Amtrak speed control system installed but wasn’t turned on

Chuck Schumer blamed the House for Amtrak budget cuts. Well I can Say "CHUCK YOU" Schumer! You Liberal Hacks are doing Like Emanuel Said. Never let a good Crisis go to waste! I heard this from a person from TSB that will prove that Schumer is a LIAR!

Amtrak had installed the "Positive Train Control" system on the track where a speeding train fatally crashed Tuesday, but the system was not switched on. The system could have automatically slowed the Amtrak 188, but instead it jumped the rails, killing 8 people and injuring more than 200.

According to a top congressional aide, Amtrak told the House Appropriations Committee on Thursday that the PTC system was installed along the section of track outside Philadelphia’s 30th Street Station, where the crash occurred, but it was not operating. The aide said Amtrak informed the committee it has encountered delays turning the PTC on throughout its system because of the need to get the bandwidths required to upgrade the radios to a higher MHz, which improves reliability.

Amtrak has worked out a deal with the Federal Communication Commission to get the broader bandwidth either late last year or early this year, an aide said.

So Amtrak didn’t have this safety equipment because of any lack of money. They didn’t have it because of government delays. (The FCC was too busy trying to take over the internet.)

Funny how this isn’t a top story at Yahoo News or on the networks. Why is that, do you think?

[Amtrak] has spent $110 million on the PTC system over the past five years… House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said Thursday funding was not the issue, but rather the high speed at which it was being driven. But Democrats said funding could have prevented the crash by hastening the installation of the PTC.

"Speaker Boehner’s comments are patently false," Chuck Schumer… Schumer said[:] "It is simply a fact that insufficient funding for Amtrak has delayed the installation of PTC, and to deny a connection between the accident and underfunding Amtrak is to deny reality."

It is simply a fact that Mr. Schumer is a loudmouthed hack who will lie about anything to try to gain partisan advantage. (Cf. the run on the banks that started the ‘Great Recession.’)

Republicans point out they funded fiscal 2016 rail safety programs at 2015 levels and made no cuts…

Nitpickers.

According to the Association of American railroads, installing PTC will cost about $9 billion by the time it is fully implemented.

Yep. It makes far more sense to spend another $9 billion on Amtrak than to hire and train competent engineers. (Sarcasm.)

The association calls for moving the deadline to finish it past the December 2015, but not [because of any] lack of funding:

"Due to PTC’s complexity and the enormity of the implementation task," the an association statement said, "and the fact that much of the technology PTC requires simply did not exist when the PTC mandate was passed and has had to be developed from scratch, much work remains to be done. Despite railroads’ best efforts, various technical and non-technical challenges make full development and deployment of PTC by 2015 impossible."

Don’t worry. The news media won’t let these pesky details get in the way of their latest soap opera storyline.

http://sweetness-light.com/archive/fcc-complexity-caused-delays-in-amtrak-safety-system

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/14/boehner-amtrak-crash_n_7287446.html

http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2015/05/15/the_amtrak_funding_narrative_falls_apart

“How stupid do they think we are? [...] This is not a ‘crumble’ problem – this is a speeding problem. This isn’t an...
Posted by The Kelly File on Thursday, May 14, 2015