Fire on the Red Line (Chicago, Bush: unemployment, construction, maintenance)

[Swandaddy]

19 hurt in CTA Red Line fire on the Near North Side :: CHICAGO SUN-TIMES :: Metro & Tri-State (http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/2413148,fire-red-line-north-side-062010.article?;;;;;xxxxxx - broken link)

WTF is the deal with this crumbling infrastructure!!?? I don't care whether it's Rodriguez, Daley, Quinn, Blajo, Bush, Obama, the city, the state, the feds, whoever. To have an incident like this is simply unacceptable!

With 75% of the CTA system being a slow zone, the smelly beat up old train cars, etc, obviously there isn't enough money being spent on capital equipment/maintenance/etc. Whether there's patronage going on or underfunding or spending all our money on interstate highways or whatever bottom line is that not enough money is being spent on the service itself.

There's however much unemployment especially in the blue collar/manufacturing section and they can't figure out that A: there's a manufacturing/construction need and B: there's plenty of people willing to work in manufacturing/construction should equal C: money should be made available to put A & B together.

[Dncr]

Well this is terrible, but it's not so much the infrastructure. The CTA is in the process of getting new trains anyway.

Having a heavy rail option is better than not. I'll take the occasional accident over the addition to over a million cars added to the streets.