A Holistic Look at U.S. Infrastructure

In the wake of a tragedy like the recent crash of Amtrak 188 killing eight people and injuring 200 others near Philadelphia, we need time to mourn and then time to understand what happened and what went wrong. It is important to learn from this crash, however, and apply those lessons to our nation’s infrastructure to prevent something like this from happening again.

An op-ed from GBTA ran in The Baltimore Sun this weekend taking a holistic view at the nation’s infrastructure. Below is an excerpt from the piece:

When the Apollo 1 fire in 1967 killed three American astronauts, it was a terrible national tragedy. But just two years later, during the Apollo 11 mission, Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. That is what we do with tragedies: We learn from them and work to ensure they don’t happen again.

That is the spirit we must take with the tragic crash of Amtrak 188 that killed eight people and injured 200 others near Philadelphia. It is too early to know precisely what caused the derailment and inappropriate to speculate; a final report will ultimately provide the details.

But the crash should make us take a step back and look at whether we’ve done enough to ensure the safety of our nation’s transportation system. As a nation, we increasingly rely on our infrastructure to conduct business and connect. And there are no more heavily used tracks than the Northeast corridor that connects Boston through New York City, Philadelphia and Baltimore to Washington.

Head over to The Baltimore Sun website to read the full article.