Budget cuts, safety, and state of good repair

Much has been made by the media of a supposed connection between budget cuts to public transportation entities (Amtrak, commuter districts, etc.) and unsafe operating conditions. I’d like to examine whether there is really a connection, or is there a connection only in some cases and not in others.

Failures occur almost daily at Washington Metro Area Transit Authority (WMATA).

Problems at WMATA's transit system, including fatal failures, have been going on for years, and are attributed by WMATA and most media directly to failure of the system to find a stable source of funding. Nor can the state and local members of the district agree on how to fund the backlog of maintenance that needs to be addressed for the failures to stop.

In this case, one sees little evidence that the unsafe conditions resulted from anything else than lack of funds to keep up needed maintenance. The lack of funds, however, did not result from budget cuts, recent or otherwise, but rather from the funding structure that pits all the players against each other.

Similarly, aging infrastructure problems on Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor are blamed on budget cuts, but in fact arise because, like all legacy transportation systems in this country, Amtrak’s owned infrastructure is simply old, far older than WMATA, for example. Managers, including Congress, have simply failed to budget enough money for maintenance of an elderly railroad.

Here’s a simple fact: (For those of you who prefer, instead of "simple fact" here’s a "version of reality.") Budget cuts do not automatically result in deterioration of either infrastructure or safety culture. What is happening is political, not scientifically or logically related cause and effect. (For those of you who prefer versions of reality to fact, please look up science and logic in a dictionary published before 1980.)

It works this way: Somebody, usually a conservative or Republican, proposes cutting the budget for a transportation entity. This angers somebody else at the entity, who gets his/her knickers in a knot and issues a press release stating that budget cuts will result in deferred maintenance and unsafe conditions. Soon, an accident happens. Accidents happen because no system is perfect, even fully budgeted ones.

If an accident is caused by an equipment failure, the liberal media immediately attribute the failure to the budget cut, even though, up to that point, just as much money has been going into maintenance as before the budget cut proposal.

If the accident is caused by an unsafe action, the same media will again attribute the unsafe action to the budget cut. This is even more ridiculous, because safety training and learned responses to unsafe conditions do not instantly drain from the brains and reactive memories of those persons who have already been trained.

When cuts occur, there is usually more than enough time for a passenger rail entity to plan for maintenance or embargo the equipment, or gradually reduce the frequency but increase the effectiveness of safety training sessions. Contrary to what the media would have us believe, passenger rail does not become immediately less safe when there is a cut in the budget.

So, it’s illogical, but politically expedient, to blame failed track work at Penn Station on a Trump budget cut. But it is logical to blame it on decades of Congress' failure to find a permanent and adequate solution for Amtrak funding.

©2017 – C. A. Turek – mistertrains@gmail.com

(Charles A. Turek is a writer and novelist based in Albuquerque, NM. After four decades working in areas of the insurance industry related to transportation, he now writes on all aspects of American railroading. Charles is a political conservative but believes in public funding of passenger rail as a part of the federal government’s constitutionally conservative obligation to provide for defense and public infrastructure so that private enterprise may flourish.)