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    Vol.63/No.12           March 29, 1999 
 
 
Thirst For Proft = Train Crashes  
The massive train crash in Illinois that killed 13 people was a disaster that could have been prevented. As the Militant goes to press, two days after the accident, the cause of the disaster is undetermined, according to government investigators. But this is false. The main cause of the accident is known: throughout the United States, highway and rail traffic are forced to intersect at thousands of railroad crossings, causing a major safety hazard.

Driven by their thirst for profits, railroads historically refused to run tracks through tunnels and over bridges in populated areas, nor did government regulatory agencies require it. Today, of the 260,000 grade-level railroad crossings only about 62,000 have an active warning system, some of which are merely lights. Last year 422 people were killed in train-vehicle collisions.

Acknowledging the problem, the federal government adopted a strategy in 1991 to close about 60,000 more crossings - leaving 200,000 untouched. In a moment of frankness, one transportation department official admitted, "The best crossing is the one that doesn't exist."

The thousands of road crossings are not a necessity. The Northeast corridor from Washington, D.C., to New York that Amtrak runs on does not have one grade-level crossing. The U.S. rail system is designed to make profits for the rail bosses, not to ensure safety.

The labor movement, led by the rail unions, should demand a massive public works program to build the overpasses, bridges, and tunnels needed to provide safe transit in this country. Such a demand would require billions of dollars. It would mean jobs for thousands of workers.

As Jack Barnes explains in Capitalism's World Disorder: Working-Class Politics at the Millennium, "class conscious workers must take questions such as safety seriously. Labor must convince broad layers of the population as a whole that it is the working-class movement above all that cares about these questions.... It is a question of the working class taking the moral high ground in the battle against the exploiting class and for human solidarity."  
 
 
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