Rail System

A collision at a rail yard early Sunday injured three workers on Washington's Metro. The transit agency says a six-car subway train was returning to the West Falls Church Rail Yard when it rear-ended a parked six-car train. Two workers were cleaning the parked train to get it ready for service. Three employees were treated for minor injuries at a nearby hospital and released. No passengers were on board when the crash occurred at about 4:30 a.m. It was the latest in a series of recent accidents involving Washington's rail system.

Riding the MARC Camden Line to a conference on high-speed rail is a bit like taking a horse and buggy to an auto show. But that's exactly what I did last Thursday. And by the end of the day's presentations, riding the pokey old train back from Union Station to Dorsey, the sense of being behind the times was overwhelming. It came as no surprise that the United States is far behind Japan or Germany or France in high-speed rail. We've known for years that visitors from these highly developed industrial nations have been laughing behind our backs at our woefully antiquated rail system.

Cheers from political and business leaders and jeers from neighborhood activists greeted Gov. Martin O'Malley's announcement Tuesday that he will seek federal funding for a 14-mile light rail system with limited tunneling as Maryland's plan to build the long-awaited east-west Red Line. During an appearance at West Baltimore's MARC station, O'Malley surprised nobody by selecting the plan that has won the endorsement of Mayor Sheila Dixon, Baltimore County Executive James T. Smith Jr. and the Greater Baltimore Committee.

The deaths of nine people in the crash involving two Washington Metro subway trains Monday evening was, as more than one person on the scene described it, a horror. It seems all the more so because such an event is so uncommon on commuter rail systems, particularly compared to the automobile-related carnage that takes place on our nation's highways each day. While it will take some time for investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board to determine the exact cause of this tragedy, myriad troubling questions have already arisen.

WASHINGTON -President Barack Obama promoted his plan for developing high-speed railways in America on Thursday, detailing how $13 billion in federal money would act as a "down payment" on creating speedier passenger train service. "High-speed rail is long overdue, and this plan lets American travelers know that they are not doomed to a future of long lines at the airports or jammed cars on the highways," Obama said. "There's no reason why we can't do this." The plan lists the long-planned rail corridor from Los Angeles to San Francisco as one that could receive funding, as well as a planned network featuring Chicago as the hub of a system reaching to Minneapolis, Detroit, Cleveland, Indianapolis and St. Louis.

Maryland has an unexpected opportunity to turn the Obama stimulus package into a local triumph. With a little vision and a lot of determination, we can make it happen. House and Senate conferees inserted language into the stimulus bill that provides $8 billion for high-speed rail systems. The funding was part of President Barack Obama's bold plan to help shift America's transportation priorities and jolt our high-speed rail infrastructure into catching up with what the Europeans, Japanese and Chinese have been doing for decades.

Md. to receive $5.1 million to help ease bay pollution Maryland is getting $5.1 million in federal funds to help clean up farm runoff polluting the Chesapeake Bay, officials said yesterday. The money is the state's share of $23 million earmarked for bay restoration this year in the farm bill approved by Congress. The bill authorized a total of $188 million over four years to address farm pollution in the bay, but the Bush administration had at first balked at spending it. Officials said Pennsylvania will get $6.7 million this year and Virginia nearly $7 million, with the remainder split among Delaware, New York and West Virginia.

If you were paying attention on Election Day, you probably felt the jolt. The train has finally left the station. Actually, trains are beginning to leave the station all over the country. This month, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson will inaugurate the Rail Runner, a new commuter line linking Albuquerque and Santa Fe. California voters just approved $10 billion to start building a high-speed rail line that will stretch from San Diego to Sacramento. In Colorado, transportation planners are talking seriously about a "front range" line that would connect Colorado Springs, Denver, Fort Collins and other communities along the eastern edge of the Rockies.

It takes about two hours to fly from Baltimore to Chicago. But if you want to take public transit from Hunt Valley to Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport to catch that plane? The 25-mile trip is going to take at least as long. As problem-plagued as Baltimore's light rail system has been over its 15 years in service, one would think that every shortcoming had been exposed. Maryland Transit Administration officials have discovered a startling new one: falling leaves.

Don't blame leaves for light rail woes I cannot believe that leaves are what is really stopping the light rail indefinitely ("Stopped short," Nov. 18). It seems to me that the real problem is the braking technology the Maryland Transit Administration installed on the system in 2004. The light rail system has been open since 1992, and I am sure that leaves have fallen on the tracks ever since and that trains have ground them into a "gelatinous substance." So why, after 16 years, have the trains come to a screeching halt in the northern half of the system?