Amtrak Train Was Moving In Excess of 100 mph on a Curve With a Speed Limit of 50

We need to spend $10 billion more per year on the crucial infrastructure of telling engineers not to blow the speed limit by more than double.

An Amtrak train involved in a fatal crash here appears to have been traveling at more than 100 miles an hour as it entered a sharp curve where it derailed Tuesday night, killing at least seven people, according to two people with knowledge of the investigation.

The speed limit in that section of track drops to 50 miles per hour, according to the Federal Railroad Administration.

Investigators are focusing on the possibility that excessive speed was a factor in the derailment, one of these people said.

MSNBC was pretty sure this was all due to Republican Spending Cuts Slowdowns in the Rate of Growth.

As the leftwing media blabbles about "more infrastructure spending," John Nolte looks at 11 things they're not focusing on.

9. Taxpayers Subsidize Passengers Who Can Afford to Make Amtrak Profitable

The welfare queens riding in Amtrak luxury at the benefit of the American taxpayers are mostly not the poor. Nevertheless, you and I and future generations are subsidizing every ticket purchased by those who can afford to pay the fare required to make Amtrak profitable.

Many of the same media elite already using Tuesday night's tragedy to call for more government spending on Amtrak, also are guilty of welfare queening on Amtrak between their Emerald Cities of Washington DC and Manhattan.

This is from a 1997 Cato Institute Study. There is nothing, though, that indicates anything’s changed much. In fact, with the labor force so diminished and Washington DC attracting more and more of the connected and wealthy, it would not surprise me to learn that even fewer of the poor benefit from Amtrak:

Amtrak's typical riders are not low-income Americans. The poor are less likely to travel by Amtrak than by most other travel options. Only 13 percent of Amtrak passengers have incomes below $20,000. The average Amtrak rider has a higher household income than the average taxpayer. In fact, the clientele for Amtrak Metroliner service between Washington and New York consists largely of Wall Street traders, K Street lobbyists and other affluent business travelers. These folks aren't poor.

And there's this:

Progressives object when conservatives (or moderate) note that their first, last, and best answer for any question is "Spend More Taxpayer Dollars." With the kneejerk cries of "spend more money!" coming before the black boxes are analyzed, it's time to accept this not as a charge but as a Fact.

To which we should also add another observation: The party of government never wishes to discuss the poor performance of government employees; they always change the subject, and even begin suggesting that the way to make incompetent government workers do the jobs they are paid to do is to just Pay Them More Taxpayer Dollars.

Update: This claims the engineer did give a statement.

Amtrak Train Was Moving In Excess of 100 mph on a Curve With a Speed Limit of 50&bodytext=We need to spend $10 billion more per year on the crucial infrastructure of telling engineers not to blow the speed limit by more than double. An Amtrak train involved in a fatal crash here appears to have been traveling...&topic=world_news"> posted by Ace at 01:56 PM

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