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A 14-year-old took home $10,000 for his award-winning investigation into train derailments. Here's what he found.
(www.businessinsider.com)
this post was submitted on 03 Nov 2024
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This kid just got 10k for saying rail infrastructure is failing due to a lack of maintenance. Specifically the springs at junctions. The main failing here in the US though is that rail maintenance falls to rail companies that have little financial incentive to spend the money on safety. That may be changing, however if the federal government just hands over money with inadequate oversight it will just enrich the companies.
https://www.transportation.gov/briefing-room/fact-sheet-rail-safety
https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/how-us-rail-system-works
https://www.publicrailnow.org/site/assets/files/1036/putting_america_back_on_track_final_6-30-24_single_pages.pdf
Sounds almost as if critical infrastructure should be owned by the public.
But that stinks of communism, doesn't it... 😄
I can't wait until Mccarthy has his final death and nobody remembers him anymore...
Need to remember the bastards to remember to piss on their graves.
Much as I understand your sentiment, I think it's important to remember the people who did horrible things like McCarthy, and use him as a warning to our younger generations who didn't see the problems they created.
You know, and the grave pissing.
Thanks to how history is being recorded, there's no chance that he will be forgotten until civilization collapses.
I wouldn't want history to actually forget any shitty person (or good person) because that makes it way easier for someone with similar ideals to take power again.
It's more the sentiment.
I have a metaphorical bucket of piss just for Margaret Thatcher. ^26+6=1^
Given that you yourself are remembering him, you can't wait until you die / have dementia?
Life is one endless torment after another, soooooooo.......
The alternative to communism is drift towards monarchy.
Sprinkle a bit of communism on that capitalism.
Tim Roth?
Conrail has left the chat.
Check out that last link I posted there
I wasn't disagreeing with you, I was making an (hopefully) entertaining comment.
No disagreement inferred! Just playing along and pointing out the last link to those that may not get to it is all. I'll just go back to doomscrolling election predictions and lamenting our lack of RCV here in the states.
The worst part of this is that that money is not just wasted, it's used to lobby politicians to make it worse.
And to be clear, the railroads don't need more money, back when Biden banned Warren Buffet's railroad from striking, I did the math, they could afford to double their work force, giving them all half the year off, and pay each one of them 100K/year, and still give the shareholders multiple billions a year.
Absolutely, Robber Barons have been a thing since the rails were laid. It's a shit system and the main reason we don't have highspeed rail.
I took Amtrak across the country once. The freight trains are supposed to give priority to the passenger trains so they leave and arrive (mostly) on time, but (outside the NEC) they mostly don't bother and they've never been held to those requirements. Once again, prioritizing "stuff" over people.
They're prioritizing profits. This is just capitalism working as intended.
Oh it's simpler than that. They just go around the requirement via loopholes in the agreements. They know they're required to give priority, so they just make the freight trains too long to fit on the side track on those routes. So if there's a conflict, the freight train physically cannot get out of the way and the passenger one has to.
Not to mention the inflationary effects of shareholders skimming a set percentage in profits off everything that gets transported over rail. If the government ran it at cost, a huge drag on the economy would be removed.