New York Times: Crash Puts Focus on Aging Rail Fleets

From New York Times:

The train that rear-ended another in Washington on Monday evening, killing nine people, was made up of some of the oldest cars in Washington’s relatively young subway system, cars that had been cited for vulnerabilities before. But federal data show that many other cities are also using outdated rail equipment.  More than a third of the equipment in the nation’s seven largest rail transit agencies was rated in marginal or poor condition by the Federal Transit Administration this spring. Replacing all the equipment that has exceeded its useful life and finishing all outstanding station rehabilitations for just those seven large systems would cost roughly $50 billion, the agency estimated, and keeping the systems in a state of good repair after that would cost an estimated $5.9 billion a year.