This news article was pretty much custom-tailored to catch my attention. It's a big-money government handout to a corporation, the corporation is a railroad, and the railroad has a spectacularly bad safety record.
Oh, and the money is to allow the safety-challenged railway to run dirty and/or toxic loads through a major urban area alongside an internationally known hospital. How could the story get any better?
Using government statistics, the Mayo Clinic prepared a report for the FRA showing that DM&E "has one of the worst, if not the worst safety records of all U.S. railroads." According to the report, DM&E had 107 accidents involving trains carrying hazardous materials in the past 10 years, including a record 16 in 2005, and the company reported train accidents at a rate of 7.5 times higher than the national average from 2000 to 2005.
Larry Mann, a national rail safety expert who helped draft the Federal Railroad Safety Act of 1970 and who's now working with Mayo, said DM&E is "a poster child" for not how to run a railroad.
"It's unsafe at any speed," he said.
The amount of money in question? Two point five BILLION.
Posted by Nicholas at July 20, 2006 03:53 PM
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