Thursday, May 14, 2015

american beauty.

an ongoing discussion/moment of clarity.




words.

"We don’t know yet what caused Tuesday night’s train derailment in Philadelphia, which killed at least seven people and injured scores more. On Wednesday, the National Transportation Safety Board said that the train was travelling at more than a hundred miles an hour, on a sharp turn where the speed limit was just fifty miles an hour. But even if human error was responsible for what happened, the crash also highlights the fact that some stretches of the track that Amtrak uses are unsuitable for high-speed travel, and they are also not equipped with the modern technology necessary to enable automatic override systems, which can slow down speeding trains.

 ...One thing we do know for sure is that, for decades now, the United States has been allowing its public infrastructure to decay.

...And that’s just transportation infrastructure. Many of America’s schools, sewage systems, and parks could do with an upgrade, too. A couple of years ago, a survey by the World Economic Forum ranked the United States twenty-fifth globally in overall quality of infrastructure, behind such nations as Spain, Oman, and South Korea. That’s hardly surprising..."

THE NEW YORKER: After the Amtrak Crash, It’s Time to Get Serious About Transportation Infrastructure

SEE ALSO:

HUFF POST MEDIA: Rachel Maddow Blames Congress For Amtrak Derailment

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