Oh great. Just great. Just frikkin great.

[WilliamPitt]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/11/AR2005051102089.html

Acela Brake Flaws Posed Big Risk
Amtrak Chief Inspector Says Cracks Could Have Caused Major Accident

By Mike Musgrove
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, May 12, 2005; Page E01

The brake problem that sidelined the high-speed Acela Express train line could have caused a catastrophic accident had it gone undiscovered, Amtrak's inspector general said yesterday.

"We got very lucky that this was found when it was," said Fred E. Weiderhold Jr. in a hearing before a House Transportation and Infrastructure subcommittee. "We were getting dangerously close to a very, very serious problem."

Amtrak shut down its high-speed service on April 15, after a safety inspector with the Federal Railroad Administration noticed that a brake component appeared to be rusted. A resulting investigation turned up hairline cracks in 300 of 1,440 brake disks in the 20-train Acela fleet.

During the hearing, Weiderhold confirmed that one of the brake spokes, when cut from the brake disk rotor, fell apart in an engineer's hands.

...more...

I must have taken that exact train to DC half a dozen times in the last year. Yeesh.

[hank1901]

1. Never ride those trains. They are an accident waiting to happen.

We need to shut down Amtrac or get out of subsidies for them don't you agree?

[WilliamPitt]

3. No and no

I love Amtrak, I love trains. Just want the breaks to work.

[Richard Steele]

46. YUP. I tripped on a broken bit of sidewalk last week...

...so we obviously need to STOP MAINTAINING THE SIDEWALKS.

Brilliant!

EDIT, P.S.: welcome to DU, hank1901. Enjoy your stay.

[all.of.me]

54. 'the breaks'?!

aren't you a writer? not self-editing, i s'pose?

lol

oh i get it! you got a good night's sleep! now you're all confused....

[DS1]

4. Yes, lets funnel more money to the airlines. We should also

eliminate road construction funding, because every time I get on the highway there's some sort of accident. Driving is obviously dangerous. Sidewalk funding should be cut too, I stepped in a weapon of mass destruction yesterday.

[mike_c]

8. lol-- my cats of mass destruction likely left it there....

The flower beds are heavily mined.

[montanacowboy]

6. Well then should we shut down the airlines

and other transportation? Amtrack budget is continually cut while other transportation cash cows keep getting funded by the govt.

They WANT amtrack to fail, that is why they are starving them.

[Bridget Burke]

7. Nope, don't agree.

We've given the airlines tons of money & they are still failing--while screwing their employees. (Well managed ones are doing OK.)

We need to spend more money on Amtrak & expand its routes.

[CottonBear]

10. It's spelled Amtrak. Have you never ridden a high speed train?

No, I most certainly do not agree. The UK, most Commonwealth countries and the countires of the EU subsidize their national train systems. It's why they have excellent public transportation.

Did you know that we (the American public) subsidize the entire US highway system and also fund massive highway and bridge construction in all 50 states? We also subsidize airlines.

[hank1901]

16. Big difference is that those are all VERY SMALL countries so trains are

more efficient for them.

In America it makes zero sense to take a train from coast to coast
...............unless you are afraid of flying.

[bertha katzenengel]

21. "it makes zero sense to take a train from coast to coast" -- unless

Unless of course you're one of those pesky, low-stress, slow-moving, tree-hugging, HAPPY souls who want to see the incredibly gorgeous land that decades of thoughtless, shameless genocide got us.

[Kathy in Cambridge]

24. Those of us in the Northeast rely on public transportation

it makes TOTAL sense for the most populous part of the country to have Amtrak.

[DS1]

27. Yes, there's a REASON it's called the "Great Flyover"

Regardless of how pretty Bertha may think it is, there's nothing there. Except maybe that pit-stop on the water with the tall tower.

[Kathy in Cambridge]

31. LOL-my sentiments exactly

Hank Hill is probably from the flyover flatlands.

[CottonBear]

39. Australia, Canada, Germany, France and the UK are small?

We must have taken different geography classes or else you've never been abroad?

And, by the way, you can take a train coast to coast here in the USA.

[CottonBear]

53. Canada, Germany, Australia and France are not small. n/t

[punpirate]

13. Don't know how old you are...

... but chances are good you're likely to see a day when fuel is far too expensive for you to afford. If we follow your suggested plan of action, you're going to be doing a great deal of walking, if you want to get anywhere.

Hope hiking boots aren't too expensive.

The actual cost of subsidizing public transportation, and keeping it safe and effective, is very small compared to the economic damage resulting from importing larger and larger amounts of increasingly expensive oil and maintaining a badly bloated defense budget for the purpose of subsidizing weapons manufacturers and waging wars of opportunity.

Cheers.

[hank1901]

23. Wow, you and I really disagree on this one.

I am not a worry wart. Alternative fuels will be readily available IF and WHEN we need them. America will lead the world like we always do in this issue.

It seems to this college kid that our "badly bloated" defense budget is a smaller percentage of spending than it has been since Vietnam days with twice as good of weapons and soldiers.

Just how would YOU defend America from the hoards in the world that want to see it destroyed like Hitler, Mao, Stalin to name just 3 did?

How?

[Kathy in Cambridge]

25. You're too funny. Talk about paranoid.

"Just how would YOU defend America from the hoards in the world that want to see it destroyed like Hitler, Mao, Stalin to name just 3 did?"

Grammar 101.

[CottonBear]

42. I thought that Grammar 101 was required back in grade school. n.t

[bertha katzenengel]

26. "Just how would YOU defend America from the hoards" *sic*

I would not defend this country from the hateful hordes by stirring up more hatred like our esteemed president and his band of merry men have done.

[DS1]

29. Easy, sign your college-aged ass up

Duh

[blue neen]

33. Have "YOU" stopped by your local military recruiting office lately?

They are desperate for "college kids" like you right now. Recruitments are way down these days. See, most of America now knows that there were no weapons of mass destruction.

All lies hon, all lies.

[Misunderestimator]

36. "Alternative fuels will be readily available IF and WHEN we need them."

:rofl:

Right... first... IF we need them? :wtf:

Second... right... let's just wait for America to lead the world as we always do... OMG :rofl:

[da_chimperor]

41. Do you rig your doors and windows with claymore mines before going to bed?

I'm asking because it seems like you would with that mindset.

[DS1]

50. No, but the lights are left on, and there's never a bear out of reach

;-)

[punpirate]

52. My first suggestion...

... if you're in college, is to spend a lot more time in the library researching the subject, as I have been doing for the last couple of years.

With regard to America's dominance in all things: you've been deluded into believing the United States is first in everything. There's a subject for research.

As for alternative fuels: here's a little fact. It takes 1.4 calories of energy now to produce 1 calorie of fuel or food. Here's another: within the last few months, the US became a net food importer, meaning we import more food than we produce. Biofuels look a lot more iffy under those circumstances.

Hydrogen is a possibility, but there's not enough storage capacity in an automobile for gaseous bydrogen. And, there's the issue of accidents (of which we have a great many in this country). Hydrogen will spontaneously ignite, quite dramatically, in the presence of oxygen just by pressure changes in the local atmosphere.

Now, about that amount of spending on defense, as compared to the Vietnam years: one must remember that so-called defense in this country is actually about offensive capability, and one has to figure black projects, intelligence and the share of interest on the national debt for military-related spending--to include VA costs, military retirements, and the amounts spent as deficit spending.

One estimate of the share of interest on the debt today for military-related spending is about 80%. Total interest budgeting this year is about $330 billion.

So, this year, all published items in the defense budget will be about $420 billion, about $30 billion in black-world and off-the-shelf projects, civilian intelligence is secret, but is estimated to be around $35 billion for the NSA, CIA and counterintelligence operations of the FBI. Add about $30 billion in additional funds for so-called homeland security, about $260 billion in debt interest, about $70 billion to operate the VA. Add in the average supplemental, off-budget cost of waging current wars (about $100 billion per year).

The actual cost of maintaining a large standing army and a long-term weapons research, development and production system (a violation of Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution) is today about $855 billion per year. The discretionary part of the federal budget (the part paid by all taxes other than for Social Security and Medicare) is about $1.3 trillion. Defense-related items therefore account for about 65% of that budget, and with deficit spending, about 50% of all actual discretionary spending.

Now, for that, we have a military manpower level about half the size of that during the Vietnam years. We spend far more per unit weapon than we once did. For example, during a particularly bad year in Vietnam, 1967, we lost 900 aircraft of all types in about five months. The replacement cost of those aircraft in then-current dollars was about $6 billion (about $30 billion today). That $30 billion in current dollars buys us now about a dozen B-2 bombers with spare parts. In the early `80s, the purchase price of an F-15 was about $25-30 million, depending upon upgrades. The anticipated replacement for the plane, the Joint Strike Force fighter is expected to be around $350 million each, and that price was based on a larger production run, which may not come about because of costs.

So, are we getting better, or just getting much more expensive.

As for those threats you mention, Hitler, Stalin, Mao (by the way, it's "hordes" not "hoards"), Hitler was an obvious threat; Germany declared war on us before we declared war, and the country expected many sacrifices to build for that threat. That's one of the realities of world war. It doesn't mean that, once the threat is dispelled, that wartime spending and policies need be continued.

I hasten to remind you that the USSR was on our side during WWII, perhaps as a matter of convenience, and that the threat of communism, post-WWII, was largely a manufactured threat in this country, a threat which benefitted a select segment of the economy--defense aerospace. If you spend more time in the library, you will find many oddities occurring immediately after WWII, including the fact that the Soviet Union was in no shape to fight a protracted war, that US estimates of their capabilities were consistently too high and unrealistic (which benefitted whom?) throughout the so-called Cold War, that for the first time in the history of the country, the draft was reinstated in peacetime (in 1947), that very quietly in the Eisenhower administration, there were plans to make industry a permanent partner of the DoD. That the people yelling most loudly about the threat of communism were supported, politically and financially, by the people who made a very large amount of money from defense spending, etc.

Now, with regard to military spending, soldiers and weapons who are twice as good, etc. On September 11, 2001, nineteen people using Stone Age technology (knives) overcame the most sophisticated and expensive threat-warning system in the history of the world and inflicted noticeable casualties on the US simply by turning our technology against us--the terrorist equivalent of jiujitsu.

Have we really been spending money wisely on our defense, or have we been doing something quite different? I've been researching this issue for almost two years.

With regard to public transportation, I spent thirteen years in the transportation manufacturing industry. I know whereof I speak.

Cheers.

[Kathy in Cambridge]

17. Then let's shut down the airlines too and stop giving THEM subsidies

[name not needed]

19. Hey asshole, I think you're on the wrong site.

[Zuni]

20. then what are we going to do for trains?

I personally like taking the train. I have taken amtrack to NYC and to Florida and it was far prefferable to driving.

[Misunderestimator]

34. LOL.... Welcome to DU!

While we're at it, let's shut down subsidies for everything, right?

[Worst Username Ever]

40. SEE YA

[Misunderestimator]

48. Nice knowin' ya!

:hi: :rofl:

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

56. I never listen to freeptards. They are an accident waiting to happen

oh..wait...the accident already happened then they re-elected it.

[yvr girl]

2. It's good to have an angel on your shoulder

[johnnie]

5. Ehhhhh

Brakes shmakes. Who needs em? All you have to do is jump out of it when you see it about to crash. That's what I do in my car.

[mr_hat]

9. But in your car, you don't have to form a line to jump out.

[johnnie]

11. Sit by a window

[mr_hat]

12. The windows don't open, you know.

[Redstone]

14. It's because we don't give AMTRAK enough money. As another poster

pointed out, there is NO SUCH THING as passenger rail service that pays for itself.

If we (as a country) want to have it, we have to pay for it, just like every other country does.

(I'm for paying for it, by the way.)

Redstone

[Zuni]

22. I personally would miss Amtrak

I would much rather take the train from Baltimore to New York, Boston etc. than drive

[Redstone]

35. So would a lot of other people. That's why we need to fund the train

operations with tax money. Every car kepst off the highway is a plus.

Redstone

[Kathy in Cambridge]

15. I used to take the Acela once a week

:scared:

Now I drive to NY.

[madinmaryland]

30. I haven't had to take Amtrak recently,

but anytime I commute to NYC/Boston/Philly/DC I take the train. I-95 scares me way too much. The Merritt Parkway is even worse.

[Kathy in Cambridge]

32. I-95 is always under construction. the Merritt is usually OK.

I drive if I'm going to Westchester or NJ, but if I go to Manhattan, I always take the train.

[Lex]

18. Unfortunately we are always seconds away from

death. A driver veers out of control on the highway. An earthquake. A gas leak. Bad brakes on a train.

Ugh. Now I've bummed myself out.

[progressoid]

28. I took the TJV from Paris to the Pyrenees a couple years ago.

What a pleasure. No hassles getting on or off. Fast and quiet. Read a book. Coffee and a croissant.

Sure would hate to have that kind of service here.:crazy:

[da_chimperor]

38. The TGV is getting kinda old. The German ICE trains are wicked awesome.

[CottonBear]

43. I love the ICE trains!

I rode from Basel to Paris on an ICE. ZOOM! :)

[da_chimperor]

51. I've taken the ICE quite a few times before. Fast, quiet, convenient.

I love trains. :D

[Kellanved]

37. since when is the Acela express a "high speed" service?

High Speed means high-speed trains running on state-of-the-art straight tracks. Amtrak bought the trains, but forgot about the infrastructure.

[WilliamPitt]

45. It is pretty damned fast

Straight to New York at over 100 mph with no stops, and the station is in the heart of the city. Takes about 3.5 hours.

Compare that to getting to Logan, screwing around at bag check, wading through security, waiting at the gate, flying into two of the zooiest airports on the East coast, collecting your crap, getting out of the airport, finding a ride into the city, and dealing with traffic/train crowds to get there.

The Acela is so much better for getting to NY or DC...but yeah, I wondered the same thing when they first put it in about the tracks. Looks like the tracks weren't the problem.

[Kellanved]

47. exactly

OK, I was too stingy to try it out and went with the normal amtrak train instead, but still.


100 Mph isn't fast - it is about half the speed of what the TGV, the acela's technological basis, could do. IIRC Boston <-> NYC is about 200 miles; the Hamburg<-> Berlin ICE takes about 90 minutes for that distance. :D

[Tektonik]

44. I love Amtrak

It's handy to take whenever I need to go from San Diego back to Chatsworth (NW LA). But we really should have some high speed trains on the coasts. A line from LA to Vegas alone would make tons of money.

[blue neen]

49. Amtrak has a great service from Virginia to Florida.

It's called the Auto Train. They load you and your car on in Lorton, VA. The next morning you're in Sanford, FL (just north of Orlando).

They even have a "Bar Car" that's all windows. You can stay up all night and drink if you want or just gaze at the stars.

[xmas74]

55. Throwing my 0.02 in here.

I love Amtrak. I used to take it for day trips to St. Louis or KC. I can load right in my town (since I live close to the depot, I don't even have to drive). My daughter and I have a relaxing trip where I don't have to hear her whine about going to the bathroom nor do I have to feel her little feet kicking me in the back while I'm trying to navigate some of the worst maintained roads around. And it's always been a very inexpensive trip. Plus, my kid thinks that riding on a train is one of the coolest things to do-ever.
If Amtrak were taken away I would very much miss it.

[Elidor]

57. There goes one of your nine lives

Be mindful of the other eight.