For many springtime sun seekers who have Florida dead in their sights, Amtrak’s Auto Train offers an easy way to cruise south with one’s car—minus the stress usually associated with Interstate travel. Yet, it was not a relaxing respite for the 394 passengers on the night of March 28th when their train came to a stop after leaving the tracks just outside of Rocky Mount, North Carolina.
The Auto Train has been an eastern seaboard institution since the 1971, carrying as many as 240,000 passengers a year along the 855-mile route from Lorton, Virginia –just outside Washington, D.C. –to Sanford, Florida near Orlando. Originally a privately owned railroad, several derailment incidents in the late 1970s led to the company shutting down service before being revived by Amtrak—the only current provider of medium- and long-distance intercity rail service in the U.S.
While the partial derailment did not produce any injuries, four railcars filled with travelers’ automobiles were left behind as the Auto Train disconnected and continued on with its journey. Unfortunately, March 27th did witness a loss of life as the Auto Train was only miles from its destination of Sanford when it fatally struck a man near DeLand, Florida. Even earlier in the month, the Auto Train was involved in another incident where it struck a vehicle soon after departing its origin station with only minor damage to the car and no injuries.
Historically though, the damage has been far more devastating with past Auto Train accidents. On April 18, 2002, the passenger/vehicle line derailed in Crescent City, Florida near Jacksonville—killing four people and injuring over 140 passengers. At the time, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigated and determined that the derailment was caused by a buckling of the track that had occurred due to inadequate track maintenance on the part of CSX Transportation, the railroad that owns much of the tracks that Amtrak travels on within the eastern United States.
And it’s not only the Auto Train that has recently plagued Amtrak with problems—other lines in 2018 have already compiled a fatal vehicle collision in North Carolina, an accident with a garbage truck while transporting Republican Party lawmakers, a derailment in Washington State that killed three passengers, and the deadly crash with a CSX train in Cayce, South Carolina that killed two and injured 116 people.
So why is Amtrak experiencing such a surge in accidents only three months into a new year? Are rail employees that overworked and ill-trained? Is new legislation aimed at train safety not a priority for Congress? Could our country’s trains and rail infrastructure be that outdated and in disrepair? Is this all fallout from the fact that the Federal Railroad Administration, our leading railroad safety agency, has effectively been leaderless for more than a year? Possibly the real problem here is that none of these situations should be acceptable to the American people and they should all be addressed—because it’s our safety and that of our friends, family and neighbors that’s on the line.
