Free Republic

The principal of an innovative West Harlem public school killed herself the day after her students took the state Common Core exams — which were later tossed out because she cheated ... Jeanene Worrell-Breeden, 49, of Teachers College Community School, jumped in front of a B train in the 135th Street station ... She was pulled out from under the train and taken to Harlem Hospital, where she died eight days later. The city Medical Examiner’s Office ruled it a suicide. The leap came at 9:20 a.m., less than 24 hours after her 47 third-graders wrapped up three days sweating...

BALTIMORE (Reuters) - Maryland officials are eyeing a $2.9 billion light rail project long in the works for Baltimore as a way of combating the crushing poverty that fueled rioting in the city after the police-custody death of Freddie Gray. Backers say the proposed Red Line light rail project could speed city residents to jobs and help end the isolation of poor neighborhoods, some of which still bear the scars of race riots in the 1960s...

The May Amtrak derailment outside of Philadelphia put the sorry state of passenger rail in the United States briefly back on the public agenda, leaving many people wondering not just about the specifics of the crash but about the more general issue — how is it that a rich and powerful country that was a pioneer in railroad adoption in the 19th century has such terrible trains? The United States is a big country, with lots of trains in it. So you can really think of this big generic question as composed of three separate questions with separate answers. One...

A Chicago-bound Amtrak train had an unfortunate encounter with a tractor-trailer carrying 70,000 pounds of bacon that was “obstructing the tracks” last Friday, June 5 — the same day we reported on Indiana’s amazing bacon lottery. The train, Texas Eagle Train 22, collided with the truck near Illinois Route 53, and managed to overturn the truck, splitting it in half. “There's boxes everywhere [sic],” a passenger told NBC Chicago. “But somehow the driver was OK.” None of the crew or passengers were injured in the crash, but we assume all hope for the bacon was lost. However, if there were...

While debating proposed cuts to Amtrak’s budget, Rep. Corrine Brown (D-Fla.) argued that the government subsidized train system is necessary, especially during disasters. “What is it - that we don’t support transportation infrastructure?” Brown said on the House floor Thursday. “When we had 9/11 – Amtrak was the only entity that was moving people. When we had Katrina – Amtrak. We had over 3,000 people to die because they couldn’t move around the area.” According to Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) 1,833 people died in relation to Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Amtrak...

Gurr test-driving an early prototype of his Autopia vehicle in 1955.George Clooney may get top billing in his new film, Tomorrowland, but design visionary Gurr is the real star.In his 27 years as a Disney Imagineer, Bob Gurr was known for doing the impossible: He designed a submarine fleet, the cars of Autopia, and the Monorail that soars above the park on a single beam. With the opening of Tomorrowland in 1955, Gurr shaped a vision of the future (1986 to be exact) that still feels out of reach. Six decades after Gurr began creating ride vehicles for the theme...

The last week has been unimaginably difficult for many Americans who lost friends or family members in the tragic derailment of Northeast Regional Amtrak train 188, which crashed on a curved track just north of downtown Philadelphia on Tuesday evening. Eight lives were lost, eight more individuals remain in critical condition and more than 200 were injured. The day after the derailment, I visited the scene to speak with Amtrak President Joe Boardman, Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) Acting Administrator Sarah Feinberg, National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) Vice Chairman Bella Dinh-Zarr and Board Member Robert Sumwalt, and Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter....

Brandon Bostian, crashed Amtrak train's engineer, reportedly ranted about safety: 'I wish the railroads had been more proactive' BY KELDY ORTIZ , DAREH GREGORIAN The engineer who was behind the controls of an Amtrak train that derailed going around a curve at 100 mph is a lifelong train buff who's written online about the need for better rail safety, it was reported Thursday. Brandon Bostian, writing on website Trainorders.com, criticized railroads for not installing "positive train control" systems to prevent crashes, the New York Times reported. "At any point over the previous EIGHTY years the railroad could have voluntarily implemented...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)A rogue group of subway vandals calling them the ‘Subway Conquestors’ is allegedly on a mission to attack the rail system. As CBS2’s Weijia Jiang reported, they can be seen in video footage sneaking into deserted stations at Canal and Bergen streets, and an underground construction zone at Ninth Avenue. Police sources believe they were responsible for an explosion in the Bronx, and have been linked to one at Brooklyn’s Nostrand Avenue station in April. In the Nostrand Avenue incident, police arrested Keyshawn Brown, 16, and accused him of placing a piece of metal on the tracks. “There are plenty...

The Metropolitan Council continues to struggle with a marketing problem that just won't go away. The projected cost of extending light rail from Minneapolis to Eden Prairie has ballooned to $2 billion, which would make it the largest public infrastructure project in state history. That certainly would be a lot of bridges repaired and lanes of freeway added. Mark Fuhrmann, the project director for Metro Transit, said the other day that delaying the project could jeopardize federal funding. In other words, if we don't act now, we could lose the government's contribution needed to build the line. The government's share?...

Exactly two months after the latest Warren Buffett-owned BNSF train derailed near the spot where the Galena river meets the Mississippi, resulting in a huge fire and the evacuation of all homes in a one mile radius, moments ago another of Buffett's BNSF oil trains derailed, this time near the town of Heimdal, North Dakota, resulting in the same outcome. According to the Bismark Tribune, the town in Wells County was evacuated Tuesday morning after a train full of oil tanker cars derailed and burned about a mile and half east of here. ... For those concerned that these countless...

As recently as 2010, the estimated cost for the Southwest Light Rail Transit line was estimated to be $1.2 billion, or about the cost of a new football stadium. Then the cost jumped to $1.7 billion because somebody spun the magic wheel. Now the cost is projected to be $2 billion. OK, $1.994 billion, but if they find an endangered earthworm or an especially exotic cattail, all bets are off and the project will shoot over $2 billion in a European minute, for the Metropolitan Council loves to keep playing Europe. The train stops are called Royalston, West Lake, Blake...

After 109 years in business, the Great Northern Iron Ore Properties Trust officially terminated Monday and its stock stopped trading on the New York Stock Exchange. The moment provided a reminder of a distant era in Minnesota history, shaped by railroad barons and trust-busting reformers, by the great riches of the Mesabi Range and the hard realities of the industrial age. "So many of Hill's decisions cast such a long shadow," said Craig Johnson, manager of the James J. Hill House historic site in St. Paul. "It reminds us that he's still that big looming presence in the business and...

Following a spate of explosive accidents involving North Dakota crude, the state on Wednesday began requiring companies to remove certain liquids and gases from oil before it's loaded onto rail cars -- a move industry and state regulators believe will make for safer shipments. The rules, developed over the past year, require all crude from the oil patch to be treated by heat or by pressure to reduce its volatility before being loaded onto train cars. "North Dakota's crude oil conditioning order is based on sound science and represents an important step in the ongoing work to ensure that oil-by-rail...

Light rail is controversial because of its price tag -- the recently finished Green Line linking downtown St. Paul with Minneapolis cost $957 million. Supporters, though, say it's justified along dense routes where it can move many people more efficiently than buses can. <<>> Taxpayers shoulder the majority of the cost. In the metro area, fares account for about $100 million in revenue last year -- about 30 percent of the operating cost of transit. Federal grants play a big role in paying for new transitways and vehicles -- 55 percent of capital costs last year. But federal taxpayers covered...

Republican lawmakers on Monday proposed a $7 billion plan that they called an investment in transportation over the next decade. The proposal has some common ground with plans from leaders of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, but big divisions remain. The parties are far apart on how much money a transportation plan should include, how much of it should go to Twin Cities metro-area mass transit and -- above all -- whether the plan should be paid for by raising taxes or cutting spending. DFL Gov. Mark Dayton and the Senate DFL majority each proposed their own plans in January. Their approaches...

The agenda is a simple one, while President Obama called climate change a greater threat to America than ISIS, the unending supply of accidents continues to keep the assumed peril in the news Lulling Americans into believing that government can provide a safety net for everything from stocking a pantry and providing healthcare, to preventing administrative offices from “shutting-down,” boosting the stock market and de-stressing the environment through regulating virtually every activity, results in an opposite effect… It destabilizes the economy. As President Obama declared climate change to be the ultimate threat to national security, incidents stemming from the oil...

Most of the debate over the building of the nation's first bullet train, in California, has focused on the economics of such a monumental undertaking and its projected $68-billion first-phase price tag. Largely ignored amid the excitement over the railway's recent official groundbreaking is the physical impact and design challenges that cities will need to grapple with as they prepare for high-speed rail. California should look to rail systems across Europe to fully understand the challenge of building a transportation hub that connects to the community. To make the most of California's once-in-a-lifetime chance at building a thriving transportation network,...

I've sat and watched a lot of trains go by in my day, but none so dramatic as this.

Will there be mass protests for the cancellation of trains in more than 20 regions? See on Monday, February 2 "Rain" report Sergey Erzhenkova "Last train".