In this issue:

Infrastructure Breakdown on D.C. Metro System

Auto Sales Plummet as Interest-Free Loans Dry Up

Major Auto Industry Layoffs in the Offing

Bush Clan Defeats Florida Bullet-Train

More Than Half of Bridges in One Louisiana Parish Need Repairs

From Volume 3, Issue Number 45 of EIR Online, Published Nov. 9, 2004

U.S. Economic/Financial News

Infrastructure Breakdown on D.C. Metro System

On Nov. 3, an out-of service Metro train, in Washington D.C.'s subway system, which was parked, had its brakes fail, and started rolling backward down an incline. It gained speed, up to 30 miles per hour, then slammed into an in-operation train that had just picked up passengers. The out-of-control train was sheared in the collision, landing on top of the lead car of the in-operation train.

Investigators say that for this accident to occur on the automated Metro system, at least two systems had to fail: First, the Metro has a roll-back protection system, in which electronic signals built into the track are supposed to recognize that a train is moving backwards and to notify computers on the train to engage the brakes automatically. Second, it has an automatic control system that is supposed to stop a train from hitting another train. Neither system worked.

The Metro system is relatively young—only about 35 years old—but underfunded. It has incurred a series of serious accidents and mishaps this year: In March, a fire chased Metro Red Line riders onto the street at the height of morning rush hour. In June, Metro applied budget-cutting, reducing trains from four to two cars at night: The overcrowding was so severe it had to revert to four cars. In July, part of the ceiling of the Farragut North station collapsed. In August, a train derailed at Silver Spring, and last month, service was slowed twice by cracks in the tracks.

Metro gets some funding from passenger fares, and some from the municipalities it serves, led by Washington D.C. Mayor Tony Williams has been preoccupied with clearing out Washington to make it a center of gentrified high-priced real estate; two years ago, he instituted the genocidal closing of the city's only public service hospital, D.C. General.

Auto Sales Plummet as Interest-Free Loans Dry Up

GM and Ford sales fell in October, as the two largest U.S. automakers stopped offering long-term interest-free loans that had boosted sales in the last week of September. Chrysler posted a 2% gain in sales. General Motors reported that sales fell by 5%. Ford said U.S. sales dropped 5.3%, as car sales plunged 20% while truck sales rose 2.5%.

Major Auto Industry Layoffs in the Offing

Major layoffs are in the offing at Visteon Corp., the second-largest U.S. auto-parts supplier, with many of its 21,000 employees in Michigan, the Detroit News reported Nov. 2. Visteon was split off from Ford Motor Company four years ago, under conditions where it employed a large number of Ford workers at union scale—an average of over $25 an hour. Now, with the downturn in business, Visteon is looking to send these workers back to Ford, and hire new workers at $14 an hour. Other alternatives being considered for cost-savings are the layoffs, selling off plants, compressing the work week, and the like.

Bush Clan Defeats Florida Bullet-Train

Florida Governor Jeb Bush used his muscle, along with that of fellow Republican, the state's chief financial officer Tom Gallagher, to defeat plans to build a bullet-train in Florida. An election-day referendum was defeated by a 2-to-1 margin.

The pro-bullet-train forces had been organizing to construct such a train for more than a quarter of a century. In 2000, they succeeded in passing a constitutional amendment requiring the state commit to high-speed rail. They created the Florida High Speed Rail Authority, a state entity, and proceeded to line up a consortium of companies—Montreal-based Bombardier, Flour Corp., and Virgin Group PLC—to build the first phase of the system from Tampa to the Orlando International Airport, a stretch of 90 miles. The proposal provided for future electrification and a full double track on a new rail line dedicated just to high-speed rail. High-speed rail is any rail that travels at above 125 miles per hour, but the Florida bullet-train sponsors were hoping to achieve speeds in the range of the French TGV, of 186 mph. Following the building of the Tampa-Orlando section, construction of the system would continue northward up the Florida coast.

Jeb Bush, after maneuvering to block the plan for several years, helped form a group, "DErail the Bullet Train (DEBT)," which portrayed the project as "unwanted government spending," claiming that the project would swallow up $25 to $30 billion, although its first phase would cost only $2.4 billion—most of it absorbed by the private sector—and even under the worst-case scenario, would cost Florida's state government only $417 million over the first 10 years. The DEBT group poured money into a nasty ad campaign, which featured "fear tactics," according to a spokesman for Bombardier, the lead company in the consortium, including suggesting that prisoners would be let out of prison, were the state forced to pay its share of the project. As a result, the Bush clan blocked a chance for rail modernization, of national importance, eventually leading to maglev.

More Than Half of Bridges in One Louisiana Parish Need Repairs

Reflecting the growing urgency for Lyndon LaRouche's "Super-TVA" program to rebuild the nation's dilapidated infrastructure, inspections show that repairs are needed on 44 of the 85 bridges on roads in Livingston Parish in Louisiana, KACT-TV reported Nov. 3. Problems on seven of the bridges are so severe that state highway officials have prohibited school buses—and fire trucks—from using them. The load-limit order affects about 400 children who ride buses that will have to be rerouted.

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