No wonder Amtrak has been hemorrhaging money. They own 5% of the tracks that they run on while the other 95% is owned by private railroads. But if there’s an accident, whether Amtrak is at fault or not, Amtrak pays the bills.
This isn’t right.
If it’s a defective track that causes an Amtrak to derail, the owner of the line needs to help foot the bill, instead of having the American taxpayer foot the entire bill for their defective line.
A lot of attention has been paid to the problems that Amtrak has been having, with regards to excessive speed, the lack of the Positive Train Control system in critical areas, and the cars breaking apart at high speed.
The PTC has train-based and track-based technology that work together to prevent trains from colliding, or going too fast around curves, and so forth. Amtrak has updated 71% of it’s locomotives, while the railroads have roughly 25% of their tracks equipped with the PTC.
Amtrak needs to own their own lines, and if they can’t, then perhaps they should shut it down. This gravy train (forgive the pun) needs to come to an end.
The fact that the contracts between the railroads and Amtrak are covered by non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) is also troubling. Those should be invalidated and the contents of the agreements made public, so we can see how badly the American public is being swindled.
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