4 ms·

That makes no sense. One derailment erases any profit that would be gained from ignoring safety.

• mynameisnoone 3y ago
  Have you seen John Oliver lately? Please go watch infoedutainment materials first.
• klodolph 3y ago
  You have to understand how profits in the rail sector work. Making the system move faster translates directly to additional capacity. More capacity translates to more revenue. Think about it this way—if you increase the speed that a train moves by 10%, then you can make 10% more trips with the same system, in the same amount of time. You can keep doing this until profit you get from the additional capacity results is wiped out by the losses caused by accidents. The largest rail freight company in the US has operating revenue of something like $25 billion, with margins around 50%. The recent derailment in Ohio cost an estimated $1 billion. By that math, you could increase the speed until every 4% speed increase would result in 1 derailment per year of that scale, or some combination of smaller derailments. There are about 3 derailments per day in the US. (Note that this is a much lower figure than it was 20 or 50 years ago.)
  • panick21_ 3y ago
    Yeah and I'm sure they are paying for all the police, firefighter, cleanup and all the other issues caused. And they don't have to really pay for delay on Amtrak lines either. They are systematically devaluing vital infrastructure to increase short term profit and have done the bare minimum of investment. Systematically devaluing vital infrastructure in the country. For the US not to treat the railroads as a strategic infrastructure is borderline insane.