Just read it, at http://www.nytimes.com
The quote from Mr. Black seems to add some validity to this, but to be honest I had never heard this aspect (Amtrak’s bears the brunt of legal settlement costs) before.
Side note: I never knew Amtrak had its own IG – Fred Weiderhold Jr. At least (if you believe the article) he was successful in negotiating down some of the routine payments to freight railroads, but those are awfully large percentage reductions.
MP
I completely agree with Mark. Though I don’t know the other side of the story of the other blamed freight railroads , I can speak with some knowledge of the accident I was responsible for. On Jan.4, 1987. 16 people were killed and 176 were injured and involved in lawsuits. Conrail and Amtrak paid the price in the Civil suits. Though I was not given the exact details of the settlements for the class action. I was lead to believe that both railraods shared the punitve damages equally. I believe Amtrak paid a larger share of the compensatory damages. In the one seperate civil action I was in court for, a settlement was reached in the posturing during jury selection in Federal District Court. Both railroads shared the damages equally . I did not intentionally or otherwise disable the warning device (cab signal whistle) though it was disabled. This is public record in the railroad and the NTSB investigation final reports. As with most investigative reporting by mainstream media, sensationalizing the story is the general rule. Former Prime Minister of Great Britain Gear was quoted long ago “There are three types of lies. Lies. Damn lies and; statistics.” I wonder if he was speaking also about the general media’s tendency to slant and distort their facts so irresponsibly. I noticed also that in this article, not one quote came from a representative of the freight railroads or did I miss it? [2c]
Mr. Gates
If you are the Ricky Gates of Gunpow interlocking infamy who gave the industry and the entire county this drug testing hysteria I sincerely hope your soul roasts in hell.
Mac
Guys,
Please let’s not start “flaming” one another. Bergie already had to delete two topics next door at the Model Railroad Forum.
We’re all railfans here.
Easy Mac. Yeah, he is the same guy and we have been down this road with him more than once already. Besides, if you aren’t violating Rule G the drug tests are just a formality…
LC
This is probably pretty simple, but if Amtrak knew up front they would have to pay any claims, why would they go ahead with the agreement? I know business runs a little differently, but I would think the lawyers for Amtrak would not let such a loop hole exist. Was Amtrak that eager to get going that they would let something like this stand?
The NYT has certainly fallen a LONG way from its former glory. I’d rather read thwe Post anymore, it has more facts…LOL…
LC
Funny, I was just thinking the same thing…
With all of it’s resources, the Times managed not to find or interview Mr Gates nor anyone other than the lady who won the award.
No train crew was spoken to, or at least, if they were contacted, none of their comments were included.
And I noted how the author managed to tie this story into the series the Times ran on grade crossing accidents.
Either the lawyer for the Times isnt worth much, or he/she failed to read this story, it’s full of inaccurate statements, and so biased that it belongs on the editorial page, under the opinion section.
Shame, if the reporter has applied just a little ethics to the story, he could have made a really interesting story out of it, instead of just bashing railroads…
Mac…
If you didn’t work in the industry back then, you really dont have much of a clue as to the base reason behind what happend with Rick.
Trust me, it was a case of him being in the right place at the wrong time.
If it hadn’t been him, it would have been someone else.
That accident, or one just like it, was going to happen, period.
As a result of all of that, I can promise you that, as a whole, railroaders are one of the most sober, drug free group of transportation workers anywhere.
Now, the excuse that, “everyone was doing it” didnt wa***hen, anymore than it works now, but…everyone was getting drunk or stoned, it was part of what railroaders did.
That don’t make it right, but thats the way it was.
Rick has paid for what happened, and been kind enough to come on this forum, endure all the crap thrown at him, just like the load you delivered above, and has explained, in detail, the how and why of what happened, from the perspective on someone who was there and involved.
I think you might want to ride out your own train wreck first, before you decide to comment on someone else’s.
Mark, I am a bit surprised at your reaction to the story. I am a newspaper reporter myself, and I thought that this story, and the previous one of last summer dealing with grade crossings, are open to criticism by those of us who really know railroads, but then that’s just us.
I think the point of today’s story was just that freight RRs got indemnification as part of the deal that gave birth to Amtrak, and that maybe it is time to rethink that. The general public likely has no idea that indemnification like that exists.
I’m not saying the story was perfect (even Trains has been known to err, and as a journalist yourself you know that is inevitable), and much of it seems to us like a restatement of the blindingly obvious. But I found it interesting, if not somethiung I would have written.
And Mr. Gates, I in no way subscribe to the thoughts posted above.
Larry Fish
Mark, your first paragraph made it all clear.
Thanx!
Mookie
Mark,
You are certainly right about the morally indignant tone of the story. And there is an awful lot there that I don’t want to defend, and you are right on most points.
But I don’t think we can characterize the Amtrak/RR relationship as simply landlord/tenant. With my landlord, I just sign a boilerplate form. It’s a relationship pretty well understood by both parties.
But even there, if I am in my apartment and the ceiling collapses on me, it’s the landlord’s responsibility.
All the Times is saying, at bottom, is that here is the relationship between the freight RRs and Amtrak, and that there is no reason why the relationship has to be that way and no other.
I do think you make an excellent point, though, in pointing out that at least this way, a lot of litigation over fixing liability gets avoided.
Larry
But - if there is a fire - it is my responsibility to carry Renter’s Insurance…
Maybe this is a little simple, but here is my take on the subject. Railroad says to Amtrak-You can use my facilities at a very low cost, but if anything happens with your train full of people, the cost of damage payments to those people may be hundreds of times greater than the damage payments made if something happens to my freight train. If you want to do business with me, you are going to have to protect me from paying out potentially huge sums, or we are not going to do business.
Of course, Mark stated it much better than I ever could, but that is the story, the rest is a bunch of crap.
I believe that indemnity agreements are very common in business. They are certainly a part of everyday life. If I do something stupid while driving and there is consequently a collision with property damage, injury and death, someone else (an insurance company) will pay. Rick Gates has acknowledged his responsibility for the Gunpow accident, but he did not pay the money for the compensatory or punitive damages. Agreed, he paid, and continues to pay in other ways, but not the money.
My guess is that it is rare for the person actually at fault and being “punished” paying the money out of his or her personal wealth. Is that wrong? If the law of the land mandated that the the money for the payment of claims could only come from the personal wealth of the responsible individual, most claimants would wind up with nothing. I don’t think that is what we want.
Jay Eaton
Question? If say CSX has bad trackage and Amtrak has a opps on it, why wouldn’t CSX have had an oops also? Or do they and still don’t fix the track properly?
This may be somewhat off topic, but I would like to comment on this statement by Mark’s aquaintance of Amtrak:
I don’t think you can compare Amtrak’s access charges to those of a freight customer. UPS is paying for use of a Class I’s track, crews, equipment, terminal expenses, et al, and is doing so at a market rate. UPS’s alternative is to carry that trailer via highway, and the price charged by the railroad to carry that trailer is mostly set based on that alternative price.
Amtrak, on the other hand, is accessing the property in a way that in reality causes little extra cost to the Class I other than a less than frequent, barely impactful (to wear and tear on track itself) way, and I’m not sure if Amtrak’s fees are above this attributable cost or below it. Other than having to delay a freight train every now and then, what true costs are caused by Amtrak on the Class I’s?
Dave
Having been exposed to a little of the theory and reality of railroad costs, let me offer this. You are on the right track, but I am not sure there is any exact answer to the question of “true” costs.
From the start we could look at the “direct” or “marginal” costs. Those could be defined as the difference in actual cash paid out today by the host railroad for running the Amtrak train vs. not runing the train. That may be very close to zero. Now you can say that the wear and tear on the rail is a direct cost. It may not be paid in cash each time the Amtrak train runs, but it can be calculated based on an engineering type study or it can be an allocation of total MOW cost made based on ton miles.
After that, the next category would be indirect or overhead costs. Difficult to measure unless there is a thorough study of the extra manpower required to handle the Amtrak business. That would cover areas such as the host railroad’s dispatching, accounting and “passenger coordination” functions.
I would also add something I would call a contingency cost. If runnig the Amtrak train causes delays to freight trains, there can be costs for crew overtime or relief crews. Here is the catch. For any given incident, was it really the fault of Amtrak?
My next item could actuall be thrown back in MOW costs, but needs consideration. Does the operation of Amtrak trains at higher speeds than freight require a higher level of maintenance and an associated added cost?
The last and potentially the biggest cost is oppurtunity costs. It comes into play when the host railroad has a capacity problem. The question there is how much additional higher revenue or more profitable freight could be hauled if the Amtrak train wasn’t soaking up capacity?
I am sure that in the negotiations between Amtrak and the host railroads all of these items are involved, but I doubt that you would find anybody on either side being in agreement on a "tru
I wholeheartedly agree…
LC
One case comes to mind: the “speeding” incident in Kissimmee FL years ago (90s?), where the speed recorder indicated the engineer had exceeded the speed limit on a curve.
MP57313-
With the item you quoted, I was refering to a situation where Amtrak may or may not have caused a delay to freight trains.
As far as being at fault for an accident, I am sure they have been, certainly more than once.
Jay