President Joe Biden — perhaps the nation’s biggest Amtrak fan — is set to promote new federal investments for trains on the heavily trafficked Northeast Corridor. The Democratic president is headed to Bear, Delaware, on Monday to announce more than $16 billion in new funding that will go toward 25 passenger rail projects between Boston and Washington, the White House says. Bear is located about 12 miles (20 kilometers) from Biden’s home of Wilmington. His remarks will be held at the Amtrak Bear Maintenance Shops, where trains are maintained and repaired. The investments, the White House says, will help trains run faster, cut delays and create union jobs. The money comes from the roughly $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure law that Biden signed nearly two years ago, one of several legislative achievements that the president is touting as he gears up for his reelection bid. From the law, Amtrak will get about $66 billion in new investments, according to the White House. During his 36 years as a U.S. senator, Biden traveled back and forth from Wilmington to Washington daily. The president has said that he has logged more than 1 million miles on Amtrak during his public service career. “Amtrak wasn’t just a way to get home to family,” Biden said at an infrastructure event in Baltimore earlier this year. “The conductors, the engineers — they literally became my family.” There are about 800,000 trips daily on Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor, the White House says, which makes it the busiest rail corridor in the United States. (AP)

An Amtrak train carrying nearly 200 passengers struck a county water truck and derailed on Wednesday in Southern California, critically injuring the truck’s driver, authorities said. Three of the train’s seven cars went off the tracks following the collision in Moorpark, said Ventura County Fire Department Captain Brian McGrath. The derailed train cars remained upright on tracks adjacent to an orchard and bare sections of land. Fourteen people on the train were taken to hospitals with minor injuries, while the truck driver was taken to a trauma center with a head injury, McGrath said. Parts of the demolished Ventura County Public Works truck were scattered all around the derailed train cars. McGrath initially said the truck’s driver was believed to have gotten out of the vehicle before the crash, but later clarified that the circumstances leading up to the wreck weren’t known. “No one’s talked to him, so the whole situation is still being investigated,” he said. Mindy Faver was seated facing the rear of the train after a trip with her mother, Shari Peterson, returning from visiting family in Oregon. “All of a sudden: Smack!” Faver said, describing the impact. Then Faver saw what she later found out was the water truck’s tank tumbling past her window. Most of the passengers were able to get off the train cars on their own or with the aid of first responders, McGrath said. TV news helicopters showed numerous people, many carrying luggage, milling about in a field as firefighters worked the scene. “It could have been a lot worse,” Faver told the Ventura County Star. The train was on its way to Los Angeles from Seattle when “it struck a water truck obstructing the tracks” at 11:15 a.m., Amtrak said in a statement. “There were approximately 198 passengers and 13 crew onboard who were evacuated from the train, with no reports of serious injuries,” the statement said. “Amtrak is working with customers to make alternate travel arrangements. Amtrak, in coordination with local authorities, is conducting a full investigation.” Crews were able to quickly douse a small fire, McGrath said. Moorpark is a city of some 35,000 people located about 50 miles (80 kilometers) northwest of downtown Los Angeles. (AP)

One person is in custody after someone opened fire Monday aboard an Amtrak train in Tucson, Arizona, causing passengers to flee, police said. The shooting happened just after 8 a.m. on a train parked at the station in the city’s downtown. Authorities said the scene has been secured and there is no further threat. There are no reported injuries to the crew or passengers, said Amtrak spokesman Jason Abrams. The Sunset Limited, Train 2, was traveling from Los Angeles to New Orleans, and arrived at the Tucson station at 7:40 am, Abrams said. There were 137 passengers and 11 crew members, he said. All have been evacuated to the station. Evan Courtney was in a lounge car when people suddenly came running in yelling: “Shots fired!” “I grabbed my backpack and ran,” Courtney told The Associated Press via Twitter direct messaging. He said he huddled with other passengers while looking out the window. He saw several tactical police officers with assault rifles behind barricades. After 15 minutes, “police ran to us and told us to get out of the car and run in the opposite direction.” Courtney later tweeted a photo of nearly two dozen officers including two embracing. Dramatic video on social media taken from a camera at the Southern Arizona Transportation Museum shows some of the shooting. ⚠️🇺🇸#URGENT: Emerging reports of several officers down following shooting at Amtrak Station in Arizona#Tucson l #AZEmergency crews are now on scene. It is believed three people have been shot onboard the train. Suspect now in custody.Standby for further details! pic.twitter.com/vvoql4lTzu — Intel Point Alert (@IntelPointAlert) October 4, 2021 Multiple shots can be heard from inside a train before a man, who appears to be a security officer with a dog, boards in the middle of the second-to-last car through an open door. Two bystanders back away and then run past a baggage cart, joining four others as they usher each other into the last car and the door slides shut. One shot is heard and the security officer, holding a gun, backs off the train with the dog still on the leash. He runs behind a structure on the train platform as a man appears at the passenger car door, fires three shots toward the fleeing man and dog, and disappears back inside. Tucson, home to the University of Arizona, is 113 miles (182 kilometers) south of Phoenix. (AP)

Amtrak plans to spend $7.3 billion to replace 83 passenger trains, some nearly a half-century old, though much of the funding must still be approved by Congress. Amtrak said Wednesday that under the contract with German manufacturer Siemens AG, some of the trains will be hybrids, able to operate on diesel fuel and electricity where wires are available. The new trains will replace Amfleet, Metroliner and state-owned equipment starting in 2024. The new engines and passenger cars will be built at a U.S. factory in Sacramento, California. The new trains will have more comfortable seating, better ventilation systems, individual power outlets and USB ports, onboard WiFi, and panoramic windows. Amtrak CEO William Flynn says they’ll pollute far less than the older trains when operating in diesel mode. The trains will go to lines in New York, New England, California, the Northwest, Virginia and elsewhere. The railroad has an option to buy 130 additional trains from Siemens. Siemens says the first delivery will be in 2024 to the Cascades line in the northwest, with the rest continuing through 2030. Manufacturing will start in 2023. The trains will have an engine and roughly six to eight cars. The contract will include equipment and a long-term parts supply and service agreement, the statement says. In an interview, Flynn said the trains will be capable of traveling up to 125 mph (201 kilometers per hour), and they will be able to shift from electric mode to diesel without current delays due to switching engines. Trains often are limited to 90 mph (145 kilometers per hour) by track conditions, he said. Amtrak says money will come from about $200 million already approved by Congress, as well as future funding that has to be approved. “We expect that we will have annual funding for our portion of the train sets,” he said. “If there should be a moment in time when that money isn’t specifically available, we have the ability to finance the units as well,” Flynn said. That money would be repaid by states with trains, and passenger fares, he said. Amtrak’s board has approved up to $4.9 billion for equipment, parts and service and $2 billion to modify its facilities. Initially Amtrak will buy 73 trains and a 20-year parts and service agreement for about $3.4 billion. Amtrak ridership hit a record 32.4 million passengers in 2019 before the coronavirus pandemic hit, Flynn said. Passenger volume is about 62% of what it was before the pandemic, he said. Prior to the pandemic Amtrak operated around 310 trains per day, but now it’s about 201. Flynn expects the schedule to be fully restored by September or October. In 2016, Amtrak contracted with French train maker Alstom to build 28 high-speed trains for the Acela Express service in the Northeast Corridor. The infrastructure bill proposed by the administration of President Joe Biden has $66 billion for freight and passenger rail. Biden regularly rode Amtrak between Washington and his home in Wilmington, Delaware, during his 36 years as a senator and has proposed a big increase in federal money for the rail service. Supporters say that increased use of public transit and rail would reduce greenhouse gas emissions. (AP)

Amtrak will cut service later this year on most of its long-distance routes nationwide to three times a week instead of the current daily service because ridership has fallen significantly during the coronavirus pandemic. Amtrak spokeswoman Kimberly Woods said Wednesday that the cuts will take effect Oct. 1 and remain in place until at least the summer of 2021, but daily service could be restored if demand improves along its long-distance routes. Jim Mathews, president and chief executive of the Rail Passengers Association advocacy group, said he thinks the cuts are short-sighted and will hurt long-term demand for these routes. “The long-distance services declined the least among Amtrak’s three business lines during the coronavirus-induced slowdown, and its services remain essential to the hundreds of small communities across the United States with fewer options than Philadelphia or Boston or New York City,” Mathews said. The train routes being cut to three days week include the California Zephyr, Capitol Limited, City of New Orleans, Coast Starlight, Crescent, Empire Builder, Lake Shore Limited, Palmetto, Southwest Chief, and Texas Eagle. The Sunset Limited and Cardinal trains already operate three times a week. Amtrak said its Auto Train, which runs from the Washington, D.C., suburbs to the Orlando, Florida, area, is the only long-distance route that will continue to operate daily. (AP)

Amtrak plans to suspend Acela Nonstop lines due to decreased demand as the novel coronavirus outbreak grows across the country. Amtrak will suspend the service between March 10 and May 26, which is the day after Memorial Day. That means three routes (trains 2401, 2402 and 2403) that go directly between Washington, D.C., and New York City won’t run. Travelers can use alternative Northeast Corridor routes, Amtrak says. Many across the country are adjusting travel plans to protect themselves against COVID-19, which can cause symptoms including mild to severe respiratory effects. Amtrak says safety is its top priority. The transport service says it has stepped up cleaning protocols and made sanitizing materials available to customers and staff to safeguard against the spread of a virus that has sickened more than 100,000 across the world. Customers can also change reservations for travel dates before April 30 without paying a change fee. Dozens of coronavirus cases have been confirmed in New York, including two people who attended a conference in D.C. (NBCNewYork)

Amtrak’s president and CEO says the railroad will consider suspending service on tracks that don’t have speed controls in place by Dec. 31. That could affect service in much of the United States. Richard Anderson told a House subcommittee on Thursday that Amtrak is concerned about delays in installing GPS-based positive-train control systems on tracks it uses but doesn’t own. Railroads face a year-end deadline for installing the systems, known as PTC, but many are seeking an extension until 2020. PTC is designed to automatically slow or stop trains that are going too fast. It can take control when an engineer is distracted or incapacitated. It’s activated on Amtrak-owned tracks from Boston to Washington, D.C., and in Michigan. Elsewhere, Amtrak operates on track owned by freight carriers and other entities. (AP)

Federal investigators are still looking at how CSX railway crews routed an Amtrak train into a parked freight train in Cayce, South Carolina, last weekend. But even if CSX should bear sole responsibility for the accident, Amtrak will likely end up paying crash victims’ legal claims with public money. Amtrak pays for accidents it didn’t cause because of secretive agreements negotiated between the passenger rail company, which receives more than $1 billion annually in federal subsidies, and the private railroads, which own 97 percent of the tracks on which Amtrak travels. Both Amtrak and freight railroads that own the tracks fight to keep those contracts secret in legal proceedings. But whatever the precise legal language, plaintiffs’ lawyers and former Amtrak officials say Amtrak generally bears the full cost of damages to its trains, passengers, employees and other crash victims — even in instances where crashes occurred as the result of a freight rail company’s negligence or misconduct. Railroad industry advocates say that freight railways have ample incentive to keep their tracks safe for their employees, customers and investors. But the Surface Transportation Board and even some federal courts have long concluded that allowing railroads to escape liability for gross negligence is bad public policy. “The freight railroads don’t have an iron in the fire when it comes to making the safety improvements necessary to protect members of the public,” said Bob Pottroff, a Manhattan, Kansas, rail injury attorney who has sued CSX on behalf of an injured passenger from the Cayce crash. “They’re not paying the damages.” Beyond CSX’s specific activities in the hours before the accident, the company’s safety record has deteriorated in recent years, according to a standard metric provided by the Federal Railroad Administration. Since 2013, CSX’s rate of major accidents per million miles traveled has jumped by more than half, from 2 to 3.08 — significantly worse than the industry average. And rail passenger advocates raised concerns after the CSX CEO at the time pushed hard last year to route freight more directly by altering its routes. CSX denied that safety had slipped at the company, blaming the change in the major accident index on a reduction of total miles traveled combined with changes in its cargo and train length. “Our goal remains zero accidents,” CSX spokesman Bryan Tucker wrote in a statement provided to The Associated Press. CSX’s new system of train routing “will create a safer, more efficient railroad resulting in a better service product for our customers,” he wrote. Amtrak’s ability to offer national rail service is governed by separately negotiated track usage agreements with 30 different railroads. All the deals share a common trait: They’re “no fault,” according to a September 2017 presentation delivered by Amtrak executive Jim Blair as part of a Federal Highway Administration seminar. No fault means Amtrak takes full responsibility for its property and passengers and the injuries of anyone hit by a train. The “host railroad” that operates the tracks must only be responsible for its property and employees. Blair called the decades-long arrangement “a good way for Amtrak and the host partners to work together to get things resolved quickly and not fight over issues of responsibility.” Amtrak declined to comment on Blair’s presentation. But Amtrak’s history of not pursuing liability claims against freight railroads doesn’t

Federal investigators spent a second day Monday at the site of a deadly train crash in South Carolina, where an Amtrak train was mistakenly sent off a main track and down a side spur – and into a parked freight train. The ensuing crash early Sunday killed two people and injured more than 100 passengers. The investigation headed by the National Transportation Safety Board could take years, but federal investigators are already focusing on one critical factor: that a switch, set manually, may have caused the passenger train to barrel down the wrong track. Moreover, authorities say the crash could have been prevented with a GPS-based system called “positive train control,” which knows the location of all trains and the positions of all switches in an area and is designed to prevent two trains from traveling on the same track at the same time. “It could have avoided this accident. That’s what it’s designed to do,” said National Transportation Safety Board Chairman Robert Sumwalt. Regulators have demanded the implementation of positive train control for decades, and the technology is now in place in the Northeast, but railroads that operate tracks used by Amtrak elsewhere in the U.S. have won repeated extensions from the government. The deadline for installing such equipment is now the end of 2018. CSX Corp. — the freight railroad operator which runs that stretch of track — issued a statement expressing condolences but said nothing about the cause. “Business as usual must end,” Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut said after this latest crash. Sumwalt said the passenger train hurtled down a side track near Cayce (CAYsee) around 2:45 a.m. Sunday after a stop 10 miles (16 kilometers) north in Columbia because a switch had been locked in place, diverting it from the main line. A crew on the freight train had moved the switch to drive it from one side track — where it unloaded 34 train cars of automobiles — to the side track where it was parked. The switch was padlocked as it was supposed to be, Sumwalt said. The system that operates the train signals in the area was down, so CSX dispatchers were operating them manually. Sumwalt said it was too early to know if the signal was red to warn the Amtrak crew that the switch was not set to continue along the main train line. Just hours after Sunday’s crash, which also sent 116 of the 147 people on board the New York-to-Miami train to the hospital, Amtrak President Robert Anderson said there must be no more delays from the federal government in installing the safety system by the end of 2018. He deferred to investigators about whether the system would have stopped this crash. “Theoretically, an operative PTC system would include switches in addition to signals, so it would cover both speed and switches,” Anderson said. The Silver Star was going an estimated 59 mph (94 kph) when it struck the freight train, Gov. Henry McMaster said. It was the middle of the night, and many people were jolted from sleep by the crash and forced into the cold. “I thought that I was dead,” said passenger Eric Larkin, of Pamlico County, North Carolina, who was dazed and limping after banging his knee. Suddenly awake, Larkin said the train

An Amtrak passenger train slammed into a freight train parked on a side track in South Carolina early Sunday, killing two Amtrak crew members and injuring more than 110 people, authorities said. It was the third deadly wreck involving Amtrak in less than two months. The Silver Star was on its way from New York to Miami with nearly 150 people aboard around 2:45 a.m. when it plowed into the CSX train at an estimated 59 mph, Gov. Henry McMaster said. The crash happened around a switchyard about 10 miles (16 kilometers) south of Columbia. The governor said investigators have yet to determine how the Amtrak train ended up on that stretch of track. “The CSX was on the track it was supposed to be on,” McMaster said. The National Transportation Safety Board sent investigators. The conductor and engineer aboard the Amtrak train were killed, the coroner’s office said. And 116 people were taken to four hospitals, according to the governor. The main trauma hospital in the area had three patients in critical or serious condition, with the rest treated for minor injuries such as cuts, bruises and whiplash, said Dr. Steve Shelton, Palmetto Health director of emergency preparedness. The locomotives of both trains were left crumpled, the Amtrak engine on its side. One car in the middle of the Amtrak train was snapped in half, forming a V off to one side of the tracks. “It’s a horrible thing to see, to understand the force involved,” McMaster said after touring the scene. Many passengers were asleep with the train began shaking violently and then slammed to a halt, passenger Derek Pettaway told CBS. “You knew we’d hit something or we’d derailed,” he said. Elliot Smith told The State newspaper of Columbia that he was staying with a friend when they heard what sounded like a propane tank exploding. “The sound was so loud, you instantly knew it was bad,” he said. Smith said he and his friend saw passengers limping along the tracks, while others tried to get everyone out of the cars. Amtrak officials gathered up luggage and other belongings and within hours put passengers aboard buses to their destinations. Before being sent on their way, those who were not hurt were taken to a shelter set up at a middle school, and local businesses provided coffee and breakfast. “We know they are shaken up quite a bit. We know this is like nothing else they have ever been through. So we wanted to get them out of the cold, get them out of the weather — get them to a warm place,” sheriff’s spokesman Adam Myrick said. The dead were identified as engineer Michael Kempf, 54, of Savannah, Georgia, and conductor Michael Cella, 36, of Orange Park, Florida. Lexington County Coroner Margaret Fisher’s voice caught as she released the names of the dead. “Any time you have anything that happens like that, you expect more fatalities. But God blessed us, and we only had the two,” Fisher said. On Wednesday, a chartered Amtrak train carrying Republican members of Congress to a strategy retreat slammed into a garbage truck at a crossing in rural Virginia, killing one person in the truck and injuring six others. And on Dec. 18, an Amtrak train ran off the rails along a

Three cars on an Amtrak train carrying more than 300 passengers on a route from Miami to New York derailed in snow-covered Savannah after a fierce winter storm, but no injuries were reported. Amtrak spokesman Jason Abrams said Silver Meteor train 98 was backing slowly into the Savannah station about 10 p.m. Wednesday — hours after the storm clobbered the Southeast coast — when two sleeper cars and a baggage car derailed. “All three cars — a baggage car and two sleeper cars — are fully upright,” Abrams said in an email statement early Thursday to The Associated Press. He said there were 311 passengers on board, in addition to crew, but he had no reports of anyone hurt. Abrams’ statement said the main train was to continue its journey north though some of the sleeping car passengers had to be put aboard a different train. He didn’t say what caused the derailment, and the statement also gave no immediate indication whether the storm that coated Savannah with a rare snowfall on Wednesday was a factor. The National Weather Service said Savannah’s first measurable snowfall since February 2010 was recorded Wednesday in the normally balmy Southern City at 1.2 inches (3 centimeters). It was the first snow in Savannah that exceeded an inch (2.5 centimeters) in 28 years. The fast-intensifying storm on Thursday had moved further up the East Coast. News footage from the site showed police and other emergency vehicles with flashing lights crunching over snow and ice and converging near tracks where the derailment occurred. Passenger Joel Potischman told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution he boarded the train early in the day in Delray Beach, Fla., to head home to Brooklyn, New York. He said the train was en route north amid winter scenes of snow and ice. Another passenger, Mike Zevon, told the newspaper that it was the last three cars that derailed. Abrams’ statement didn’t elaborate on how many cars were in the formation and conditions with the weather or the tracks at the time. (AP)

The rush to launch service on a new, faster Amtrak route near Seattle came at a deadly cost — critical speed-control technology that could have prevented a derailment was not active before the train set off on its maiden voyage. Work to install the sophisticated, GPS-based technology known as positive train control isn’t expected to be completed until next spring on the newly opened 15-mile (24-kilometer) span where the train derailed, according to Sound Transit, the public agency that owns the tracks. The train was going 80 mph (129 kph) in a 30 mph (48 kph) zone Monday when it raced off the rails as they curved toward a bridge, hurtling train cars onto a highway below, investigators said. Three people were killed, and dozens were injured. Federal investigators say they are looking into whether the engineer was distracted. A positive train control system could have detected the speeding and automatically applied the brakes to stop the train, said Najmedin Meshkati, a University of Southern California professor who has studied the technology for three decades. “It is another layer of safety,” he said. Amtrak and the Washington Department of Transportation started publicizing the switch to the new route in October. Amtrak CEO Richard Anderson said that “no one wants PTC more than me” but would not directly answer questions about why it is taking so long to get the speed-control technology up and running across the board. “I’m a huge believer in positive train control,” he said at a news conference Tuesday evening. “It just makes so much scientific sense.” Anderson said the company’s safety culture can continue to improve and said the crash should be seen as a “wake-up call.” “It’s not acceptable that we’re involved in these types of accidents,” he said. Railroads are under government orders to install positive train control by the end of 2018 after the industry lobbied Congress to extend earlier deadlines, citing complexity and cost. Union Pacific, the nation’s largest freight carrier, said it was spending about $2.9 billion on the technology. Industry groups estimate railroads will spend a total of about $10 billion to install and implement the systems. Monday’s wreck is just the latest example of a deadly crash that experts say could have been prevented if the technology were in place to slow down the train when engineers go too fast, get distracted or fall ill. U.S. investigators have listed a lack of such a system as a contributing factor in at least 25 crashes over the last 20 years, including two in the last four years where a train approached sharp curves at more than double the speed limit. A Metro-North train crashed in New York City in 2013, killing four people, when an engineer with sleep apnea dozed off. An Amtrak train crashed in Philadelphia in 2015, killing eight people, when investigators say the engineer was distracted by radio traffic and lost his bearings. Positive train control was installed on 23 percent of the nation’s passenger route miles and 37 percent of freight route miles as of July, the last time the Federal Railroad Administration updated its online tracker for the technology. It is activated on the tracks Amtrak owns along the Northeast Corridor, from Boston to Washington, D.C., and on Amtrak’s Michigan line. Many of its locomotives