16 ms·

BNSF Railyway Co. helped lead fight to delay train safety technology

58 points by jstreebin 11y ago

pstuart 11y ago
We should nationalize the railways, then invest in the infrastructure to make it safe to carry freight and passengers. Then allow for competition in the "railway marketplace".
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
thasmin 11y ago
Positive Train Control is the train safety technology at issue here. It isn't ready. The "attempt at crippling the economy" is to shut down instead of operating in violation of the regulation. The railroad companies claim to have spent billions on implementation but it's not available yet. As the article says, they're not allowed to collaborate or share implementation costs because of trust regulations. Also keep in mind the scale of the deployment. There's hundreds of thousands of cars on the track today, and putting something on each car isn't something that takes an afternoon. The government can't make it happen by creating a regulation and a deadline. edit: Fixed definition of PTC.
- AnimalMuppet 11y ago
  I don't think they have to put something on every (railroad) car. I think they have to put something on every engine, and on every switch. What they put on every switch has to talk to a network. There's a lot of switches, and some of those switches are in pretty remote places. > Positive Track Control is the train safety technology at issue here. I believe it's Positive Train Control. > The government can't make it happen by creating a regulation and a deadline. Very much true, and a big surprise to too many regulators.
  - ascagnel_ 11y ago
    Also, there's no off-the-shelf version you can buy (this is all new technology), and it has to integrate with other railroads. For example, in the NY Metro area alone, you'd have to integrate the Long Island Railroad, MetroNorth, Conrail, Amtrak, New Jersey Transit, and possibly other industrial rail lines I'm not aware of. That alone will take a while to get right.
  - davismwfl 11y ago
    You are correct, not every car needs to be modified. Generally engines are the primary modification, as is the CAD systems that must accept extra data and pass it to the trains. Things like hotbox detectors that can count trains axels, determine direction plus the switches and track occupation signals need to also be sent from the CAD (which already receives them in controlled territory) to the locomotive itself. As a point, PTC works in both dark territory and controlled territory, because it focuses on the train itself (but it isn't as reliable in dark territory). Yes in controlled territory it has greater information but it doesn't require every switch to be modified. Even back in the late 90's every controlled switch reported back its status to CAD extremely quickly and CAD could control the switches remotely. Yes, dark territory is different, but PTC had some benefits even in dark territory. It was the long term goal to have near zero dark territory where a switch, siding or other similar factor would be able to cause a collision. And just as a point, even when a train leaves one CAD controlled territory (say Union Pacific territory) and enters another (say ran by BNSF) the CAD operators hand off control, much like air traffic control. So the issue of interoperability is minimal as it already is in place in at least a fairly common form. Not saying it isn't without fault or couldn't be better, but the world doesn't have to change overnight, just keep making progress on each part making it better and better.
    - paddy_m 11y ago
      I assume by CAD you mean Computer Assisted Driving? What exactly is a dark area? What are the differences between the US PTC systems and the systems used in Europe?
      - lstamour 11y ago
        I think dark territory means unmonitored sections of track or switches (to be more precise, I guess), that which isn't yet hooked up to the system to watch for speed and other issues that would cause accidents? New to me too :)
      - davismwfl 11y ago
        Computer aided dispatch. Essentially all trains are monitored via control centers owned by a few of the larger railroads. Passenger traffic is even handed off through these centers when crossing the territories. And yes dark territory is what they call the areas that are unmonitored. Usually these are way out in the middle of no where on single track. Most monitoring believe it or not is hard wired and not wireless. For example, hot box detectors which are basically buried on the inside of the tracks monitor a trains bearing/axel temperatures and can report if one is over heating. This is critical because it is a source of derailments. Those boxes though usually are wired directly to lines running along the track and back to a common point. In many cases a number of lines terminate at one location and are fed to radio towers that beam that data back. In other cases it follows the fiber all the way to a rail yard or dispatch center. I can't say now what the differences are with PTC in Europe, but I know when I was at GE we looked a lot at what they were doing because in most cases they are far more serious about their railroads.
- debacle 11y ago
  It seems incredibly unlikely to me that the government pulled the deadline out of their ass.
- davismwfl 11y ago
  Ummmmm, having been one of the original architects for GE on their CAD and PTC systems in the late 90's I have to disagree. The technology is pretty solid, the implementations even by competing companies are reasonable as well. The issues are political and liability, but frankly the claims are totally exaggerated on the cost, this is more about limiting future liability and changing a very ingrained old school culture. PTC helps to provide positive proof of negligence (or the lack thereof), which as you can imagine can generate potential liability for a railroad. PTC is not overriding of a train operator in all circumstances, hence the liability. And the train operator and general culture is VERY rooted, even more so than the automotive industry, which means moving these long timers off the ball takes way more than some government deadline. As for not sharing costs, that is complete crap. The railroads are not developing the technology anyway, companies like GE and others have developed it and are continuing to develop it. Even interoperation between competing implementations is mostly moot. The railroads have to pay for the software, maintenance and on-going updates, but the development is coming from outside the railroads so that political BS claim is just that. Not saying everything is perfect, but it frustrates me that after 15 years this isn't done and implemented, its 10 years beyond when I thought at least 2 of the biggest railroads would have it deployed at least in some form. Hell in 1998 GE had forms of it in test at 2 of the largest railroads in the country.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
- bsder 11y ago
  Actually, they very much can when it's in their economic interest. See the gauge conversion in the US: http://southern.railfan.net/ties/1966/66-8/gauge.html http://southern.railfan.net/ties/1966/66-8/gauge.html The railroads have been dragging their feet on this and should get fined. A lot.
  - a3n 11y ago
    Or nationalized.
mschuster91 11y ago
Hmm how about nationalizing the infrastructure, mandate safety technologies and allow private companies to compete on common grounds to prevent a race to the bottom?
- AnimalMuppet 11y ago
  You're advocating nationalizing private companies, and claiming a boost to competition? That seems... ironic.
  - mschuster91 11y ago
    Not the entire companies, just the part that could boost competition and innovation by nationalizing and opening it up. Aren't Amtrak trains regularly prioritized far beyond freight trains, resulting in a massive problem for passenger train service?
    - 13thLetter 11y ago
      Not sure what you're saying here? Amtrak service is notoriously terrible and technologically backwards, which does not strike me as a good argument for having the US government nationalize an industry.
      - mulmen 11y ago
        I don't think he advocated nationalizing the railroads, just the infrastructure.
        AnimalMuppet 11y ago
        If you take away the infrastructure from a railroad, there isn't much left...
        mschuster91 11y ago
        There's a shitload of stuff to compete on when you don't own the railroads. Pricing (hello Deutsche Bahn, 10x more expensive than buses LOL), service (thumbs up to Austria's Westbahn here), quality of the carriages (again, thumbs up to Westbahn, displacing even the DB ICE trains), WiFi...
cnorthwood 11y ago
The article quotes AAR spokesman Ed Greenburg as "We have been warning for years that the deadline was unworkable because the technology had to be developed from scratch." Why does such technology need to be developed from scratch? Positive Train Control sounds very similar to the in-cab signalling schemes (European Train Control System) in use in Europe on the Eurostar and other high-speed lines, and is continuing to roll out on other lines, would adapting that technology not make a good start?
- ant6n 11y ago
  It seems most of the world is moving towards ERTMS. The 'not-invented-here' syndrome is strong in the US. But there may also be compatibility issues, in the US they have a completely different view of railroad safety (laregly boils down to 'if there's an accident, our trains should be built like tanks so it doesn't matter' vs 'there should never be railroad accidents'). That's one of the reasons why there is very little transit on main lines.
- GFK_of_xmaspast 11y ago
  All that European stuff uses metric.
  - pacaro 11y ago
    There isn't that much difference between 1435 mm and 4 ft 8½
mjt0229 11y ago
I'm no anti-government activist (far from it), and in general, I think safety regulations are a good idea. But I'm having a hard time getting worked up over this. Are the sort of train accidents that this technology would prevent really so frequent or devastating that we should stop everything and fix it? Especially compared to, say, guns, nutrition, pollution, etc? I mean, I'm all for tackling low hanging fruit and making things safer, but I'm not sure how much effort should go into this compared to other safety issues.
- jessriedel 11y ago
  > So far, railroads have spent more than $2.7 billion on a system estimated to cost $10 billion to $14 billion — plus perhaps $1 billion in annual maintenance. PTC has not been installed, partly because it is not sufficiently developed. CSX Corp., which includes railroads among its assets, says the railroad industry is the nation’s most capital-intensive — and the $11 billion combined capital investments of all U.S. railroads in 2010 were approximately equal to the cost of PTC. > The Federal Railroad Administration estimates that were PTC to be installed on thousands of locomotives and tens of thousands of miles of track, it would prevent perhaps 2 percent of the approximately 2,000 collisions and derailments, preventing seven deaths and 22 injuries annually. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/george-will-positive-train-control-a-mandate-that-is-off-the-rails/2013/05/31/a1f470ba-c981-11e2-9245-773c0123c027_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/george-will-positive... (That quote is the first I could easily find, and it comes from a George Will article. If anyone suspects ideological distortion, I think they could find more objective sources that will say basically the same thing.) For comparison, the FDA, EPA, and Department of Transportation use ~$9 million for the statistical value of a human life. If it costs more than that to save, it's considered unreasonable and the funds could be better spent elsewhere. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_of_life#Life_Value_in_the_US https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_of_life#Life_Value_in_th...
osi 11y ago
In the Chicago area, the Metra commuter rail system was saying they would have to discontinue service at the end of the year if the PTC requirement wasn't delayed due to their delays in getting it implemented. It isn't just freight lobbying.
- phkahler 11y ago
  >> In the Chicago area, the Metra commuter rail system was saying they would have to discontinue service at the end of the year if the PTC requirement wasn't delayed due to their delays in getting it implemented. It isn't just freight lobbying. Does that mean they'd go bankrupt? Could someone then buy them for cheap and implement PTC and take over the business? Sometimes it's nice to entertain the idea of "let them fail".
  - arthurdenture 11y ago
    Nope. Commuter service in Chicago is contracted out to big players like BNSF and Union Pacific. If they were to lose the contract to run Metra trains, they would be fine. And it's not like there's some other company or agency waiting to make PTC happen for millions instead of billions.
    - noer 11y ago
      Not all of it, BNSF & UP only operate the services with their names in the lines, Metra operates the remainder of the services.
      - dredmorbius 11y ago
        The trackage is owned by the railroads. They're the ones responsible for implementing the fixed-position part of PTC.
  - sithadmin 11y ago
    Letting Metra fail would cripple Chicago's economy. It would be more or less impossible for a large portion of the workforce to get to the office.
ansible 11y ago
This sounds callous, but 245 deaths in 45 years isn't that bad. Yes, of course I would like safer trains. I would like safer lots of things, especially cars, because so many more people have car accidents and die each year. Ideally, our government would calculate lives per year saved versus cost for all kinds of proposed laws and regulations. And then we could more fairly decide which things to implement first, based on which would save the most lives. This requires us to place a specific dollar figure on a human life, which everyone seems reluctant to do.
- rayiner 11y ago
  The government puts a specific dollar figure on human life all the time. It's not afraid to do that. But positive train control isn't just about improving safety. It's part of a larger overhaul of the rail system that will allow increased efficiency. E.g. the Acela is much heavier than European passenger trains because of FRA crash standards. If PTC succeeds in reducing the likelihood of crashes and derailments, those regulations could be loosened, allowing lighter and faster trains.
  - ansible 11y ago
    The government puts a specific dollar figure on human life all the time. It's not afraid to do that. I disagree with that, at least with regards to the USA. Does Congress pass a resolution every year that dictates what a human life is worth? Something that is applied across the board for all legislation, rather than buried deep in the implications of whatever law they're talking about now?
    - bronson 11y ago
      http://www.nhtsa.gov/staticfiles/administration/pdf/Value_of_Statistical_Life-2009_Dollars.pdf http://www.nhtsa.gov/staticfiles/administration/pdf/Value_of...
      - hyperpape 11y ago
        Based off that, you ought to be willing to spend $1.543 billion to save those 245 lives. The railroads are claiming that they've spent billions attempting to prepare this technology. If they're accurately representing the costs (big if!), this doesn't sound like it meets the government's own cost-benefit standards, so I'd like to hear more about the rationale behind requiring this technology.
nigrioid 11y ago
Buffett is also the reason Obama won't let the Keystone pipeline happen. The crude is shipped by rail.
- ewanmcteagle 11y ago
  Buffett is on record supporting the pipeline.
  - nigrioid 11y ago
    I think his closeness and donations to Obama and friends carries more weight than an interview answer...
    - parasubvert 11y ago
      I think you are placing far too much faith in the power of one actor vs. The fact this has been a Democratic base purity test for a few years. Plus crude-over-rail is barely 10% of all oil movement (vs. Pipelines).

58 points by jstreebin 11y ago

We should nationalize the railways, then invest in the infrastructure to make it safe to carry freight and passengers. Then allow for competition in the "railway marketplace".

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

thasmin 11y ago

Positive Train Control is the train safety technology at issue here. It isn't ready. The "attempt at crippling the economy" is to shut down instead of operating in violation of the regulation. The railroad companies claim to have spent billions on implementation but it's not available yet. As the article says, they're not allowed to collaborate or share implementation costs because of trust regulations. Also keep in mind the scale of the deployment. There's hundreds of thousands of cars on the track today, and putting something on each car isn't something that takes an afternoon. The government can't make it happen by creating a regulation and a deadline. edit: Fixed definition of PTC.

AnimalMuppet 11y ago
I don't think they have to put something on every (railroad) car. I think they have to put something on every engine, and on every switch. What they put on every switch has to talk to a network. There's a lot of switches, and some of those switches are in pretty remote places. > Positive Track Control is the train safety technology at issue here. I believe it's Positive Train Control. > The government can't make it happen by creating a regulation and a deadline. Very much true, and a big surprise to too many regulators.
- ascagnel_ 11y ago
  Also, there's no off-the-shelf version you can buy (this is all new technology), and it has to integrate with other railroads. For example, in the NY Metro area alone, you'd have to integrate the Long Island Railroad, MetroNorth, Conrail, Amtrak, New Jersey Transit, and possibly other industrial rail lines I'm not aware of. That alone will take a while to get right.
- davismwfl 11y ago
  You are correct, not every car needs to be modified. Generally engines are the primary modification, as is the CAD systems that must accept extra data and pass it to the trains. Things like hotbox detectors that can count trains axels, determine direction plus the switches and track occupation signals need to also be sent from the CAD (which already receives them in controlled territory) to the locomotive itself. As a point, PTC works in both dark territory and controlled territory, because it focuses on the train itself (but it isn't as reliable in dark territory). Yes in controlled territory it has greater information but it doesn't require every switch to be modified. Even back in the late 90's every controlled switch reported back its status to CAD extremely quickly and CAD could control the switches remotely. Yes, dark territory is different, but PTC had some benefits even in dark territory. It was the long term goal to have near zero dark territory where a switch, siding or other similar factor would be able to cause a collision. And just as a point, even when a train leaves one CAD controlled territory (say Union Pacific territory) and enters another (say ran by BNSF) the CAD operators hand off control, much like air traffic control. So the issue of interoperability is minimal as it already is in place in at least a fairly common form. Not saying it isn't without fault or couldn't be better, but the world doesn't have to change overnight, just keep making progress on each part making it better and better.
  - paddy_m 11y ago
    I assume by CAD you mean Computer Assisted Driving? What exactly is a dark area? What are the differences between the US PTC systems and the systems used in Europe?
    - lstamour 11y ago
      I think dark territory means unmonitored sections of track or switches (to be more precise, I guess), that which isn't yet hooked up to the system to watch for speed and other issues that would cause accidents? New to me too :)
    - davismwfl 11y ago
      Computer aided dispatch. Essentially all trains are monitored via control centers owned by a few of the larger railroads. Passenger traffic is even handed off through these centers when crossing the territories. And yes dark territory is what they call the areas that are unmonitored. Usually these are way out in the middle of no where on single track. Most monitoring believe it or not is hard wired and not wireless. For example, hot box detectors which are basically buried on the inside of the tracks monitor a trains bearing/axel temperatures and can report if one is over heating. This is critical because it is a source of derailments. Those boxes though usually are wired directly to lines running along the track and back to a common point. In many cases a number of lines terminate at one location and are fed to radio towers that beam that data back. In other cases it follows the fiber all the way to a rail yard or dispatch center. I can't say now what the differences are with PTC in Europe, but I know when I was at GE we looked a lot at what they were doing because in most cases they are far more serious about their railroads.
debacle 11y ago
It seems incredibly unlikely to me that the government pulled the deadline out of their ass.
davismwfl 11y ago
Ummmmm, having been one of the original architects for GE on their CAD and PTC systems in the late 90's I have to disagree. The technology is pretty solid, the implementations even by competing companies are reasonable as well. The issues are political and liability, but frankly the claims are totally exaggerated on the cost, this is more about limiting future liability and changing a very ingrained old school culture. PTC helps to provide positive proof of negligence (or the lack thereof), which as you can imagine can generate potential liability for a railroad. PTC is not overriding of a train operator in all circumstances, hence the liability. And the train operator and general culture is VERY rooted, even more so than the automotive industry, which means moving these long timers off the ball takes way more than some government deadline. As for not sharing costs, that is complete crap. The railroads are not developing the technology anyway, companies like GE and others have developed it and are continuing to develop it. Even interoperation between competing implementations is mostly moot. The railroads have to pay for the software, maintenance and on-going updates, but the development is coming from outside the railroads so that political BS claim is just that. Not saying everything is perfect, but it frustrates me that after 15 years this isn't done and implemented, its 10 years beyond when I thought at least 2 of the biggest railroads would have it deployed at least in some form. Hell in 1998 GE had forms of it in test at 2 of the largest railroads in the country.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
bsder 11y ago
Actually, they very much can when it's in their economic interest. See the gauge conversion in the US: http://southern.railfan.net/ties/1966/66-8/gauge.html http://southern.railfan.net/ties/1966/66-8/gauge.html The railroads have been dragging their feet on this and should get fined. A lot.
- a3n 11y ago
  Or nationalized.

mschuster91 11y ago

Hmm how about nationalizing the infrastructure, mandate safety technologies and allow private companies to compete on common grounds to prevent a race to the bottom?

AnimalMuppet 11y ago
You're advocating nationalizing private companies, and claiming a boost to competition? That seems... ironic.
- mschuster91 11y ago
  Not the entire companies, just the part that could boost competition and innovation by nationalizing and opening it up. Aren't Amtrak trains regularly prioritized far beyond freight trains, resulting in a massive problem for passenger train service?
  - 13thLetter 11y ago
    Not sure what you're saying here? Amtrak service is notoriously terrible and technologically backwards, which does not strike me as a good argument for having the US government nationalize an industry.
    - mulmen 11y ago
      I don't think he advocated nationalizing the railroads, just the infrastructure.
      - AnimalMuppet 11y ago
        If you take away the infrastructure from a railroad, there isn't much left...
        mschuster91 11y ago
        There's a shitload of stuff to compete on when you don't own the railroads. Pricing (hello Deutsche Bahn, 10x more expensive than buses LOL), service (thumbs up to Austria's Westbahn here), quality of the carriages (again, thumbs up to Westbahn, displacing even the DB ICE trains), WiFi...

cnorthwood 11y ago

The article quotes AAR spokesman Ed Greenburg as "We have been warning for years that the deadline was unworkable because the technology had to be developed from scratch." Why does such technology need to be developed from scratch? Positive Train Control sounds very similar to the in-cab signalling schemes (European Train Control System) in use in Europe on the Eurostar and other high-speed lines, and is continuing to roll out on other lines, would adapting that technology not make a good start?

ant6n 11y ago
It seems most of the world is moving towards ERTMS. The 'not-invented-here' syndrome is strong in the US. But there may also be compatibility issues, in the US they have a completely different view of railroad safety (laregly boils down to 'if there's an accident, our trains should be built like tanks so it doesn't matter' vs 'there should never be railroad accidents'). That's one of the reasons why there is very little transit on main lines.
GFK_of_xmaspast 11y ago
All that European stuff uses metric.
- pacaro 11y ago
  There isn't that much difference between 1435 mm and 4 ft 8½

mjt0229 11y ago

I'm no anti-government activist (far from it), and in general, I think safety regulations are a good idea. But I'm having a hard time getting worked up over this. Are the sort of train accidents that this technology would prevent really so frequent or devastating that we should stop everything and fix it? Especially compared to, say, guns, nutrition, pollution, etc? I mean, I'm all for tackling low hanging fruit and making things safer, but I'm not sure how much effort should go into this compared to other safety issues.

jessriedel 11y ago
> So far, railroads have spent more than $2.7 billion on a system estimated to cost $10 billion to $14 billion — plus perhaps $1 billion in annual maintenance. PTC has not been installed, partly because it is not sufficiently developed. CSX Corp., which includes railroads among its assets, says the railroad industry is the nation’s most capital-intensive — and the $11 billion combined capital investments of all U.S. railroads in 2010 were approximately equal to the cost of PTC. > The Federal Railroad Administration estimates that were PTC to be installed on thousands of locomotives and tens of thousands of miles of track, it would prevent perhaps 2 percent of the approximately 2,000 collisions and derailments, preventing seven deaths and 22 injuries annually. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/george-will-positive-train-control-a-mandate-that-is-off-the-rails/2013/05/31/a1f470ba-c981-11e2-9245-773c0123c027_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/george-will-positive... (That quote is the first I could easily find, and it comes from a George Will article. If anyone suspects ideological distortion, I think they could find more objective sources that will say basically the same thing.) For comparison, the FDA, EPA, and Department of Transportation use ~$9 million for the statistical value of a human life. If it costs more than that to save, it's considered unreasonable and the funds could be better spent elsewhere. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_of_life#Life_Value_in_the_US https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_of_life#Life_Value_in_th...

osi 11y ago

In the Chicago area, the Metra commuter rail system was saying they would have to discontinue service at the end of the year if the PTC requirement wasn't delayed due to their delays in getting it implemented. It isn't just freight lobbying.

phkahler 11y ago
>> In the Chicago area, the Metra commuter rail system was saying they would have to discontinue service at the end of the year if the PTC requirement wasn't delayed due to their delays in getting it implemented. It isn't just freight lobbying. Does that mean they'd go bankrupt? Could someone then buy them for cheap and implement PTC and take over the business? Sometimes it's nice to entertain the idea of "let them fail".
- arthurdenture 11y ago
  Nope. Commuter service in Chicago is contracted out to big players like BNSF and Union Pacific. If they were to lose the contract to run Metra trains, they would be fine. And it's not like there's some other company or agency waiting to make PTC happen for millions instead of billions.
  - noer 11y ago
    Not all of it, BNSF & UP only operate the services with their names in the lines, Metra operates the remainder of the services.
    - dredmorbius 11y ago
      The trackage is owned by the railroads. They're the ones responsible for implementing the fixed-position part of PTC.
- sithadmin 11y ago
  Letting Metra fail would cripple Chicago's economy. It would be more or less impossible for a large portion of the workforce to get to the office.

ansible 11y ago

This sounds callous, but 245 deaths in 45 years isn't that bad. Yes, of course I would like safer trains. I would like safer lots of things, especially cars, because so many more people have car accidents and die each year. Ideally, our government would calculate lives per year saved versus cost for all kinds of proposed laws and regulations. And then we could more fairly decide which things to implement first, based on which would save the most lives. This requires us to place a specific dollar figure on a human life, which everyone seems reluctant to do.

rayiner 11y ago
The government puts a specific dollar figure on human life all the time. It's not afraid to do that. But positive train control isn't just about improving safety. It's part of a larger overhaul of the rail system that will allow increased efficiency. E.g. the Acela is much heavier than European passenger trains because of FRA crash standards. If PTC succeeds in reducing the likelihood of crashes and derailments, those regulations could be loosened, allowing lighter and faster trains.
- ansible 11y ago
  The government puts a specific dollar figure on human life all the time. It's not afraid to do that. I disagree with that, at least with regards to the USA. Does Congress pass a resolution every year that dictates what a human life is worth? Something that is applied across the board for all legislation, rather than buried deep in the implications of whatever law they're talking about now?
  - bronson 11y ago
    http://www.nhtsa.gov/staticfiles/administration/pdf/Value_of_Statistical_Life-2009_Dollars.pdf http://www.nhtsa.gov/staticfiles/administration/pdf/Value_of...
    - hyperpape 11y ago
      Based off that, you ought to be willing to spend $1.543 billion to save those 245 lives. The railroads are claiming that they've spent billions attempting to prepare this technology. If they're accurately representing the costs (big if!), this doesn't sound like it meets the government's own cost-benefit standards, so I'd like to hear more about the rationale behind requiring this technology.

nigrioid 11y ago

Buffett is also the reason Obama won't let the Keystone pipeline happen. The crude is shipped by rail.

ewanmcteagle 11y ago
Buffett is on record supporting the pipeline.
- nigrioid 11y ago
  I think his closeness and donations to Obama and friends carries more weight than an interview answer...
  - parasubvert 11y ago
    I think you are placing far too much faith in the power of one actor vs. The fact this has been a Democratic base purity test for a few years. Plus crude-over-rail is barely 10% of all oil movement (vs. Pipelines).