the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
Aug 3, 2015
U.S. Senators voted on July 30 to delay enforcing their own measures for railroad safety. Only two and a half months after eight people died in an Amtrak crash outside Philadelphia, the Senate voted not to enforce the safety rules for railroads that the Senate itself had established in 2008–after another railroad crash with fatalities.
Both the current head of the National Transportation Safety Board and its previous head told Congress that the PTC, the positive train control, a safety system to force trains to brake, would have saved the lives of those who died.
The legislation passed in 2008 on train safety gave the railroads seven years to install PTC systems. While Amtrak claimed it would meet the December 2015 deadline, it had not installed the PTC system on the part of its track where the crash occurred in May. And both freight and commuter railroad systems have stated they did not have the funds or the equipment to finish installing PTC by the end of this year.
But Congress has now adjourned without dealing with railroad safety.
These politicians go off on summer vacation with the blood of railroad victims dripping from their hands.