Amtrak Pays Millions for Others' Fatal Errors (NYTimes)

[NewYorkerfromMass]

....In accident after accident, in derailments and grade-crossing collisions, CSX and other major freight railroads have used Amtrak to shield themselves from tens of millions of dollars in liability, an examination by The New York Times has found.

For three decades, Amtrak has been paying these liability claims, regardless of fault, as a condition for using the freight lines' tracks. Not only do these payments shift the burden of paying for negligence from profitable corporations to taxpayers, they remove an incentive for railroads to keep their tracks safe.

There has never been a full accounting of these payments. Even Amtrak officials could not say how much the arrangement, known as indemnification, has cost the railroad, which needed $1.2 billion in government subsidies this year to stay afloat.

But an analysis by The Times of records obtained through the federal Freedom of Information Act found that Amtrak has paid more than $186 million since 1984 for accidents blamed entirely or mostly on others. In each instance, freight railroads were accused of playing the major or a contributing role in causing those accidents, which killed 53 people and injured nearly 1,300, according to court records, government investigators and lawyers for crash victims.....

http://nytimes.com/2004/10/15/national/15rail.html?ei=5094&en=009f1e23c024ec06&hp=&ex=1097812800&partner=homepage&pagewanted=print&position=

Read it.
Looks like Bush Treasury Sec'y Snow helped CSX rip off American taxpayers.

[NewYorkerfromMass]

1. Keeping track of Snow's special CSX treatment asTreas. Sec'y

...the CSX Corporation, the rail giant, gets a 50 percent tax credit for maintaining its tracks. What that has to do with export subsidies is anybody's guess. But CSX Corp. was headed by John Snow before he became Treasury Secretary. Was Snow remembering his old friends?...

http://www.news-journalonline.com/cgi-bin/printme.asp

Even the Bush administration, never troubled by corporate handouts, is troubled with the results, although Bush is certain to sign it into law anyway. Treasury Secretary John Snow was quoted as complaining that the measure includes a host of "special interest tax provisions that benefit few taxpayers and increase the complexity of the tax code." Snow's former employer, CSX, is one of the bill's beneficiaries. It and other railroads would get a tax credit to keep their tracks in working order, as if they wouldn't do so without a taxpayer subsidy....

http://ajc.printthis.clickability.com/pt/cpt?action=cpt&title=Tax+break+badly+mended&expire=&urlID=11922958&fb=Y&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ajc.com%2Fopinion%2Fcontent%2Fopinion%2F1004%2F12tax.html&partnerID=557