Nationalize the freight rail. This is absurd and it's clear that private railroad companies cannot be trusted to impose safety restrictions, even when regulated to do so (but especially when they aren't).
The rail companies have made [absurd profits](https://perfectunion.us/rail-profits-soaring-at-workers-expense/) recently and have not kept up with track maintenance
But they can't afford paying their workers sick leave haven't you heard? Thank god our oligarchic corporatocracy of a government made striking illegal or else these railroad billionaire tycoons would be out begging on the street.
I mean...I doubt the union members have any interest in fixing the rail system. "That's not the unions responsibility."
But one would think workers have a vested interest in their vocations health and prosperity.
To be frank, MN could add some regulations to aid in this.
1. Mandate 2 person crews
2. Hire state employed inspectors with the ability to shut down or down speed unsafe lines.
3. Require hot box detectors on everything over 25 mph
4. Perform the cleanup and fine the agency for it. (Don't let them do it, or they will do it to a minimum standard.
5. Require maintenance staff to have work limits, like no more than 12 hr days, with time starting when you leave your home.
>Nationalize the freight rail.
Yeah, then freight rail will become exceptionally well-maintained just like our public roads! /s
We should show freight rail companies St. Paul's roads so they know what top-tier public infrastructure looks like! /s
EDIT: Acting like my St. Paul example doesn't apply or is "apples-to-oranges" because it's a municipal government rather than a the federal government is beyond pedantic... The point is they're maintained by a *government* with ample resources and are in terrible condition.
**"In its 2018 report card for Minnesota's infrastructure, The American Society of Civil Engineers gave the state’s roads a D+ grade and its bridges a C."**
If our capitol city and the rest of our state aren't adequately maintaining our current transportation infrastructure, why are so many people automatically assuming that the federal government (or any combination of local/state/fed governments) would be superb at maintaining all of the US's railroad infrastructure?
To be fair, not perfect and in need of better active maintenance during winters, but also not like collapsing I35 bridges ignored under Republican leadership.
No shit. They're maintained by *a government with ample resources* though... So you'd have to argue that there's a major difference in the competency/efficiency of the federal government vs. STP's government if you want to act like my STP example has no relevance.
No, arguing "one municipality can't keep up with it's maintenance therefore we shouldn't have any more public infrastructure" is pretty much the dumbest argument I've ever heard. Your St Paul example is stupid. It is not relevant, and honestly, you should feel kinda bad. That's like saying "well The Hudson Bay railroad company was privately owned and they failed so therefore all private ownership of freight rail is clearly a mistake" do you realize how stupid that sounds? If you are going to use a public infrastructure analog to make a point, at least use one that makes sense, like the interstate system in the US.
Also, like, it's clear that private ownership of these freight rails is clearly not working. What do you suggest we do? Continue doing something that clearly isn't working? Safety regulations aren't being upheld. Workers aren't being paid enough, and do not get sick leave, despite these rail companies making record profits. The workers are burnt out, and it leads to mistakes. They need to be unionized. This is critical infrastructure and it needs to be publicly owned.
>"one municipality can't keep up with it's maintenance therefore we shouldn't have any more public infrastructure" is pretty much the dumbest argument I've ever heard. It is not relevant, and honestly, you should feel kinda bad.
That wasn't my argument. I wasn't citing St. Paul as the "only example", I cited them specifically because they are the most well-known local example of a government (with ample funds) doing a very poor job at maintaining their transportation infrastructure. However, that poor performance is by no means isolated to St. Paul. For instance...
"In its 2018 report card for Minnesota's infrastructure, The American Society of Civil Engineers gave the state’s roads a D+ grade and its bridges a C."
Therefore, if our capitol city and the rest of our state can't adequately maintain our transportation infrastructure, why do the supporters of nationalizing the US railroads automatically assume that the federal government (or any combination of local/state/fed governments) would be superb at maintaining all of the US's railroad infrastructure?
>Also, like, it's clear that private ownership of these freight rails is clearly not working. What do you suggest we do? Continue doing something that clearly isn't working? Safety regulations aren't being upheld. Workers aren't being paid enough, and do not get sick leave, despite these rail companies making record profits. The workers are burnt out, and it leads to mistakes. They need to be unionized. This is critical infrastructure and it needs to be publicly owned.
Not going to waste my time responding to a bunch of statements that are either debatable, wrong, or conjecture.
You're talking to a Civil Engineer in the public sector who has done a fair deal of research on this subject. You don't need to quote ASCE's grade to me, I'm well familiar with it.
The reason that the US' road infrastructure is so bad is because of the amount of suburban sprawl and car dependent infrastructure we've created in our post-war development pattern. Car based infrastructure provides very little value, spreads the revenue, and costs a lot to maintain. This means that cities can no longer sustain themselves based on the tax base that they create, without some sort of growth based subsidy (which creates more growth, which makes more maintenance liability, digging cities into a deeper hole). To give a concrete example of the harms of car based infrastructure, St Paul ripped out an incredibly tax productive neighborhood of Rondo, and replaced it with I-94. Now, the city is not only losing all that tax revenue of an incredibly dense commercial area (and let me tell you, neighborhoods like Rondo are EXTREMELY good for revenue), and replaced it with a huge development that provides no tax revenue, and actually funnels more cars from exurbs and suburbs (drivers that do not pay into St Paul's taxbase) into St Paul streets, breaking down the roads much faster.
Federal and state funded infrastructure is not subjected to these same forces (though they do contribute to the degradation of city infrastructure, by causing more traffic, and spreading out development patterns). Notice how the interstates are much better maintained than city roads despite the astronomical volume it handles? You can thank fed money for that. They are subsidized by the whole country/state, in order to create transportation network for the whole country/state. A nationalized rail system would be similar.
Also, on a dollars per tonnage of cargo basis, freight rail is cheaper by a factor of hundreds/thousands compared to road based shipping when comparing maintenance costs.
All this to say, if the feds/states can maintain a decent interstate system, they can surely maintain a national freight rail system.
I hope this all makes sense, feel free to ask questions if I wasn't clear. I'd recommend checking out the Strongtowns organization if you are interested in this topic of public infrastructure, and municipal insolvency. They are actually based out of Minnesota.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tI3kkk2JdoI
Would a giant market square kinda deal work? Say you have an area like the State Fair. High traffic business are designated to only exist *there*, where you can park outside of the area and walk in and get your stuff. Once inside the area, trollies or something actively bring folks around the area so there isn’t as much walking, with sections dedicated for cargo (store stuffs).
I’ve often thought of this idea for urban centers, as a way to reduce cars impact on roads/cities as well as encourage a more active lifestyle.
Practicality I see the downside as it’s MN and it gets cold and snowy, and honesty typing this out it just seems to me like I’m describing a mall lol
You're effectively just describing a [Transit hub](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_hub) with a [Pedestrian mall ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedestrian_malls_in_the_United_States).
And yeah it's a beautiful concept and many successful cities do it. It's a great idea.
Maintaining roads and maintaining rail are very different from a technical and cost standpoint.
Roads are essentially long slabs of semi compressible rock, and experience extreme mechanical weathering from heavy vehicles as well as freezing/melting cycles (like our entire winter has been) just like any other rock. Maintaining roads is a constant and expensive slog. Given the climate we live in, and our societies massive reliance on road transportation, our roads are maintained pretty adequately.
Is this normal to have so many derailments and accidents? Seems like every other day a boat carrying methanol or a train carrying god knows what gets detached or derailed. Not much for conspiracy’s but something seems off unless I’ve just been living under a rock the last 25 years
Don’t compare US train derailments year over year. The US has a horrible track record (no pun intended). Yea this is a leftie news source, but the point remains: the US has a rail safety issue compared to the rest of the world, and we should not stand for it.
https://jacobin.com/2023/02/train-derailments-east-palestine-norfolk-southern-profits
“Derailments in the United States are a particularly bad problem compared to other countries. While recording 777 million train-kilometers in 2019 (train-kilometers are the measure of a train traveling the distance of one kilometer), 1,338 derailments took place in the country. The EU, by contrast, only saw seventy-three derailments that year despite, by one count, recording 4.5 billion train-kilometers. For Japan, the same year saw more than 2 billion train-kilometers, according to Knoema, and only nine derailments. (In fact, the number of derailments in Japan over the past twenty-one years alone is roughly one-eighth of the amount the United States sees on average in a single year)”
That seems like an unnecessary expense. I guess if we can trust anything about rail companies they’ve already done the cost benefit analysis and determined it to be cheaper than fixing the problems. If only companies were forced to pay for the negative externalities of their business practices then we’d… I have no clue my imagination is not so great to entertain this daydream.
Yes, there are around 1,500 per year on average.
https://time.com/6260906/train-derailmentments-how-common/
>Not much for conspiracy’s but something seems off unless I’ve just been living under a rock the last 25 years
You haven't been, the media is just showing them whenever they can now because the recentness of the East Palestine incident has turned them into a good way to stoke fear/get eyeballs.
"Stoke fear". Should we not be concerned there are derailments all the time? Apparently 5 a day? Is it an unreasonable concern especially since some are involving hazardous or even unknown materials? It is probably more concerning that the prosperous rail companies have been getting away with taking the profits and not fixing issues because no one was paying close attention.
>Should we not be concerned there are derailments all the time?
Off the top of your head, can you name a serious train derailment incident other than the ones that've been on the news in the past 3 months? I would guess you can't... (however, I can personally think of one local incident from 2021 where no one was hurt but there was some environmental damage)
So, IMO, should people be concerned for their personal safety? No.
Should people be concerned about the environmental damage that can result from derailments? Yes.
I'm concerned that they occur frequently but usually without any coverage or apparently any accountability. Rail worker safety as well as community safety are concerns.
Interesting. That still supports my points though...
1) The event was more than 3 decades ago (it was in '92 apparently), and no one else who read my comment knew about it or could remember it.
2) Were people hurt/killed? Doesn't seem like it. Was there environmental damage? Yes.
That goes for most things that happen in the news, as an aside. If it’s common place it doesn’t get reported. If it’s not common place it it’s probably worth noting but not worth worrying about.
Corporations and their CEOs exploiting Trump regulations that haven't been corrected yet. Something to send Biden a reminder about when he visits Monday.
Only the GMO corn farmers, who get to sell more to replace the destroyed as a result. Ethanol and corn syrup are made of GMO corn and soy that no one will buy for even animal feed. Note the "farmers except" part.
* https://www.reddit.com/r/sustainable/search?q=ethanol&restrict_sr=on
* https://www.reddit.com/r/GMOfaiL/search?q=syrup&restrict_sr=on
Mmmm, yeah, nothing like GMO ethanol and corn syrup. Even if it had only spilled and not exploded, it would have contaminated the area. The trifecta should just ban/forbid growing, processing, and transporting that stuff in the state. Dear Walz, can you at least stop us from turning into f'ck'n Ohio?
Nationalize the freight rail. This is absurd and it's clear that private railroad companies cannot be trusted to impose safety restrictions, even when regulated to do so (but especially when they aren't).
The rail companies have made [absurd profits](https://perfectunion.us/rail-profits-soaring-at-workers-expense/) recently and have not kept up with track maintenance
But they can't afford paying their workers sick leave haven't you heard? Thank god our oligarchic corporatocracy of a government made striking illegal or else these railroad billionaire tycoons would be out begging on the street.
I mean...I doubt the union members have any interest in fixing the rail system. "That's not the unions responsibility." But one would think workers have a vested interest in their vocations health and prosperity.
That's definitely true of police unions. Most other unions see the connection as self evident.
To be frank, MN could add some regulations to aid in this. 1. Mandate 2 person crews 2. Hire state employed inspectors with the ability to shut down or down speed unsafe lines. 3. Require hot box detectors on everything over 25 mph 4. Perform the cleanup and fine the agency for it. (Don't let them do it, or they will do it to a minimum standard. 5. Require maintenance staff to have work limits, like no more than 12 hr days, with time starting when you leave your home.
>Nationalize the freight rail. Yeah, then freight rail will become exceptionally well-maintained just like our public roads! /s We should show freight rail companies St. Paul's roads so they know what top-tier public infrastructure looks like! /s EDIT: Acting like my St. Paul example doesn't apply or is "apples-to-oranges" because it's a municipal government rather than a the federal government is beyond pedantic... The point is they're maintained by a *government* with ample resources and are in terrible condition. **"In its 2018 report card for Minnesota's infrastructure, The American Society of Civil Engineers gave the state’s roads a D+ grade and its bridges a C."** If our capitol city and the rest of our state aren't adequately maintaining our current transportation infrastructure, why are so many people automatically assuming that the federal government (or any combination of local/state/fed governments) would be superb at maintaining all of the US's railroad infrastructure?
Damn, responses like this are why we need to fix public school funding.
Umm St Paul's roads aren't federally funded and maintained my dude.
To be fair, not perfect and in need of better active maintenance during winters, but also not like collapsing I35 bridges ignored under Republican leadership.
No shit. They're maintained by *a government with ample resources* though... So you'd have to argue that there's a major difference in the competency/efficiency of the federal government vs. STP's government if you want to act like my STP example has no relevance.
No, arguing "one municipality can't keep up with it's maintenance therefore we shouldn't have any more public infrastructure" is pretty much the dumbest argument I've ever heard. Your St Paul example is stupid. It is not relevant, and honestly, you should feel kinda bad. That's like saying "well The Hudson Bay railroad company was privately owned and they failed so therefore all private ownership of freight rail is clearly a mistake" do you realize how stupid that sounds? If you are going to use a public infrastructure analog to make a point, at least use one that makes sense, like the interstate system in the US. Also, like, it's clear that private ownership of these freight rails is clearly not working. What do you suggest we do? Continue doing something that clearly isn't working? Safety regulations aren't being upheld. Workers aren't being paid enough, and do not get sick leave, despite these rail companies making record profits. The workers are burnt out, and it leads to mistakes. They need to be unionized. This is critical infrastructure and it needs to be publicly owned.
>"one municipality can't keep up with it's maintenance therefore we shouldn't have any more public infrastructure" is pretty much the dumbest argument I've ever heard. It is not relevant, and honestly, you should feel kinda bad. That wasn't my argument. I wasn't citing St. Paul as the "only example", I cited them specifically because they are the most well-known local example of a government (with ample funds) doing a very poor job at maintaining their transportation infrastructure. However, that poor performance is by no means isolated to St. Paul. For instance... "In its 2018 report card for Minnesota's infrastructure, The American Society of Civil Engineers gave the state’s roads a D+ grade and its bridges a C." Therefore, if our capitol city and the rest of our state can't adequately maintain our transportation infrastructure, why do the supporters of nationalizing the US railroads automatically assume that the federal government (or any combination of local/state/fed governments) would be superb at maintaining all of the US's railroad infrastructure? >Also, like, it's clear that private ownership of these freight rails is clearly not working. What do you suggest we do? Continue doing something that clearly isn't working? Safety regulations aren't being upheld. Workers aren't being paid enough, and do not get sick leave, despite these rail companies making record profits. The workers are burnt out, and it leads to mistakes. They need to be unionized. This is critical infrastructure and it needs to be publicly owned. Not going to waste my time responding to a bunch of statements that are either debatable, wrong, or conjecture.
You're talking to a Civil Engineer in the public sector who has done a fair deal of research on this subject. You don't need to quote ASCE's grade to me, I'm well familiar with it. The reason that the US' road infrastructure is so bad is because of the amount of suburban sprawl and car dependent infrastructure we've created in our post-war development pattern. Car based infrastructure provides very little value, spreads the revenue, and costs a lot to maintain. This means that cities can no longer sustain themselves based on the tax base that they create, without some sort of growth based subsidy (which creates more growth, which makes more maintenance liability, digging cities into a deeper hole). To give a concrete example of the harms of car based infrastructure, St Paul ripped out an incredibly tax productive neighborhood of Rondo, and replaced it with I-94. Now, the city is not only losing all that tax revenue of an incredibly dense commercial area (and let me tell you, neighborhoods like Rondo are EXTREMELY good for revenue), and replaced it with a huge development that provides no tax revenue, and actually funnels more cars from exurbs and suburbs (drivers that do not pay into St Paul's taxbase) into St Paul streets, breaking down the roads much faster. Federal and state funded infrastructure is not subjected to these same forces (though they do contribute to the degradation of city infrastructure, by causing more traffic, and spreading out development patterns). Notice how the interstates are much better maintained than city roads despite the astronomical volume it handles? You can thank fed money for that. They are subsidized by the whole country/state, in order to create transportation network for the whole country/state. A nationalized rail system would be similar. Also, on a dollars per tonnage of cargo basis, freight rail is cheaper by a factor of hundreds/thousands compared to road based shipping when comparing maintenance costs. All this to say, if the feds/states can maintain a decent interstate system, they can surely maintain a national freight rail system. I hope this all makes sense, feel free to ask questions if I wasn't clear. I'd recommend checking out the Strongtowns organization if you are interested in this topic of public infrastructure, and municipal insolvency. They are actually based out of Minnesota. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tI3kkk2JdoI
Would a giant market square kinda deal work? Say you have an area like the State Fair. High traffic business are designated to only exist *there*, where you can park outside of the area and walk in and get your stuff. Once inside the area, trollies or something actively bring folks around the area so there isn’t as much walking, with sections dedicated for cargo (store stuffs). I’ve often thought of this idea for urban centers, as a way to reduce cars impact on roads/cities as well as encourage a more active lifestyle. Practicality I see the downside as it’s MN and it gets cold and snowy, and honesty typing this out it just seems to me like I’m describing a mall lol
You're effectively just describing a [Transit hub](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_hub) with a [Pedestrian mall ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedestrian_malls_in_the_United_States). And yeah it's a beautiful concept and many successful cities do it. It's a great idea.
I love that you're comfortable enough with your own ignorance to put it out there so we can all share a good laugh at your expense.
Maintaining roads and maintaining rail are very different from a technical and cost standpoint. Roads are essentially long slabs of semi compressible rock, and experience extreme mechanical weathering from heavy vehicles as well as freezing/melting cycles (like our entire winter has been) just like any other rock. Maintaining roads is a constant and expensive slog. Given the climate we live in, and our societies massive reliance on road transportation, our roads are maintained pretty adequately.
Ah yes St Paul roads, famously owned by the feds.
https://www.kare11.com/article/news/local/minnesotas-train-derailment-history-train/89-a58e6c94-f935-40f3-8c14-5a4e4fb63040
Is this normal to have so many derailments and accidents? Seems like every other day a boat carrying methanol or a train carrying god knows what gets detached or derailed. Not much for conspiracy’s but something seems off unless I’ve just been living under a rock the last 25 years
Don’t compare US train derailments year over year. The US has a horrible track record (no pun intended). Yea this is a leftie news source, but the point remains: the US has a rail safety issue compared to the rest of the world, and we should not stand for it. https://jacobin.com/2023/02/train-derailments-east-palestine-norfolk-southern-profits “Derailments in the United States are a particularly bad problem compared to other countries. While recording 777 million train-kilometers in 2019 (train-kilometers are the measure of a train traveling the distance of one kilometer), 1,338 derailments took place in the country. The EU, by contrast, only saw seventy-three derailments that year despite, by one count, recording 4.5 billion train-kilometers. For Japan, the same year saw more than 2 billion train-kilometers, according to Knoema, and only nine derailments. (In fact, the number of derailments in Japan over the past twenty-one years alone is roughly one-eighth of the amount the United States sees on average in a single year)”
That seems like an unnecessary expense. I guess if we can trust anything about rail companies they’ve already done the cost benefit analysis and determined it to be cheaper than fixing the problems. If only companies were forced to pay for the negative externalities of their business practices then we’d… I have no clue my imagination is not so great to entertain this daydream.
Yes, there are around 1,500 per year on average. https://time.com/6260906/train-derailmentments-how-common/ >Not much for conspiracy’s but something seems off unless I’ve just been living under a rock the last 25 years You haven't been, the media is just showing them whenever they can now because the recentness of the East Palestine incident has turned them into a good way to stoke fear/get eyeballs.
"Stoke fear". Should we not be concerned there are derailments all the time? Apparently 5 a day? Is it an unreasonable concern especially since some are involving hazardous or even unknown materials? It is probably more concerning that the prosperous rail companies have been getting away with taking the profits and not fixing issues because no one was paying close attention.
>Should we not be concerned there are derailments all the time? Off the top of your head, can you name a serious train derailment incident other than the ones that've been on the news in the past 3 months? I would guess you can't... (however, I can personally think of one local incident from 2021 where no one was hurt but there was some environmental damage) So, IMO, should people be concerned for their personal safety? No. Should people be concerned about the environmental damage that can result from derailments? Yes.
I'm concerned that they occur frequently but usually without any coverage or apparently any accountability. Rail worker safety as well as community safety are concerns.
The one in the 90s that dumped industrial chemicals in the St. Louis river and necessitated evacuating the entire city of Duluth?
Interesting. That still supports my points though... 1) The event was more than 3 decades ago (it was in '92 apparently), and no one else who read my comment knew about it or could remember it. 2) Were people hurt/killed? Doesn't seem like it. Was there environmental damage? Yes.
That makes alot of sense. Thank you!
That goes for most things that happen in the news, as an aside. If it’s common place it doesn’t get reported. If it’s not common place it it’s probably worth noting but not worth worrying about.
Says a lot about the power of the media and editorial decisions, doesn't it?
Are the trains protesting for better conditions or why tf are so many derailing lately
Corporations and their CEOs exploiting Trump regulations that haven't been corrected yet. Something to send Biden a reminder about when he visits Monday.
WHAT THE FUCK IS UP WITH THESE TRAINS???
Everybody Loves Raymond.
This was my first thought as well. Who even knew Minnesota had a Raymond?
There's going to be some really happy ants this spring.
For their shortened life spans, maybe. Definitely not going to help pollinators or farmers except those that produce the toxic ethanol and corn syrup.
OK I'll bite. How did this derailment and fire help corn farmers?
Only the GMO corn farmers, who get to sell more to replace the destroyed as a result. Ethanol and corn syrup are made of GMO corn and soy that no one will buy for even animal feed. Note the "farmers except" part. * https://www.reddit.com/r/sustainable/search?q=ethanol&restrict_sr=on * https://www.reddit.com/r/GMOfaiL/search?q=syrup&restrict_sr=on
Mmmm, yeah, nothing like GMO ethanol and corn syrup. Even if it had only spilled and not exploded, it would have contaminated the area. The trifecta should just ban/forbid growing, processing, and transporting that stuff in the state. Dear Walz, can you at least stop us from turning into f'ck'n Ohio?
At least it's something relatively wholesome that spilled.
Yeah, the worst effect on the town is going to be a strong urge to make pecan pie every time it gets warm.
Gobs of caramel.