lmao and we’ve already got a truck spill post
Imagine when someone hijacks a chemical truck and the cops circular firing squad it on a busy highway during rush hour… like that UPS truck a few years ago.
like that UPS truck a few years ago.
i hadn’t forgotten that one and remind people about it whenever I think about it… but there’s just so much shit that happens
Firing squad? What is this, the 1800s? Nah, they have robots with bombs on them. They’re gonna dirty bomb a whole city
By balloon, perhaps?
The NHS bullshit hurts the poor the most, but the US cutting safe and efficient infrastructure will really fuck things up.
We’ve already had supply chain issues, and then :ever-given: and nearly collapsed when people panicked and hoarded resources. Cutting back on US railroads will fuck with rich people too. How do they not see it?
Cutting back on US railroads will fuck with rich people too. How do they not see it?
Wanted to make a snarky joke about the inherent contradictions of capitalism and the falling rate of profit, but instead I’ll just say that the people who make this decision (cost-cutting and gutting services to the point where they fail more often than not) are not the same people as who will be hurt financially when a disaster strikes. So while Norfolk Southern being starved to death by its own executives will hurt the entire capitalist class, it will also juice the shit out of their returns for the next couple of years before all the deferred maintenance really starts to kick in, and the executives don’t really plan for that, since they intend to leave the railroad after their brief stay led to a ballooning stock price, another company is surely going to offer them a nice, cushy, low effort position.
Strictly speaking, there is. It’s called a pipeline. But nobody is going to pipe a very specific set of chemicals hundreds of miles, because that would mean building a specific set of pipes for each product.
And the whole point of trains is to do that cheaply, rather than safely.
Part of me wonders what could be done beyond just train lengths. I think train consists should be forbidden from carrying more than a certain amount of different chemicals.
It’s not just a matter of train lengths. Europe and China see far less derailments than the USA by several orders of magnitude and it’s because they actually have safety laws around how these things can be used and what equipment trains need to have. Like brakes that work. And unions that give rail workers more than 90 seconds per car to inspect for issues. And regular maintenance.
