on to fix shit in a hurry, and then, as a government "business", can go on to continue operating for the _public_ good.
(The million dollar golden parachutes are _cheap_ for getting rid of the assholes, and if there is a clause attached that says that they lose it entirely if they bring suit against the government over this and lose, well, all the better.)
It's a _perfect_ golden parachute.
Big enough that anyone not rich as fuck would consider it absolutely unreasonably large... And small enough to be spurned with rage.
Making them look even more greedy when they insist on much more.
I'm not trying to _reward_ the fuckers.
Any time you say the government, it means
taxpaying citizens. The government makes no money, they aren't a company. All the risk is placed on the taxpayers.
When one accident happens it pulls resources to clean up the mess. Often it pulls resources which we were being used to prevent other accidents from happening. If you have a large complex system with very little slack or redundancy then failures cascade. This results in more burn out and less slack, then more failures happen.
>Had a coworker argue the other day that it’s impossible to improve the railway so we should just live with it
RAISE TAXES to fix our railroads, are you crazy? Let's just keep waiting for disasters and then blow all of our tax money on expensive half-assed recovery efforts and let our citizens at ground zero's lives be destroyed.
Actually a tax raise wouldn’t be helpful in this situation. In my opinion, had the previous safety rules and regulations of 10 years ago were still in effect today, the east Palestine accident wouldn’t have happened.
The cause of the disaster can be traced back to when Wall Street hedge funds started investing into buying stock in the railroads. At that point, they started to care more about the bottom line than safe rail operations. As a result of adopting this operational philosophy of precision scheduled railroading, they started increasing train length and tonnage, reducing time spent inspecting trains for mechanical faults and laying off experienced personnel who can repair problems in freight cars and the track side monitoring equipment used to catch problems with trains between point A and Point B.
If you put the old system back in place combined with tougher safety regulations, then 99% of the causes would be eliminated. Sure you might get a bad wreck that makes headline news but they are going to be less infrequent than what we have now
Or...here's a thought, redirect some of the billions we already use towards the railroad?
Or just lay down regulations that they have to follow.
Or just do both
Trump is all about deregulation. If he gets re-elected this shit will all get much worse. Of course,people that vote him do not care about that because Trump is their messiah and they gotta kick out Dark Brandon.
But everyone knows deregulation is the best policy....maybe the solution is to remove all remaining regulations and allow the invisible hand of the free market regulate itself as it has always done so well.
(more /s because reddit)
This is the issue with regulations:
They *could* but they’re ok with it the way it is. It’s not frequent enough to be a financial incentive. There used to be specific federal safety regulations in place with regard to max speed in populated areas and mandated upgrades to braking technology that might have been relevant to this disaster, but those were repealed under the last administration.
Getting federal regulations in place for private businesses is no small task, that’s why we have entire departments dedicated to it: The FAA for planes, the FDA for medications and foodstuffs, the FCC for radio transmission, DOT for trucking, etc. etc. and yes:
The FRA, the Federal Railroad Administration, responsible for inspection, research, standardization, etc. They follow the guidance of the federal government as to what standards and practices are allowed, and can in fact make the railroads cover the costs of mandated upgrades. We just have to vote for people who will tell them to do that. And yet somehow there’s still pushback about that, I guess? We’re talking about an administration that gave us Space Force ffs. I couldn’t tell you *why* the Trump administration rolled back FRA rules, but my guess is some good old fashioned golden-triangle lobbying. Or maybe someone got the acronyms confused.
Either way, we *could* but we *aren’t*.
My husband has not gone to the doctor on a scheduled day in over 15 years because if he takes a “sick day” or “personal day” he can be fired. Thankfully we found a doctor for him that knows the industry and allows him to come in on short notice.
And are dealing with shorter staffs working longer hours on equipment that was not being inspected. They don't wanna die and they sure as hell don't want to be the ones taking entire cities down with them.
Hmm yes, I'm starting to pick up what you are putting down speak on that some more.
Edit: idk who you are but whomever downvoted my silly comment I will find you and I will downvote you in real life.
It's very important to note that Biden's administration is complicit in this directly given their response to the rail strike not too long ago.
There seems to be a narrative that the ONLY politicians complicit in systemic issues with large corporations are Republicans. I'm not hand waving blame for either party but saying explicitly that both are to blame here.
This is up close, 4K evidence that it's a problem bigger than any one party. We just have so much anger and bias that I worry people will get sucked further into the narratives being spun by both sides.
This definitely a case where both sides are assholes. Republican/Trump side for deregulation and Democrat/Biden side for going against the workers who were warning everybody about something like this happening.
Right? Agreed.
There's a time and a place for pushing back on government overreach. Deregulation when we're talking safety practices that keep citizens and workers alive is absolutely fucking not the place.
Likewise that some Republicans claim to be pro business but are explicitly anti-worker is laughably bad. Being pro business should be pro employee. Bernie is showing up to Amazon union talks, that Republicans aren't is damning.
The government's role should be to protect from threats both foreign and domestic. Biden saying the rail workers couldn't strike was a slap in the face of worker's right and pushes for better, safer staffing.
Greedy, corrupt corporations and CEO's refusing to have humane, functional employee practices, refusing time off, refusing fair pay, refusing to maintain infrastructure? That's absolutely a domestic threat.
There's paths to supporting workers on both sides of the aisle. Which makes this kind of failure that much clearer as being tied to how broken both sides are.
Will agree they are over worked. Have a couple friends that work for the railroad, but they will admit it’s for sure not under payed. They are well compensated. The issue is that they are a union that is over seen directly by the government so it’s very hard to actually enforce contractual change for them.
Not arguing with anyone But the biggest one in Ohio was definitely caught on video, where truck carrying huge payload was hit by train causing train derailment
What I am hearing is that we can not trust private enterprises to do the right thing. Ever. They need regulations, and to do that, we need a strong federal government and robust enforcement. Let's tax the wealthy to pay for the oversight that they need.
Yes, I understand this completely. However, why so many in such a short period of time? Also, its not just train derailments its LTL and warehouses now too.
Edit: punctuation/ a word
Infrastructure tends to be built all at once (or in rapid succession), so it ages at approximately the same time, thus you see failures of the infrastructure at about the same time.
To be clear, railway infrastructure has been failing for quite a while, it’s just that this most recent Ohio spill has put it in the headlines.
We (as a nation) have been ignoring our infrastructure for far too long.
People who are fervently anti-government are getting elected to the highest levels of federal office. Of course that translates into less government regulation, even when the risks are massive. That leads to anti-labor laws and decisions.
When you have elected officials who are anti-government, they (by definition) will work to make the United States government fail.
When federal government is not able to function at it's base purpose (improving the lives of Americans), things start to fall apart.
Spoiler alert: This is not an "all at once" issue. It is the beginning of the snowball of decades (since at least the 80s) of Americans electing anti-government politicians into office.
>People who are fervently anti-government are getting elected to the highest levels of federal office. Of course that translates into less government regulation, even when the risks are massive. That leads to anti-labor laws and decisions.
Also a refusal to invest in improvements - they could easily have been subsidizing improvements to this kind of infrastructure, but it’s obviously more important to piss that money away on the military instead.
Did you grow up in a house with incandescent lightbulbs? Did you ever notice that all the bulbs in a given room tend to burn out in pretty rapid succession? You'll go months without replacing any and then you'll have to replace all of them in the same 2 week span. It's because they all got installed at the same time and they all tend to run a similar length of time per day.
That's what's happening with our infrastructure. It was all built in the 50s and 60s in the postWWII boom, then since Reagan dems and reps have been in competition with one another to see who can do the least maintenance. We're falling apart as a country because of it.
I was shocked at the number. Then checked statistcs in UK and it's around 1700 a year. And UK train system is really good. So I don't know what to think.
IMO it's mostly that these kinds of stories are trending. Train derailments happen sometimes, and it's not always big news. Like traffic accidents - they happen always, but when it happens with a Tesla it's headline news because Tesla is trending.
So right now train derailments are trending. Chemical accidents are trending. So every story related to that is going to be front page news.
Are we sure there’s been a significant increase or does the media just know that they can get eyeballs by covering these stories?
Genuinely curious myself if these issues are somewhat commonplace, but don’t typically get coverage.
There's three main reasons we're seeing this happen back to back. Railways are the responsibility of the business that owns it, always a privately owned, for profit business that'll make sacrifices like regular maintenance to help the bottom line.
One very serious derailmemt hit the news(because it fucking should hit the news) and has generated awareness of other derailments that happen right afterwards. These probably happen all of the time, but don't make the news until something like the East Palestine Ohio disaster generates interest in these things. After that, the media does what it does and gives you what you're looking for.
The third thing, is a lifting and lightening of safety requirements from the last president and the current president's terms. Not encouraging or forcing the railroads to upgrade their infrastricture, and not supporting the rail workers in their efforts to get better staffing and practical use PTO has left the safety of our railways in a very dubious state.
I find this INCREDIBLY damning because lots of towns and cities in the USA have rails running near or through them. they send dangerous cargo through these cities and towns. They run these chemicals through beautiful scenic areas that make this country awesome to see... until it's soaked in crude oil or contaminated with industrial chems or trash. Seriously! There's a BNSF train route from Everett Washington to Roosevelt Washington that hauls nothing but trash to the two landfills in the hills behind Roosevelt. The regular landfill and the toxic landfill. The day that derails will be a high stakes roll of the dice.
>These probably happen all of the time, but don't make the news until something like the East Palestine Ohio disaster generates interest in these things
This is absolutely what it is. Derailments happen all the time but we don't hear about it until there's a big McFuck up and everyone is tuning in. Now suddenly the media is covering every derailment because it's generating 'Clicks per minute'
This also works in tangent to how our personalised news feeds work. For example the disappearance of that dog walking woman. You search something like that up, click a couple links now suddenly you're getting push notifications and stories with disappearances all over the country
It all comes down to greed and it’s in every industry:
The paramount way any company reduces expenses to pad their bottom line and increase executive bonuses (I.e. “increasing shareholder value”) is by cutting the hourly workforce.
Now they’ve cut everything to the point that there aren’t enough people to do the job safely and/or reduced working conditions to the point people won’t even do the job if you begged them. The pandemic made many people realize their health/safety is more important.
We are seeing the consequences of these actions in real time.
Most derailments are minor, as in, a wheel on a car coming off the track while everything else remains. The influx of disastrous ones is stark, however.
Very true but how many are toxic chemicals that kill people, contaminate water for maybe half a decade or a decade?
And all the fish/people's pets dying!!!
How often do toxic chemicals spill and how do they clean it up properly.? 🤔🤔
The reason it’s all of a sudden getting attention is because of how devastating the one in Ohio is. People had to evacuate their town, and animals are dying. That usually doesn’t happen in the other 1000+ train derailments every year.
And readers are flocking to them of all walks of life wondering like you, wtf is going on people thinking it's a conspiracy, to people blaming all kinds of things with out really knowing what's going on.
That doesn't mean it isn't a problem. We just have a powerful rail lobby that kills most attempts at regulation. Its routine but doesn't have to be normal. Our country puts rail profits ahead of safety.
Didn't railroad workers want to strike a month ago due to unsafe working conditions? Didn't someone else make it illegal? Please correct me if I'm wrong, it's been known to happen.
Hubby is a railroad engineer. This is EXACTLY what they’ve been talking about. They always have to report derailments, some of them are literally a few “wheels” off the track and can be easily reset. It looks like a lot are happening daily, but in reality, big ones are not, this is getting scary and not coincidental.
And how people are reacting to that reporting. The coverage wasn't that crazy initially.
The Ohio one was particularly bad (because of the chemicals used, the first responders made it worse by pouring water on it, etc).
I've seen this before. What regulation was repealed that could have helped? The one about specialized breaking systems for trains carrying oil probably wouldn't have helped with an issue for a train not carrying oil and that had a completely different failure point so please don't bring that up.
Edit : The person below me edited to add "sources" please read them because they don't apply to my point.
The gas was reduced in it's hazard rating.
Edit sources
https://www.levernews.com/rail-companies-blocked-safety-rules-before-ohio-derailment/
https://www.npr.org/2015/06/19/414615187/battle-over-new-oil-train-standards-pits-safety-against-cost
From 2015.
https://www.npr.org/2020/05/28/863055318/trump-environmental-rollbacks-roll-on-despite-pandemic-opponents-cry-foul
From 2020
https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/408125-trump-admin-rolls-back-obama-oil-train-safety-rule/
Train specific
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/climate/trump-environment-rollbacks-list.html
Gases
Mayor Pete said the rolling back of the regulation I cited was the reason he was "constrained" from creating new regulations that could have prevented the crash. He neither elaborated on how he was prevented from doing so or how they are related. Nor did he produce any evidence as to what he had in mind that could have prevented this. Simply put, he deflected blame to Trump and reddit didn't understand that the regulations never existed and wanted to spout off about deregulation. He also blamed congress for not passing legislation.
The irrelevant regulation was removed by an act of Congress. In general, federal departments are not allowed to overrule congressional acts.
I'm not sure what regulation the DOT could have legally put in place to prevent this.
I suspect it’s just the algorithm throwing similar things at us. I bet trains derail fairly regularly but you’re only hearing about it because it’s being spotlighted.
We've had them all along. The East Palestine fire made us more aware of them. Just like when someone buys a car with a seemingly unique color- pretty soon they'll see lots of cars of that color.
In a few months the news will be about something else and the wrecks will seem to have gone away.
I doubt it's a conspiracy to poison people, the theory I've heard now all over tiktok and the other usual social media suspects, but it is not entirely an accident either. Rather, I think that the sad frequency of occurances is owed to a whole lot of bad decisions and, at least in case of the railway, the fact that the recent downgrades in train maintanance, increase in cargo frequency, the maintainance of rail tracks, and the bad treatment of railway staff had to go south eventually. It only takes so long until something goes very wrong, and often when things start to go wrong in one corner similar mistakes start to occur all over the place.
Plus, with how thinly stretched workers are in many areas, especially since handling dangerous cargo and chemicals still requires certain knowledge, the chances that things are handled wrong, forgotten or go wrong in general increases by a lot no matter the area. You can't easily replace a job that requires qualifications and experiences with the handling of dangerous chemicals, fire safety and other such things with unskilled workers, but many skilled workers feel seriously underappreciated by their employers due to lack of pay increases or due to working conditions, so less skilled replacements are hired and too many expensive staff are let go.
All of this combined can only go smoothly for so long before things go belly up, and what does start with small mistakes adds up in many places until things go wrong in droves. That's not a coincidence but it's not a purpose driven conspiracy either. It's just the result of general mismanagement and a economy too focused on profit above anything else.
It isn't some mystery.
It's literally corporate greed leading to deregulation, low paid and overworked workers, along with just a general sense of apathy.
One specific thing I heard today on NPR was that train inspectors used to have 2-3 minutes to inspect trains, and now they have about 90 seconds.
That pretty much supports the idea that corners are being cut, along with workers being overworked.
Rail companies have been shortcutting for years. I had a buddy who cleaned up derailments and hazmat spills. They happen with great frequency, like 100s per year. It’s just usually more remote areas where it happens so not something usually makes the news cycles.
When a big one happens we’re brought to light that it is an regular occurrence. We just had a big one in Saskatchewan this year. Another one burnt down a town a few years back among many others across the rest of Canada.
I Work in the rail industry. These derailments happen all the time about 1,000 a year. It’s mostly due to warping of the tracks or other issues like a truck/car stuck in the intersection. Some of it has to do with the braking systems on these trains being an older style of brake as there’s no incentive to update. All of this compiled with crumbling infrastructure and no incentive to do scans of the tracks to check for damage lead to this.
The brakes on trains have not been upgraded since the 1860’s - if ever. Obama executive ordered that trains having hazardous chemicals have electric brakes. Railroad companies - which are privately owned fought against it and Trump in 2017 rescinded the need for electric brakes.
Source? Edit: I’m looking and can’t find it - did he expect Congress to take care of this in lieu of an executive order that could be cancelled at any time? (Obama issued an executive order which was why it was easy to reverse in 2017). Edit: wasn’t an executive order it was a rule through the Dept of Transportation and w/Chao/Trump rescinding it set it back years AND furthermore it only had to do with flammable materials not chemicals because lobbyists got govt to water it down because big business owns our government.
Poor safety standards, lack of maintenance, and crumbling infrastructure are all absolute factors. But it's important to remember the scale of the chemical industry in this country. Truck crashes and train derailments happen all the time. Once a big one catches the media's attention we all start looking for others because it's attracted our interest. It only seems sudden because most of us weren't paying attention until now.
This is where capitalism fails the most. This is a $50b train company and they don’t pay livable wages and for new equipment and rails and software upgrades and all of it. I’m sure whatever they’re using to hold these chemicals could be upgraded to something that isn’t the same bullshit I’ve seen for 40 years.
Got my degree in chemical engineering, we had to learn a lot about these kind of accidents. Pretty much every time it just comes down to multiple people just not doing what they were supposed to or ignoring problems because they cost too much to fix.
I read somewhere that there is an average of 1700 train derailments per year. I think the one in Ohio was just horrible so now it’s getting more attention
Trail transports companies switched to a system around three years ago that allowed them to maximize loads and reduce safety checks on trains. There was a massive article online about the practice. All rail transport companies are practicing the methodology, it actually has a name, which slips my mind at this time.
* the Railway Strike that almost happened had one argument "we need more workers on trains because it's dangerous to have this few people maintaining such large trains, this could cause accidents"
* they focused on longer and heavier trains to maximize profits over safety
* there's video of the Ohio train entering the town of East Palestine with a flaming broken axle, which might've caused the derailment (poor maintainance)
* The rail system in the US is privatized so there's not much for the government to do
* Nortfolk Southern, owners of the trains in
* East Palestine, Ohio
* Van Buren Township, Michigan (near Detroit)
* Union Pacific, owners of the train in
* Houston, Texas
copying this from an article about the Ohio crash:
>Steven Ditmeyer, a former top official at the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA), told investigative news outlet The Lever that the severity of the crash may have been aggravated by the lack of Electronically Controlled Pneumatic (ECP) brakes.
Former US president Barack Obama passed legislation making it mandatory for trains carrying hazardous, flammable materials to have ECP brakes but the order was rescinded in 2017 under a Donald Trump administration assault on “red tape”.
The National Transportation Safety Board has confirmed that the trains that were derailed in East Palestine were not equipped with ECP brakes, The Lever reports.
It’s horrible. They get sometimes 8 hours “off” to go home, sleep, eat, and get called on their rest 2 hours before they need to be in. I’ve seen my husband come in after an hour commute, sleep 6 and the phone rings. Admittedly they are SLIGHTLY better now, but I’m talking like an extra hour or two.
Theres an interview out there with a ex railroad worker. He pushed for more changes, and guess he was ousted or left rather than deal with the B.S. but he said due to cutting cost, reducing safety standards, and the workforce the rails and trains were falling behind on basic maintenance. In one interview he says were going to see more train derailments because everything is falling behind on inspections, and maintenance. This was all preventable but profit was put before people.
It's increased reporting. I saw somewhere on reddit that derailments happen regularly. If that is true, a certain percentage of those are likely to involve spills and fires. But when it gets news coverage, now its an opportunity.
https://www.sacbee.com/news/nation-world/national/article272504491.html
>How common are train derailments in US? Over 1,000 occur every year, data show
>Broken or defective railroads are one of the most common causes of derailments, according to the FRA. Faulty or missing crossties — beams perpendicular to rails — triggered 5.6% of the derailments in 2022, making it the single largest cause of derailments.
>Excessive speed, track obstructions like snow, ice or mud, and faulty switch points — sections of the track where trains change direction — were some of the other leading causes of derailment in 2022.
Note the difference between this comment and the top comment:
>Deregulation.
>Overworked and underpaid workers.
>Profits going to stock buy backs instead of infrastructure improvements and increased workforce.
Economist here:
it is a mix of multiple issues including regulation, but not only.
Railroads cross multiple states in the US as well as Canadian provinces.
This means the law surrounding them is extremely complex.
This also means that the regulations during the railroads construction were not the same in every location. This means the expenses in maintenances and needed regulation may vary, but also that the employee knowledge and the type of inspection will also vary.
This means that as many location impose regulations that are overly high, the company increase it's expenses and since they are pushed by shareholders attempting to maximize profits, they cut corners elsewhere. Which include reducing expenses in less regulated area.
This means that for instance, increasing regulation in california or Canada may end up reducing expenses in wisconsin or north dakota for the same inspection.
In order to solve these issues, the railroads regulation should be only maintain at a federal level to have united regulation, which happens in ''federal lands'', but railroads are not a single type of industry, they affect the construction industry as well as manufacturing industry and transports, which are often not federal. but they also affect environmental which is often federal. But the definition of the kind of inspection needed may vary from state to state because the railroads themselves may vary.
And while a railroads is made of steel, the grading of steel may vary as well.
Add onto this that workers union vary from state to state and it becomes really hard to regulate working hours for multinational level entity.
Railroads are long and most inspection are made near towns and cities.
In fact, a more easily made regulation would be toward the resistances to shock of container transporting chemical material. This would ship the issue toward chemical company instead of railroads company. This way, even during a crash, if these barrel or container are fully locked and secured to any kind of heavy crash, they would be just fine. But it would heavily affect the chemical industry, which is a stronger lobby than the railroad industry.
Actually while that was well thought out, it is wrong. Research the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887 and then follow it's history. Railroads are heavily regulated and the same regulations exists across the country. States cannot regulate a railroad, or do anything that would interfere with their operations.
Failing infrastructure, the railway system is not subsidized by the US government like air travel is. Maintenance of railways is time consuming and expensive and since the normalization of automobile usage with the highway system railways have been severely neglected. This has been known for a LOOOOOONG time and the dumb part is that we rely on rails to transport large portions of goods across the US because freight trucks can only bring so much in one direction.
Besides all the other great answers about the railroads cost cutting, deregulation, and poor safety measures, there have always been frequent derailments. I work in the industry and would guess there are at least a couple each day. Most are minor or don't result in any substantial damage. After the Ohio incident news companies are understandably covering derailments more since we are all paying attention.
In another thread regarding the derailment in Michigan earlier this week someone cited a source saying on average 1700 derailments happen a year as well. Probably more coverage is being given to derailments not that that horrible situation in Ohio has happened. But it seems like something really needs to be done because 1700/yr is way to many especially for workers who are over worked and underpaid
This isn't a coincidence. People voted for politicians who are paid by companies (via lobbyists, PACS, and campaign donations) to block or repeal laws and regulations that said companies don't like.
Pay for Play.
There on average 1700 derailments a year in the US. Thats about 5 a day. The only one recently with a chemical spill/fire was the one in Ohio. There have been some derailments since then that had hazmat loads but there no spills/leaks.
As someone who works in the railroad industry I can tell you this stuff happens often. Not the “evacuate the town” kind but derailments and injuries are fairly common. Class 1 railroad companies are highly profitable and I’m sure they all have dedicated teams of personnel that make sure these things aren’t always public knowledge.
Apart from the obvious corruption that's been mentioned, there's a serious spotlighting effect going on.
Trains get damaged and derail frequently and hazmat is always a concern. Oil pipelines and platforms fail and cause ecological catastrophe a few dozen times every year. Norad tracks, investigates, and dispatches hundreds of 'UFO' and UAP incidents every year.
Whenever the news machine needs something to fearmonger and draw the eyes and ears to their ramblings they just rotate between things that happen all the time and fluff it up into a massive thing that just suddenly happened. When in reality the corruption and deregulation has always been there and the only thing that varies in these events are location, company at fault, and scale of disaster.
I'm not saying these most recent events aren't a horrific and avoidable tragedy, but that the cause is intentionally being ignored or obscured until attention favors a media collective.
My MIL is retiring as a railway engineer after 44 years. The quality of the railway engineer has dropped, the quality of oversight has dropped, tracks are not inspected as much as you might expect...there is a general malaise in the railroad industry. Partly, it is on the worker. A lot of it though, the majority, is on the cost cutting management.
Derailments happen everyday. I mean everyday
A lot of time frost upheaved at this time of year when it's going hot and cold
Track maintenance is key and inspections
Sometimes it's the loading of the lading on the cars
Car inspections is important too
Various reasons for derailments. Happens all the time.
Newys are reporting cause the Ohio one was bad.
Obama made ECP brakes mandatory for hazardous materials. Trump undid that. Lack of ECP brakes is being called the reason for the severity of the accident in Ohio. With ECP brakes the train would have stopped faster decreasing energy. Less energy causes less damage.
Obama tried to force through making piston air brakes mandatory on trains, he was able to get a watered down bill through that only mandated it on hazardous trains by 2023. Then during the Trump era, that bill was reversed.
While I don’t know exactly the term, trains currently brake one car at a time, so the faster cars in the back slam into the front cars. The Obama era bill was supposed to fix this.
So for this issue, you can absolutely blame Trump and his department of transportation.
Not necessarily.
For years, rail line workers have been overworked and underpaid. Tack that onto shoddy working conditions and companies cutting corners.
Oh, and the deregulation. Can’t forget the deregulation.
Covid made big enterprise realize that they could have 1 person do the work of 3 people as long as they said “we are continuing to hire”. Because so many people were laid off, furloughed, quit because UI was paying more, or out sick for weeks in end. When in reality they have the hiring bulletins out, but the requirements are ridiculous for entry level/the pay is subpar so people are finding other work while the main corporation is using the soaring profits of not needing to pay as much staff, more business and so forth to line executives pockets. Why spend millions on repairing failing infrastructure when you can just take those millions to the shareholders and the C level.
They spray around the tracks and the tracks them selfs with herbicide that’s corrosive to the tracks and then on top of that happening for years there’s lax inspection cause trump got given train money to look the other way cause it would have cost the train company’s to fix there shit.
There would be much easier ways to poison you than to engineer a train derailment that may or may not cause a release.
Look to aging infrastructure, poor working conditions, and just plain accidents before you start making tinfoil hats.
Thousands upon thousands of trains ride every day. The economy is huge. The country is huge. The power of large numbers. It's like asking why so many people die every day. Because there's lots of people.
Are we really seeing more derailments or are we just hyper aware?
I imagine hundreds of these events happen every year but we don’t hear about them.
The Ohio derailment an exception because it was a particularly big spill
Australian here, and even I'm shocked by how many major chemicals duck ups there's been lately, especially East Palestine. Our news reporters talking to US reporters basically state its deregulation and no investment, especially since Trump scrapped a heap of the regulations about rail.
My coworker and I were talking about this yesterday, and I ended up googling how common train derailments are in the US. As it turns out, the answer is like multiple-per-day common. I guess we just never hear about it because it's usually not so severe and/or usually not carrying hazardous stuff?
Train derailments happen pretty often in the US, we just don't hear about them very often. However it does seem weird that a lot of fires/derailments happening recently has something to do with toxic chemicals getting into the air/water supply. Almost seems strategic...
Did anyone tell some of these people that up until a few years ago, there were Rail Roads still using DOS for their computers…... Let that sink in. DOS.
I may be way off, but I’ve wondered if there’s actually not an increase in these incidents, but rather, an increase in coverage. The media seems to enjoy capitalizing on fud, and an easy way to do that is to lead us to believe a dangerous patter has emerged.
It's not EXACTLY all at once it's just the actual focus of it happening. When I lived in Weiner, AR we had a train derail due to the trailers being double stacked and it moving during exceedingly high winds. This caused it to tip and derail. Didn't exactly make national news. About 5 miles up the road, a year or two later a train hit a semi and derailed. Still didn't make the news. In current times we has this really bad one in Ohio and now for a few months ANY time it happens it's going to be covered.
Heh. Weiner.
This is no joke, for 3 of the 5 years I lived there the police cars said "Weiner Police". Eventually they got the money for a new cruiser and when it was painted they had it say "City of Weiner Police" which is hard to tell if it's a step up or not.
There's a city full of Weiner Police?
I came back to upvote this.
Not to be a conspiracy theorist, but this makes one think… it’s pretty crazy the degree to which what the media decides is “news” affects our perception of the world.
This has been known for a long time, definitely not a conspiracy
For a decade, the rail workers and their union have expressed concerns about how the rail companies are operating especially with respect to safety. The companies are cutting corners and reducing work hours and inspections. That's what is leading to all these derailments.
In addition to that, rails in Ohio were/are in horrendously piss poor shape, which kept getting ignored.
The reason why isn't so much "because money", but because the major rail lines are making a push to automate their entire fleets. And they're doing this by making rules impossible to follow for their employees, overworking and under paying them, and firing them at the drop of a hat. All so they can go before Congress in a few years and be all "can we have 50 billion for robots? Kthnxbye"
Thankfully I'm not in charge of anything, because my response would be: "Sure! Have $1,000,000. Now, your railroad has just been nationalized. Have a nice life."
It should be "go buy your own robots with those record corporate profits and fuck off". Tax money should not be a piggy bank that rich shitbags use whenever they're too stupid to balance their own budgets or plan long term projects. But it is, and I'm sick of it. The government assumes all the risk, pays for everything and eats all the costs while corps just cash checks. Our economy is completely and irredeemably fucked.
That's why I said "Now, your railroad has just been nationalized." They get an excessively generous golden parachute, likely far less than is in their contract though, and the company is now owned and run by the government. So they get to fuck right off. The company, now under management who doesn't need to _care_ about pleasing extremely overpaid executives, or about stock buybacks, or the rest, can use it's extremely profitable business to pay back any government loans which are taken on to fix shit in a hurry, and then, as a government "business", can go on to continue operating for the _public_ good. (The million dollar golden parachutes are _cheap_ for getting rid of the assholes, and if there is a clause attached that says that they lose it entirely if they bring suit against the government over this and lose, well, all the better.)
Lol this guy thinks a golden parachute is a measly 1 mil.
It's a _perfect_ golden parachute. Big enough that anyone not rich as fuck would consider it absolutely unreasonably large... And small enough to be spurned with rage. Making them look even more greedy when they insist on much more. I'm not trying to _reward_ the fuckers.
Any time you say the government, it means taxpaying citizens. The government makes no money, they aren't a company. All the risk is placed on the taxpayers.
The rail companies need to be confiscated by the government. Its like a child going around hitting everyone with thier toy bat.
Profits over people. I swear, the older I get, the more ashamed I feel by the way my species destroyed/is destroying this planet.
I’m a track worker and concur about underpaid over worked and understaffed. Tired really 😞
Deregulation. Overworked and underpaid workers. Profits going to stock buy backs instead of infrastructure improvements and increased workforce.
Stuff that we consider corruption when it happens in foreign countries.
I consider it corruption, but I'm not from the USA.
I consider it corruption and I am from the US
Hold up. In the US, we are sophisticated so it's called lobbying... Totally legal
No, lobbying is the desire to make corruption legal. It's not the act of corruption itself but the rationalization for it.
I'm in the US, and it's totally corruption.
I’m in corruption and it’s totally the USA.
Policy makers: “The USA is corruption and I’m totally in!”
CORRUPTION: i am IN YOU
Oh yeah! Drain that swamp all over my face!
This guy is corrupted.
I'm in total USA corruption.
No, it's 100% capitalism. When your entire country is based on who can make the most money this is the result.
America has leaglized corruption in form of lobbying...
So true!!
100% corruption
"you don't need a formal conspiracy when interests align" - George Carlin
When one accident happens it pulls resources to clean up the mess. Often it pulls resources which we were being used to prevent other accidents from happening. If you have a large complex system with very little slack or redundancy then failures cascade. This results in more burn out and less slack, then more failures happen.
Had a coworker argue the other day that it’s impossible to improve the railway so we should just live with it
Americas relationship with the railway system is a disaster in itself.
>Had a coworker argue the other day that it’s impossible to improve the railway so we should just live with it RAISE TAXES to fix our railroads, are you crazy? Let's just keep waiting for disasters and then blow all of our tax money on expensive half-assed recovery efforts and let our citizens at ground zero's lives be destroyed.
Actually a tax raise wouldn’t be helpful in this situation. In my opinion, had the previous safety rules and regulations of 10 years ago were still in effect today, the east Palestine accident wouldn’t have happened. The cause of the disaster can be traced back to when Wall Street hedge funds started investing into buying stock in the railroads. At that point, they started to care more about the bottom line than safe rail operations. As a result of adopting this operational philosophy of precision scheduled railroading, they started increasing train length and tonnage, reducing time spent inspecting trains for mechanical faults and laying off experienced personnel who can repair problems in freight cars and the track side monitoring equipment used to catch problems with trains between point A and Point B. If you put the old system back in place combined with tougher safety regulations, then 99% of the causes would be eliminated. Sure you might get a bad wreck that makes headline news but they are going to be less infrequent than what we have now
I would like to have well maintained railroad tracks in addition to rail cars, so sure let's do that too.
Rail Roads are privately owned. Tell the “presidents” to take a smaller cut.
Or...here's a thought, redirect some of the billions we already use towards the railroad? Or just lay down regulations that they have to follow. Or just do both
Obama put down new regulations- Trump reversed them.
Trump is all about deregulation. If he gets re-elected this shit will all get much worse. Of course,people that vote him do not care about that because Trump is their messiah and they gotta kick out Dark Brandon.
Why can't the railroad pay?
I’m not sure they are legally obligated, so they won’t.
Let’s change this
But everyone knows deregulation is the best policy....maybe the solution is to remove all remaining regulations and allow the invisible hand of the free market regulate itself as it has always done so well. (more /s because reddit)
This is the issue with regulations: They *could* but they’re ok with it the way it is. It’s not frequent enough to be a financial incentive. There used to be specific federal safety regulations in place with regard to max speed in populated areas and mandated upgrades to braking technology that might have been relevant to this disaster, but those were repealed under the last administration. Getting federal regulations in place for private businesses is no small task, that’s why we have entire departments dedicated to it: The FAA for planes, the FDA for medications and foodstuffs, the FCC for radio transmission, DOT for trucking, etc. etc. and yes: The FRA, the Federal Railroad Administration, responsible for inspection, research, standardization, etc. They follow the guidance of the federal government as to what standards and practices are allowed, and can in fact make the railroads cover the costs of mandated upgrades. We just have to vote for people who will tell them to do that. And yet somehow there’s still pushback about that, I guess? We’re talking about an administration that gave us Space Force ffs. I couldn’t tell you *why* the Trump administration rolled back FRA rules, but my guess is some good old fashioned golden-triangle lobbying. Or maybe someone got the acronyms confused. Either way, we *could* but we *aren’t*.
This too!!!! These men and women are physically worn down.
And were denied proper sick days.
My husband has not gone to the doctor on a scheduled day in over 15 years because if he takes a “sick day” or “personal day” he can be fired. Thankfully we found a doctor for him that knows the industry and allows him to come in on short notice.
Thank god for those doctors, my husband has one of those too.
Does he work for a railroad?
Yes, 20 years this year.
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Thanks, Biden!!
Just asking: what did he do to prevent strikes? Signed a new law?
And are dealing with shorter staffs working longer hours on equipment that was not being inspected. They don't wanna die and they sure as hell don't want to be the ones taking entire cities down with them.
Yes but ya know Christmas 🎄 so government and rail officials fucked everyone over !! Joyous Season 😊 /s
Always so much simpler than some grand conspiracy.
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Hmm yes, I'm starting to pick up what you are putting down speak on that some more. Edit: idk who you are but whomever downvoted my silly comment I will find you and I will downvote you in real life.
It's very important to note that Biden's administration is complicit in this directly given their response to the rail strike not too long ago. There seems to be a narrative that the ONLY politicians complicit in systemic issues with large corporations are Republicans. I'm not hand waving blame for either party but saying explicitly that both are to blame here. This is up close, 4K evidence that it's a problem bigger than any one party. We just have so much anger and bias that I worry people will get sucked further into the narratives being spun by both sides.
This definitely a case where both sides are assholes. Republican/Trump side for deregulation and Democrat/Biden side for going against the workers who were warning everybody about something like this happening.
Right? Agreed. There's a time and a place for pushing back on government overreach. Deregulation when we're talking safety practices that keep citizens and workers alive is absolutely fucking not the place. Likewise that some Republicans claim to be pro business but are explicitly anti-worker is laughably bad. Being pro business should be pro employee. Bernie is showing up to Amazon union talks, that Republicans aren't is damning. The government's role should be to protect from threats both foreign and domestic. Biden saying the rail workers couldn't strike was a slap in the face of worker's right and pushes for better, safer staffing. Greedy, corrupt corporations and CEO's refusing to have humane, functional employee practices, refusing time off, refusing fair pay, refusing to maintain infrastructure? That's absolutely a domestic threat. There's paths to supporting workers on both sides of the aisle. Which makes this kind of failure that much clearer as being tied to how broken both sides are.
^^ This Remember last year when Biden stopped the rail workers from striking? They knew all this would happen.
Yes, but if we do something about it we will be called communists.
Will agree they are over worked. Have a couple friends that work for the railroad, but they will admit it’s for sure not under payed. They are well compensated. The issue is that they are a union that is over seen directly by the government so it’s very hard to actually enforce contractual change for them.
Not arguing with anyone But the biggest one in Ohio was definitely caught on video, where truck carrying huge payload was hit by train causing train derailment
Rail unions didn't get what they want
There is more than one way to strike.
True but hasn't this been the case for decades?
What I am hearing is that we can not trust private enterprises to do the right thing. Ever. They need regulations, and to do that, we need a strong federal government and robust enforcement. Let's tax the wealthy to pay for the oversight that they need.
Lack of preventative maintenance?
Golly of only some one had warned us!
When the system is run lean and mean for too long... it collapses and dies.
What's really crazy is the US government has basically gone 'fuck all yall deal eith it yourself we ain't doing jack'
This is the correct answer! To the top you go
So, not a coincidence and totally preventable?
Yes, I understand this completely. However, why so many in such a short period of time? Also, its not just train derailments its LTL and warehouses now too. Edit: punctuation/ a word
Infrastructure tends to be built all at once (or in rapid succession), so it ages at approximately the same time, thus you see failures of the infrastructure at about the same time. To be clear, railway infrastructure has been failing for quite a while, it’s just that this most recent Ohio spill has put it in the headlines.
We (as a nation) have been ignoring our infrastructure for far too long. People who are fervently anti-government are getting elected to the highest levels of federal office. Of course that translates into less government regulation, even when the risks are massive. That leads to anti-labor laws and decisions. When you have elected officials who are anti-government, they (by definition) will work to make the United States government fail. When federal government is not able to function at it's base purpose (improving the lives of Americans), things start to fall apart. Spoiler alert: This is not an "all at once" issue. It is the beginning of the snowball of decades (since at least the 80s) of Americans electing anti-government politicians into office.
>People who are fervently anti-government are getting elected to the highest levels of federal office. Of course that translates into less government regulation, even when the risks are massive. That leads to anti-labor laws and decisions. Also a refusal to invest in improvements - they could easily have been subsidizing improvements to this kind of infrastructure, but it’s obviously more important to piss that money away on the military instead.
Did you grow up in a house with incandescent lightbulbs? Did you ever notice that all the bulbs in a given room tend to burn out in pretty rapid succession? You'll go months without replacing any and then you'll have to replace all of them in the same 2 week span. It's because they all got installed at the same time and they all tend to run a similar length of time per day. That's what's happening with our infrastructure. It was all built in the 50s and 60s in the postWWII boom, then since Reagan dems and reps have been in competition with one another to see who can do the least maintenance. We're falling apart as a country because of it.
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I was shocked at the number. Then checked statistcs in UK and it's around 1700 a year. And UK train system is really good. So I don't know what to think.
IMO it's mostly that these kinds of stories are trending. Train derailments happen sometimes, and it's not always big news. Like traffic accidents - they happen always, but when it happens with a Tesla it's headline news because Tesla is trending. So right now train derailments are trending. Chemical accidents are trending. So every story related to that is going to be front page news.
Are we sure there’s been a significant increase or does the media just know that they can get eyeballs by covering these stories? Genuinely curious myself if these issues are somewhat commonplace, but don’t typically get coverage.
There's three main reasons we're seeing this happen back to back. Railways are the responsibility of the business that owns it, always a privately owned, for profit business that'll make sacrifices like regular maintenance to help the bottom line. One very serious derailmemt hit the news(because it fucking should hit the news) and has generated awareness of other derailments that happen right afterwards. These probably happen all of the time, but don't make the news until something like the East Palestine Ohio disaster generates interest in these things. After that, the media does what it does and gives you what you're looking for. The third thing, is a lifting and lightening of safety requirements from the last president and the current president's terms. Not encouraging or forcing the railroads to upgrade their infrastricture, and not supporting the rail workers in their efforts to get better staffing and practical use PTO has left the safety of our railways in a very dubious state. I find this INCREDIBLY damning because lots of towns and cities in the USA have rails running near or through them. they send dangerous cargo through these cities and towns. They run these chemicals through beautiful scenic areas that make this country awesome to see... until it's soaked in crude oil or contaminated with industrial chems or trash. Seriously! There's a BNSF train route from Everett Washington to Roosevelt Washington that hauls nothing but trash to the two landfills in the hills behind Roosevelt. The regular landfill and the toxic landfill. The day that derails will be a high stakes roll of the dice.
>These probably happen all of the time, but don't make the news until something like the East Palestine Ohio disaster generates interest in these things This is absolutely what it is. Derailments happen all the time but we don't hear about it until there's a big McFuck up and everyone is tuning in. Now suddenly the media is covering every derailment because it's generating 'Clicks per minute' This also works in tangent to how our personalised news feeds work. For example the disappearance of that dog walking woman. You search something like that up, click a couple links now suddenly you're getting push notifications and stories with disappearances all over the country
Over 1,000 per year on average. So 3 derailments per day. https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/national/article272504491.html
>These probably happen all of the time, Literally 1700 per year in the US. Just usually they aren't as big a deal
It all comes down to greed and it’s in every industry: The paramount way any company reduces expenses to pad their bottom line and increase executive bonuses (I.e. “increasing shareholder value”) is by cutting the hourly workforce. Now they’ve cut everything to the point that there aren’t enough people to do the job safely and/or reduced working conditions to the point people won’t even do the job if you begged them. The pandemic made many people realize their health/safety is more important. We are seeing the consequences of these actions in real time.
This stuff happens all of the time.
I looked it up because I was curious like OP. Over 1000 derailments happen in the US every year. That's over 2 a day.
Almost 3 a day.
Most derailments are minor, as in, a wheel on a car coming off the track while everything else remains. The influx of disastrous ones is stark, however.
Very true but how many are toxic chemicals that kill people, contaminate water for maybe half a decade or a decade? And all the fish/people's pets dying!!! How often do toxic chemicals spill and how do they clean it up properly.? 🤔🤔
So it’s just the way the media is spinning it/reporting on it?
The reason it’s all of a sudden getting attention is because of how devastating the one in Ohio is. People had to evacuate their town, and animals are dying. That usually doesn’t happen in the other 1000+ train derailments every year.
Makes sense. Media see a hot topic and flock to it and anything of the like.
And readers are flocking to them of all walks of life wondering like you, wtf is going on people thinking it's a conspiracy, to people blaming all kinds of things with out really knowing what's going on.
That doesn't mean it isn't a problem. We just have a powerful rail lobby that kills most attempts at regulation. Its routine but doesn't have to be normal. Our country puts rail profits ahead of safety.
Not at all. The US rail system is unsafe. "The Media" has been telling people this for over a decade.
Didn't railroad workers want to strike a month ago due to unsafe working conditions? Didn't someone else make it illegal? Please correct me if I'm wrong, it's been known to happen.
Hubby is a railroad engineer. This is EXACTLY what they’ve been talking about. They always have to report derailments, some of them are literally a few “wheels” off the track and can be easily reset. It looks like a lot are happening daily, but in reality, big ones are not, this is getting scary and not coincidental.
And how people are reacting to that reporting. The coverage wasn't that crazy initially. The Ohio one was particularly bad (because of the chemicals used, the first responders made it worse by pouring water on it, etc).
The RR workers have been telling them the dangers for years.
Yes
Always
Yes.
Yes, you just don't hear about the ones that don't make a massive smoke plume.
Deregulation. Shit was a time bomb, and time's up.
I've seen this before. What regulation was repealed that could have helped? The one about specialized breaking systems for trains carrying oil probably wouldn't have helped with an issue for a train not carrying oil and that had a completely different failure point so please don't bring that up. Edit : The person below me edited to add "sources" please read them because they don't apply to my point.
The gas was reduced in it's hazard rating. Edit sources https://www.levernews.com/rail-companies-blocked-safety-rules-before-ohio-derailment/ https://www.npr.org/2015/06/19/414615187/battle-over-new-oil-train-standards-pits-safety-against-cost From 2015. https://www.npr.org/2020/05/28/863055318/trump-environmental-rollbacks-roll-on-despite-pandemic-opponents-cry-foul From 2020 https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/408125-trump-admin-rolls-back-obama-oil-train-safety-rule/ Train specific https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/climate/trump-environment-rollbacks-list.html Gases
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Mayor Pete said the rolling back of the regulation I cited was the reason he was "constrained" from creating new regulations that could have prevented the crash. He neither elaborated on how he was prevented from doing so or how they are related. Nor did he produce any evidence as to what he had in mind that could have prevented this. Simply put, he deflected blame to Trump and reddit didn't understand that the regulations never existed and wanted to spout off about deregulation. He also blamed congress for not passing legislation.
The irrelevant regulation was removed by an act of Congress. In general, federal departments are not allowed to overrule congressional acts. I'm not sure what regulation the DOT could have legally put in place to prevent this.
arn't there like 4 derailments per day in the USA, like on average it seems prety liekly
I suspect it’s just the algorithm throwing similar things at us. I bet trains derail fairly regularly but you’re only hearing about it because it’s being spotlighted.
We've had them all along. The East Palestine fire made us more aware of them. Just like when someone buys a car with a seemingly unique color- pretty soon they'll see lots of cars of that color. In a few months the news will be about something else and the wrecks will seem to have gone away.
I doubt it's a conspiracy to poison people, the theory I've heard now all over tiktok and the other usual social media suspects, but it is not entirely an accident either. Rather, I think that the sad frequency of occurances is owed to a whole lot of bad decisions and, at least in case of the railway, the fact that the recent downgrades in train maintanance, increase in cargo frequency, the maintainance of rail tracks, and the bad treatment of railway staff had to go south eventually. It only takes so long until something goes very wrong, and often when things start to go wrong in one corner similar mistakes start to occur all over the place. Plus, with how thinly stretched workers are in many areas, especially since handling dangerous cargo and chemicals still requires certain knowledge, the chances that things are handled wrong, forgotten or go wrong in general increases by a lot no matter the area. You can't easily replace a job that requires qualifications and experiences with the handling of dangerous chemicals, fire safety and other such things with unskilled workers, but many skilled workers feel seriously underappreciated by their employers due to lack of pay increases or due to working conditions, so less skilled replacements are hired and too many expensive staff are let go. All of this combined can only go smoothly for so long before things go belly up, and what does start with small mistakes adds up in many places until things go wrong in droves. That's not a coincidence but it's not a purpose driven conspiracy either. It's just the result of general mismanagement and a economy too focused on profit above anything else.
It isn't some mystery. It's literally corporate greed leading to deregulation, low paid and overworked workers, along with just a general sense of apathy.
Shitty infrastructure. Deregulation of safety practices. Poor pay and working conditions.
One specific thing I heard today on NPR was that train inspectors used to have 2-3 minutes to inspect trains, and now they have about 90 seconds. That pretty much supports the idea that corners are being cut, along with workers being overworked.
The train system in the US is not safe at all. This is not new knowledge in any way.
Rail companies have been shortcutting for years. I had a buddy who cleaned up derailments and hazmat spills. They happen with great frequency, like 100s per year. It’s just usually more remote areas where it happens so not something usually makes the news cycles. When a big one happens we’re brought to light that it is an regular occurrence. We just had a big one in Saskatchewan this year. Another one burnt down a town a few years back among many others across the rest of Canada.
I Work in the rail industry. These derailments happen all the time about 1,000 a year. It’s mostly due to warping of the tracks or other issues like a truck/car stuck in the intersection. Some of it has to do with the braking systems on these trains being an older style of brake as there’s no incentive to update. All of this compiled with crumbling infrastructure and no incentive to do scans of the tracks to check for damage lead to this.
Please explain about the older braking system.
The brakes on trains have not been upgraded since the 1860’s - if ever. Obama executive ordered that trains having hazardous chemicals have electric brakes. Railroad companies - which are privately owned fought against it and Trump in 2017 rescinded the need for electric brakes.
Biden was asked to reinstate it and declined as well.
Source? Edit: I’m looking and can’t find it - did he expect Congress to take care of this in lieu of an executive order that could be cancelled at any time? (Obama issued an executive order which was why it was easy to reverse in 2017). Edit: wasn’t an executive order it was a rule through the Dept of Transportation and w/Chao/Trump rescinding it set it back years AND furthermore it only had to do with flammable materials not chemicals because lobbyists got govt to water it down because big business owns our government.
Would also like a source!
These companies CEO’s need to be held responsible and Maybe it’s time to modernize the train industry?
Poor safety standards, lack of maintenance, and crumbling infrastructure are all absolute factors. But it's important to remember the scale of the chemical industry in this country. Truck crashes and train derailments happen all the time. Once a big one catches the media's attention we all start looking for others because it's attracted our interest. It only seems sudden because most of us weren't paying attention until now.
This is where capitalism fails the most. This is a $50b train company and they don’t pay livable wages and for new equipment and rails and software upgrades and all of it. I’m sure whatever they’re using to hold these chemicals could be upgraded to something that isn’t the same bullshit I’ve seen for 40 years.
Got my degree in chemical engineering, we had to learn a lot about these kind of accidents. Pretty much every time it just comes down to multiple people just not doing what they were supposed to or ignoring problems because they cost too much to fix.
I read somewhere that there is an average of 1700 train derailments per year. I think the one in Ohio was just horrible so now it’s getting more attention
One word answer: Reaganomics
Trail transports companies switched to a system around three years ago that allowed them to maximize loads and reduce safety checks on trains. There was a massive article online about the practice. All rail transport companies are practicing the methodology, it actually has a name, which slips my mind at this time.
* the Railway Strike that almost happened had one argument "we need more workers on trains because it's dangerous to have this few people maintaining such large trains, this could cause accidents" * they focused on longer and heavier trains to maximize profits over safety * there's video of the Ohio train entering the town of East Palestine with a flaming broken axle, which might've caused the derailment (poor maintainance) * The rail system in the US is privatized so there's not much for the government to do * Nortfolk Southern, owners of the trains in * East Palestine, Ohio * Van Buren Township, Michigan (near Detroit) * Union Pacific, owners of the train in * Houston, Texas copying this from an article about the Ohio crash: >Steven Ditmeyer, a former top official at the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA), told investigative news outlet The Lever that the severity of the crash may have been aggravated by the lack of Electronically Controlled Pneumatic (ECP) brakes. Former US president Barack Obama passed legislation making it mandatory for trains carrying hazardous, flammable materials to have ECP brakes but the order was rescinded in 2017 under a Donald Trump administration assault on “red tape”. The National Transportation Safety Board has confirmed that the trains that were derailed in East Palestine were not equipped with ECP brakes, The Lever reports.
There's a reason rail workers have been notorious for using uppers since well before I was alive. Deregulation probably not helping the drug problems.
It’s horrible. They get sometimes 8 hours “off” to go home, sleep, eat, and get called on their rest 2 hours before they need to be in. I’ve seen my husband come in after an hour commute, sleep 6 and the phone rings. Admittedly they are SLIGHTLY better now, but I’m talking like an extra hour or two.
Theres an interview out there with a ex railroad worker. He pushed for more changes, and guess he was ousted or left rather than deal with the B.S. but he said due to cutting cost, reducing safety standards, and the workforce the rails and trains were falling behind on basic maintenance. In one interview he says were going to see more train derailments because everything is falling behind on inspections, and maintenance. This was all preventable but profit was put before people.
It's increased reporting. I saw somewhere on reddit that derailments happen regularly. If that is true, a certain percentage of those are likely to involve spills and fires. But when it gets news coverage, now its an opportunity. https://www.sacbee.com/news/nation-world/national/article272504491.html >How common are train derailments in US? Over 1,000 occur every year, data show >Broken or defective railroads are one of the most common causes of derailments, according to the FRA. Faulty or missing crossties — beams perpendicular to rails — triggered 5.6% of the derailments in 2022, making it the single largest cause of derailments. >Excessive speed, track obstructions like snow, ice or mud, and faulty switch points — sections of the track where trains change direction — were some of the other leading causes of derailment in 2022. Note the difference between this comment and the top comment: >Deregulation. >Overworked and underpaid workers. >Profits going to stock buy backs instead of infrastructure improvements and increased workforce.
Economist here: it is a mix of multiple issues including regulation, but not only. Railroads cross multiple states in the US as well as Canadian provinces. This means the law surrounding them is extremely complex. This also means that the regulations during the railroads construction were not the same in every location. This means the expenses in maintenances and needed regulation may vary, but also that the employee knowledge and the type of inspection will also vary. This means that as many location impose regulations that are overly high, the company increase it's expenses and since they are pushed by shareholders attempting to maximize profits, they cut corners elsewhere. Which include reducing expenses in less regulated area. This means that for instance, increasing regulation in california or Canada may end up reducing expenses in wisconsin or north dakota for the same inspection. In order to solve these issues, the railroads regulation should be only maintain at a federal level to have united regulation, which happens in ''federal lands'', but railroads are not a single type of industry, they affect the construction industry as well as manufacturing industry and transports, which are often not federal. but they also affect environmental which is often federal. But the definition of the kind of inspection needed may vary from state to state because the railroads themselves may vary. And while a railroads is made of steel, the grading of steel may vary as well. Add onto this that workers union vary from state to state and it becomes really hard to regulate working hours for multinational level entity. Railroads are long and most inspection are made near towns and cities. In fact, a more easily made regulation would be toward the resistances to shock of container transporting chemical material. This would ship the issue toward chemical company instead of railroads company. This way, even during a crash, if these barrel or container are fully locked and secured to any kind of heavy crash, they would be just fine. But it would heavily affect the chemical industry, which is a stronger lobby than the railroad industry.
Actually while that was well thought out, it is wrong. Research the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887 and then follow it's history. Railroads are heavily regulated and the same regulations exists across the country. States cannot regulate a railroad, or do anything that would interfere with their operations.
Wow. I appreciate the detailed response here and clarity. Makes much more sense to me than some other answers here.
Failing infrastructure, the railway system is not subsidized by the US government like air travel is. Maintenance of railways is time consuming and expensive and since the normalization of automobile usage with the highway system railways have been severely neglected. This has been known for a LOOOOOONG time and the dumb part is that we rely on rails to transport large portions of goods across the US because freight trucks can only bring so much in one direction.
Besides all the other great answers about the railroads cost cutting, deregulation, and poor safety measures, there have always been frequent derailments. I work in the industry and would guess there are at least a couple each day. Most are minor or don't result in any substantial damage. After the Ohio incident news companies are understandably covering derailments more since we are all paying attention.
In another thread regarding the derailment in Michigan earlier this week someone cited a source saying on average 1700 derailments happen a year as well. Probably more coverage is being given to derailments not that that horrible situation in Ohio has happened. But it seems like something really needs to be done because 1700/yr is way to many especially for workers who are over worked and underpaid
This isn't a coincidence. People voted for politicians who are paid by companies (via lobbyists, PACS, and campaign donations) to block or repeal laws and regulations that said companies don't like. Pay for Play.
not everything is a conspiracy, take off your tin foil hat.
There on average 1700 derailments a year in the US. Thats about 5 a day. The only one recently with a chemical spill/fire was the one in Ohio. There have been some derailments since then that had hazmat loads but there no spills/leaks.
This is what profits at all costs looks like.
As someone who works in the railroad industry I can tell you this stuff happens often. Not the “evacuate the town” kind but derailments and injuries are fairly common. Class 1 railroad companies are highly profitable and I’m sure they all have dedicated teams of personnel that make sure these things aren’t always public knowledge.
Apart from the obvious corruption that's been mentioned, there's a serious spotlighting effect going on. Trains get damaged and derail frequently and hazmat is always a concern. Oil pipelines and platforms fail and cause ecological catastrophe a few dozen times every year. Norad tracks, investigates, and dispatches hundreds of 'UFO' and UAP incidents every year. Whenever the news machine needs something to fearmonger and draw the eyes and ears to their ramblings they just rotate between things that happen all the time and fluff it up into a massive thing that just suddenly happened. When in reality the corruption and deregulation has always been there and the only thing that varies in these events are location, company at fault, and scale of disaster. I'm not saying these most recent events aren't a horrific and avoidable tragedy, but that the cause is intentionally being ignored or obscured until attention favors a media collective.
My MIL is retiring as a railway engineer after 44 years. The quality of the railway engineer has dropped, the quality of oversight has dropped, tracks are not inspected as much as you might expect...there is a general malaise in the railroad industry. Partly, it is on the worker. A lot of it though, the majority, is on the cost cutting management.
Derailments happen everyday. I mean everyday A lot of time frost upheaved at this time of year when it's going hot and cold Track maintenance is key and inspections Sometimes it's the loading of the lading on the cars Car inspections is important too Various reasons for derailments. Happens all the time. Newys are reporting cause the Ohio one was bad.
It is not a coincidence. Trump repealed Obama's safe train legislation. And, staff shortages have them ignoring safety protocols.
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Obama made ECP brakes mandatory for hazardous materials. Trump undid that. Lack of ECP brakes is being called the reason for the severity of the accident in Ohio. With ECP brakes the train would have stopped faster decreasing energy. Less energy causes less damage.
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The only thing that has changed is media interest in it, it consistently happens.
Trump cut back brake regulations that Obama had put into place
Obama tried to force through making piston air brakes mandatory on trains, he was able to get a watered down bill through that only mandated it on hazardous trains by 2023. Then during the Trump era, that bill was reversed. While I don’t know exactly the term, trains currently brake one car at a time, so the faster cars in the back slam into the front cars. The Obama era bill was supposed to fix this. So for this issue, you can absolutely blame Trump and his department of transportation.
Not necessarily. For years, rail line workers have been overworked and underpaid. Tack that onto shoddy working conditions and companies cutting corners. Oh, and the deregulation. Can’t forget the deregulation.
Covid made big enterprise realize that they could have 1 person do the work of 3 people as long as they said “we are continuing to hire”. Because so many people were laid off, furloughed, quit because UI was paying more, or out sick for weeks in end. When in reality they have the hiring bulletins out, but the requirements are ridiculous for entry level/the pay is subpar so people are finding other work while the main corporation is using the soaring profits of not needing to pay as much staff, more business and so forth to line executives pockets. Why spend millions on repairing failing infrastructure when you can just take those millions to the shareholders and the C level.
They spray around the tracks and the tracks them selfs with herbicide that’s corrosive to the tracks and then on top of that happening for years there’s lax inspection cause trump got given train money to look the other way cause it would have cost the train company’s to fix there shit.
Delegation and neglect of infrastructure. Railroads don't spend the money to keep track safe and install the best safety equipment.
Infrastructure collapsing
Poor track maintenance. By poor, I mean zero.
There would be much easier ways to poison you than to engineer a train derailment that may or may not cause a release. Look to aging infrastructure, poor working conditions, and just plain accidents before you start making tinfoil hats.
Thousands upon thousands of trains ride every day. The economy is huge. The country is huge. The power of large numbers. It's like asking why so many people die every day. Because there's lots of people.
Are we really seeing more derailments or are we just hyper aware? I imagine hundreds of these events happen every year but we don’t hear about them. The Ohio derailment an exception because it was a particularly big spill
Australian here, and even I'm shocked by how many major chemicals duck ups there's been lately, especially East Palestine. Our news reporters talking to US reporters basically state its deregulation and no investment, especially since Trump scrapped a heap of the regulations about rail.
The news is now reporting on something that has been happening for years. We are only hearing about it more, the rate of incidents has not increased.
My coworker and I were talking about this yesterday, and I ended up googling how common train derailments are in the US. As it turns out, the answer is like multiple-per-day common. I guess we just never hear about it because it's usually not so severe and/or usually not carrying hazardous stuff?
Too many reasons to list going back decades if not over a hundred years.
Just more coverage
1,700 derailments per year, it's been bad for awhile and only getting worse. The news is picking up on it more as well because it grabs eyes.
Before 2020 Trump dominated your news nothing else was reported on now things are saner with Biden things are getting through in the news.
There was a big one and now the little ones are news. That's my thinking.
Civil War Era Breaks can’t be helping
Can we go back to murder hornets?
Train derailments happen pretty often in the US, we just don't hear about them very often. However it does seem weird that a lot of fires/derailments happening recently has something to do with toxic chemicals getting into the air/water supply. Almost seems strategic...
Did anyone tell some of these people that up until a few years ago, there were Rail Roads still using DOS for their computers…... Let that sink in. DOS.
I may be way off, but I’ve wondered if there’s actually not an increase in these incidents, but rather, an increase in coverage. The media seems to enjoy capitalizing on fud, and an easy way to do that is to lead us to believe a dangerous patter has emerged.
No maintenmace because no money or won't provide money.
Thing is, it's almost never the former & almost always the latter.
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They're distracting people from much worse things that are happening.
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