DuPont AMTRAK Cascades Train crash

This morning in my home state of Washington, an AMTRAK Cascades train crashed on the new line between DuPont and Olympia. This is a route I frequently take to get between my home of Bellingham and Olympia, where my parents live.

This lies on the most important rail route in the Northwest, and one of the most important in the country. 6.3 million people live on the AMTRAK Cascades route, a not insignificant sum, and we are growing quickly. We need to have alternatives to driving and flying in this part of the country, and AMTRAK offers us the ability to do this.

Every day, there are over 300 AMTRAK trains making their normal routes every day in the United States, or about 110,000 per year. This is the 2nd accident this year on AMTRAK. 99.9982% of AMTRAK trains this year have gone without incident.

It is important to understand also how this happened. First of all, the section of track is between two tight bends as the new track crosses I-5. The speed limit here is 64 km/hr, but the train was going 130 km/hr. This is why the train crash occurred. As a consequence of a windy section, this means the train cannot go even at highway speed until it is past the second bend, but the conductor on this train did not follow the rules.

This was absolutely avoidable. Positive Train Control is a method which monitors a train's speed and automatically slows a train down when it goes through a dangerous section, to avoid driver error. On the vast majority of train rides, 99.999% this year, trains have successfully avoided this type of accident by the conductor slowing the train down on their own accord, and there is no problem. However, in this particular situation the conductor didn't, which is why we saw a disaster on the first higher-speed trip in Washington State history.

We need to keep higher-speed rail in my home state, and use this to implement and require Positive Train Control nationwide to prevent future accidents. These are extremely rare, and thousands of Americans over the next week are going to use AMTRAK to go to their family for Christmas, and they should. This accident is notable because it is rare.

Don't let one accident by one fool damn an entire region to traffic.