(Newswire.net — May 13, 2015) — Philadelphia – Dozens of lives have been lost, and hundreds of people injured over the past decade in train wrecks. According to critics, all this is due to lack of funding, infrastructure and development.
Amtrak’s ninth derailment this year alone took 6 lives, and injured 150 people. While officials are still deterring the reasons of the derailment, some, like transportation analyst Matthew L. Wald, blame aged rail tracks that are hard to provide proper maintenance for, because they are in frequent use.
“It’s an extremely heavily used stretch of track,” says Wald. “They have trouble keeping it in a state of good repair.”
The Northeast Corridor, which reaches from Washington to Boston, is the busiest passenger line in the country, CNN reported.
Reportedly, the area of the crash in Philadelphia, known as Frankford Junction, was the site of one of the nation’s deadliest train accidents; the Congressional Limited crash of 1943 killed 79 people.
One of the six persons killed in the Amtrak train crash in Philadelphia, was a student at the US Naval Academy, a doctor at Temple University Hospital said Wednesday.
According to some passengers, it didn’t all happen at once. One of the passengers, Jeremy Wladis was in the very last car, eating. “The next thing you know, the train starts doing funny things, and it gradually starts getting worse and worse,” he said.
“Until the second of impact, everything was normal,” passenger Daniel Wetrin told CNN. “Then it was just chaos,” he said explaining that things “started flying” — phones, laptops, “Then people.”
“It is an absolute, disastrous mess,” Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter said. “I’ve never seen anything like this in my life.”
According to Amtrak, Service between Philadelphia and New York City remained suspended Wednesday.
Amtrak issued a hotline for those seeking information about friends and family aboard the train: 1-800-523-9101.