Tax Breaks for Trains

Tax breaks for the very rich will make you realize how much they really don’t care much for the needs of Americans. In other countries there are high speed safe rail lines taking their citizens all over their countries in affordable and safe ways. Not here in America. Last winter alone there were two deadly back to back crashed and recently the National Transportation Safety Board had meetings with the people who manage America’s rail lines to see what could be done to make rail travel safer. People died when an Amtrak train went over a bridge in Washington, State. In South Carolina in February an Amtrak train plowed into a freight train killing more people.

Maybe part of the problem is the fact that Amtrak doesn’t own or control the majority of the tracks it operates. Amtrak uses more than 21,300 miles of track to take people places. Almost 97% of that tract belongs to other railroads. Mostly six big privately owned companies like BNSF, CSX, Union Pacific, NS and CN get big tax breaks from Trump but they don’t have to make any improvements to the rail lines unless they want to. As usual, Disastrous Donald makes BAD deals. These companies are more interested in moving coal, chemicals, lumber and food so if a train derails they don’t expect to lose any lives just a lot of mess on the tracks for a cleanup.

We know that private companies built the United States rail tracks but they should be held accountable for stricter safety regulations for all the perks Trump has given to these rich privately owned companies. They used to run passenger trains too but starting in the 1950’s ridership declined with the improvements that were made to long distant highways. In 1971 President Nixon took passenger trains of the hands of private companies in his Rail Passenger Service Act that created Amtrak. Rail companies were happy because now they could concentrate on transporting freight that is more profitable. The Amtrak deal was about service and not about infrastructure. The tracks themselves stayed in the hands of the companies that built them.

So why should they improve the tracks? A rickety rackety cargo train doesn’t need smooth new tracks but passenger trains need a smooth ride! So when Silver Star Train number 91 was making its way to Miami on February 4^th it was traveling on rail owned by CSX, a private freight company. The Amtrak crew had to ask permission to the CSX dispatchers to keep going. The CEO of Amtrak said that CSX was responsible for the locked switch which diverted Train number 91 and ultimately sent it head on into a CSX freight train. Shouldn’t passenger trains get first priority in safety and upgrades to new accurate switches to   avoid causalities? Trump could care less.

Even if the freight train company causes the accident it is likely that Amtrak and our tax dollars will have to pay the damages thanks to no fault liability deals between the agencies and the private companies and the infrastructure it depends on. Trump could have demanded changes to that too with his gift of tax breaks for rich privately owned companies. There is a good computerized system called Positive Train Control that could have been installed and would have prevented the devastating train crash. It is a safety system that automatically stops or slows down a train. Back in 2008 Congress passed a law making it mandatory to be installed by 2015. But the powerful privately rail owned lobbyists gave contributions to lawmakers wanting more time to install and delay the improvements. Trump could have demanded that the safety improvements be made before he gave these companies more perks.  He didn’t do anything.

Trump likes to play golf for personal profit at his resorts and spends his time twice a week on re-election campaigning. How again is he making America great?