Commentary

PTC for the masses

A large percentage of the general public, specifically, the passenger-train-riding public, does not understand Positive Train Control—if they’ve even heard of it. For that matter, neither do many of the legislators that imposed the year-end PTC implementation deadline, but that’s another story. And neither do most of the reporters that attempt to cover rail transportation, but that’s yet another story.

Commentary

Control the speed of the train. Period

The National Transportation Safety Board, in a second update of the May 12 fatal Amtrak derailment in Philadelphia, announced that it found no indication that the locomotive engineer of train no. 188 was using his cell phone to talk or text while operating the train. In response to questions posed separately, NTSB confirmed that indeed the cell phone records support the engineer’s statement that he utilized the cell phone to call 911 after the accident.

Commentary

Liability shouldn’t threaten survival

Violent clashes often occur at the intersection of liability, ability to pay and the law. They follow train accidents that send victims and railroads to court as adversaries.

Commentary

House T&I hearing a litany of embarrassments

I watched the webcast of the June 2, 2015 U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure oversight hearing of the Amtrak accident in Philadelphia.

Commentary

Is there a plot against passenger trains?

Following Amtrak’s tragic wreck of Northeast Regional train 188, the news media, as expected, sprung into action, filling the airwaves and cyberspace and newspapers with speculation, analysis, sensationalism—and even some accurate, straight and unbiased reporting, which doesn’t occur too often where railroads are involved. The dumbest thing that aired was an “investigative report” conducted by CBS-2 New York in which the reporter, using a cell phone app and a radar gun, clocked the speeds of NJ Transit commuter trains and, without consulting an employee timetable, said they were going too fast.

Commentary

A fine kettle of fish for FRA’s Feinberg

It’s no surprise that Federal Railroad Administration Acting Administrator Sarah Feinberg, a Democratic political operative—and a darn good one by all accounts—is President Obama’s choice to become the agency’s permanent chief. Politics generally determines executive branch appointments and it’s a shrewd wager the Senate will confirm her.

Commentary

A labor leader who understood economics

Dan Johnson died last week. He was 67. You probably neither knew him nor recognize his name. Yet if you are a railroader, he touched your life in meaningful ways.

Commentary

Meg Baker and her trusty Speed-O-Meter to the rescue!

CBS News legends Edward R. Murrow, Fred Friendly, Charles Kuralt and Walter Cronkite must be turning over and hurling in their graves.

Commentary

If only . . . but wait . . .

I’ve been in France. I love being in France, a country that in the past 20 years has spent twice on its railways what it has spent on its roads. What am I missing? Another fatal overspeed derailment? At Frankford Junction?

Commentary

Shippers hoist by own petard at House hearing

Poor Mr. Dooley—Calvin, that is, president of the American Chemistry Council and not the fictional Mr. Dooley created during the late 19th century by humorist Finley Peter Dunne. The latter gained library space in Teddy Roosevelt’s White House; the former seemed to hoist himself by his own petard—Shakespeare speak (“Hamlet”) for the bomb maker managing to blow himself up with his own device.

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