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A comment on EPA Orders Norfolk Southern to Conduct All Cleanup Actions Related to Derailment. Parent comment

Re:EPA Orders Norfolk Southern to Conduct All Cleanup Action... by mushbino on Tuesday February 21, 2023 @02:15PM (#34885545)
I'm really hoping the residents and rail workers realize they need to come together for this common cause. Unfortunately, busting the rail strike as both parties did only contributes to this problem in a major way. Nobody is coming to save us. These issues can only be resolved with people coming together in collective action.

As a side note, i hope they go bankrupt and we expropriate them. Railroads are too important to leave largely to the private sector. Our rail infrastructure compared to really any developed nation is abysmally sad.

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Re:EPA Orders Norfolk Southern to Conduct All Cleanup Action... by Meerax on Tuesday February 21, 2023 @02:27PM (#34885728)
Our rail infrastructure is abysmal. Nationalizing it is perhaps not the way to go, but a serious change needs to happen. Speaking as a former Ohioan who grew up in the Ohio river valley.
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Re:EPA Orders Norfolk Southern to Conduct All Cleanup Action... by adgjlsfhk1 on Tuesday February 21, 2023 @02:28PM (#34885747)
Name a country with good rail that hasn't nationalized it (hint, you can't).
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Re:EPA Orders Norfolk Southern to Conduct All Cleanup Action... by yardie on Tuesday February 21, 2023 @02:40PM (#34885913)
Japan privatized their railway in the early 90s. It's really good. This is not an endorsement of privatization just a counterpoint to the argument of national vs privatized transport systems. What it means is leadership and management has to be truly held accountable.
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Re:EPA Orders Norfolk Southern to Conduct All Cleanup Action... by input_sh on Tuesday February 21, 2023 @03:48PM (#34887010)
Worth pointing out that a major part of why it works in Japan is that rail companies also own real estate around stations. High foot traffic allows them to charge high rent to stores.
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Re:EPA Orders Norfolk Southern to Conduct All Cleanup Action... by yardie on Tuesday February 21, 2023 @04:08PM (#34887359)
This is also the business model for the private rail in Hong Kong, Singapore, and now Florida with Brightline.

The Brightline model is surprising because it shouldn't work. Miami and Orlando aren't well thought of for there public transit systems. Yet, this premium intercity train is expanding. I'm not convinced they are profitable as a train, but they own the property around downtown train stations which is really hot right now.

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Re:EPA Orders Norfolk Southern to Conduct All Cleanup Action... by johnny22 on Tuesday February 21, 2023 @02:35PM (#34885850)
japan maybe? I don't know all the details of their setup though. I know there are multiple lines managed by multiple different companies though.
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Re:EPA Orders Norfolk Southern to Conduct All Cleanup Action... by margalabargala on Tuesday February 21, 2023 @04:31PM (#34887725)
Japan is well known for its excellent rail system, which is almost entirely privately run.

For European countries your point stands.

If companies in the US and Europe had the same sense of social duty that companies in Japan do, this wouldn't be an issue in the first place, though.

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Re:EPA Orders Norfolk Southern to Conduct All Cleanup Action... by a_JIT_pie on Tuesday February 21, 2023 @02:28PM (#34885749)
A big reason Amtrak is so shit is due to private rail industry taking priority on our shitty track infrastructure.
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Re:EPA Orders Norfolk Southern to Conduct All Cleanup Action... by User23 on Tuesday February 21, 2023 @02:38PM (#34885887)
It used to be any railroad that wanted to carry US Mail, so all of them, was required to hitch at least one passenger car onto their trains. The railroad executives insisted that this was so burdensome it would put them out of business so the law was changed. But before that change you could take a train to literally anywhere in the USA where freight trains go, which is basically everywhere including many small towns.

E.B. White wrote a marvelous essay on the subject called The Railroad.

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Re:EPA Orders Norfolk Southern to Conduct All Cleanup Action... by braingenious on Tuesday February 21, 2023 @02:29PM (#34885754)
lol at “publicly managed public infrastructure is literally the same thing as genocide!! Ceaușescu also built roads, MURDERER”
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Re:EPA Orders Norfolk Southern to Conduct All Cleanup Action... by maybelsyrup on Tuesday February 21, 2023 @03:13PM (#34886419)
Nationalize the railroads, 100%.
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Re:EPA Orders Norfolk Southern to Conduct All Cleanup Action... by jcranmer on Tuesday February 21, 2023 @03:19PM (#34886500)
Considering what happened the last time the railroads were nationalized, I doubt that's a very good idea.
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Re:EPA Orders Norfolk Southern to Conduct All Cleanup Action... by kevviiinn on Tuesday February 21, 2023 @03:24PM (#34886588)
Which was what, exactly?
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Re:EPA Orders Norfolk Southern to Conduct All Cleanup Action... by jcranmer on Tuesday February 21, 2023 @03:52PM (#34887078)
Essentially, the US government undermaintained the railroads (the modern public transit scourge of "deferred maintenance" practiced a hundred years ago). It ran the railroads with a more or less single-minded mindset to supplying war goods, and after the war was over, kept a heavy touch on the railroads which made them unable to adapt to the increasing competition from heavily-subsidized highways and airlines, which combined with the headache of "deferred maintenance" meant that railroads suffered from about 1920 to 1980. (It wasn't until the failure of Penn Central that things really started getting better.)
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Re:EPA Orders Norfolk Southern to Conduct All Cleanup Action... by kevviiinn on Tuesday February 21, 2023 @06:49PM (#34889469)
According to the wikipedia article, Conrail actually inherited a terrible maintenance situation when the railroads bankrupted and were nationalized. Conrail then proceeded to manage maintenance and got things profitable.

It was doing just fine when Reagan decided to privatize for some reason.

Nationalizing actually fixed the situation so I don't kmow where you got the impression that it made things worse

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conrail

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Re:EPA Orders Norfolk Southern to Conduct All Cleanup Action... by jcranmer on Tuesday February 21, 2023 @07:52PM (#34890004)
I'm talking about nationalization during WW1. Conrail didn't nationalize all the railroads (which did happen during WW1), just the bankrupt Penn Central.
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Re:EPA Orders Norfolk Southern to Conduct All Cleanup Action... by kevviiinn on Tuesday February 21, 2023 @08:25PM (#34890274)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Railroad_Admin...

This one? Maybe I missed it in my brief skim but I don't see anything negative

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Re:EPA Orders Norfolk Southern to Conduct All Cleanup Action... by jcranmer on Tuesday February 21, 2023 @09:06PM (#34890626)
Yeah. The Wikipedia page isn't all that great on this topic; I'm going off of my recollections from the book American Railroads, although it's been a few decades since I last read it.
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Re:EPA Orders Norfolk Southern to Conduct All Cleanup Action... by kevviiinn on Tuesday February 21, 2023 @09:14PM (#34890679)
If you know of any material that's available on the internet I would be glad to read it
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Re:EPA Orders Norfolk Southern to Conduct All Cleanup Action... by jcranmer on Tuesday February 21, 2023 @09:26PM (#34890778)
I apologize, because I don't know of any off the top of my head.
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