© Paul Sullivan/Creative Commons
Amtrak announced it will be upgrading rail lines along the Northeast Corridor.
Amtrak announced it will be upgrading rail lines along the Northeast Corridor.
The four railroads that fully met the deadline are the North County Transit District, Metrolink, Port Authority Trans-Hudson Corp., and the Portland & Western Railroad, federal officials said in an update on the USDOT website.
Of the railroads requesting alternative schedules, seven are Class Is, 25 are intercity passenger and commuter railroads, and five are short-line or terminal railroads. Additionally, 12 railroads have received conditional PTC system certification from the FRA.
According to the latest USDOT report, there are now 41,000 route miles in PTC operation, which is 71 percent of the route miles that are subject to the mandate.
Comment: Keep in mind that the claim that Americans use 500 million plastic straws daily is based on a nine-year-old's school project. Yes, you read that right.
Will a straw ban have any real affect? That's very unlikely, although this only furthers the erosion of freedom. Only about 1 percent of plastic pollution comes from the U.S. Of that 1 percent, only a tiny fraction comes from plastic straws. But people like to feel good about themselves, so they convince themselves they are doing something good when what really is happening is that people want the government to be its Nanny State. The Far Left loves to get the government involved in forcing people to do things. It's going to come back to bite them in a big way if they keep it up.
More on the myth of plastic straws being bad for the environment: