Trains

Re “Quake: Amtrak Train Derailed by Temblor,” Oct. 17: You quote a San Bernardino County sheriff’s deputy, “If the train (Amtrak’s Southwest Chief) was going 90 (mph), we’d be out here picking up bodies.”

If the Southwest Chief continued at 90 mph (and should have), it would have passed the freight and been miles further west, reaching L.A., while the deputies would have seen the Burlington, Northern & Santa Fe freight train derailed at earthquake time.

So why does a 90-mph passenger-mail train have to follow behind a freight doing less than 60 mph? Congress wants it like that: Congress is too afraid of the airlines to give Amtrak three cents of our gas tax to really succeed. In fact, Congress is too bought by the car lobby to build real transit alternatives instead of new freeways. And though Congress gave Western railroads their real estate, now they are too busy building and maintaining freeways to level the playing field by funding railroad maintenance and asserting the rail-riding public’s rightful track precedence over freight operations.

JOHN JAY ULLOTH

Mission Hills