Understanding Government

The National Transportation Safety Board is urging Michigan not to repeal a state law that requires motorcycle drivers to wear helmets. The State Senate had previously passed such laws only to have them vetoed by Michigan Democratic Governor Jennifer Granholm. New GOP Governor Rick Snyder is more receptive to getting rid of the safety measure.

This naive, safety-first blogger mistakenly presumed that all states required cyclists (including bicyclists) to wear helmets. But only 20 states have laws requiring all motorcyclists to wear helmets. Illinois is one of three states, along with Iowa and New Hampshire, to have no motorcycle helmet-use law on the books whatsoever.

A series of unrelated errors, some made over half a century ago, aligned in a cascading series of failures that caused the deadly explosion last September of a major natural gas transmission line near San Francisco, reports Eric Nadler of the San Francisco Chronicle.

The story is based on newly-released documents from a National Transportation Safety Board investigation into the catastrophe.

On Sept. 9 a Pacific Gas & Electric Co., natural gas transmission line, some 30 inches in diameter, buried beneath a San Bruno Calif., subdivision failed. The ensuing fireball and inferno killed eight people and consumed 38 homes.  Operators at a San Francisco control room saw pressure spiking in several pipelines (more…)

San Bruno aftermath

They’re still nailing down exactly what caused a massive explosion to transform a quiet subdivision south of San Francisco into a fatal inferno in September of last year, but evidence of shoddy record-keeping by the utility Californians love to hate has prompted a new set of urgent orders from federal regulators. (more…)

Pipelines may be central to many modern conveniences, but the explosion earlier this month of a half-century old natural gas pipeline south of San Francisco has awakened public unease that the pipelines may be ticking time bombs that have been out of sight and, until now, out of mind.

Under pressure from state regulators, Pacific Gas & Electric Co., the utilities that locals love to hate, is compiling a list of the 100 riskiest pipeline segments in its service area, which covers about a third of the state. (more…)

USA Today’s Alan Levin reports on a three-day hearing by the National Transportation Safety Board into the safety of metro public transit systems (a hearing brought about by last June’s subway crash in Washington):

Peter Goelz, the NTSB’s former managing director, said systems such as Washington’s Metro have no incentive to improve safety. “What’s going to happen to them?” Goelz said. “It’s not like an airline and you can ground them.”

Unlike heavy rail, airlines and highway transportation, safety on the nation’s 40 subway and light-rail systems is overseen by state agencies, not the federal government. More than 4 billion passengers a year travel on these systems, according to the American Public Transportation Association (APTA).

The Tri-State Oversight Commission, which oversees safety in Washington’s subway system, has six employees, five of whom have other duties and work part time on the issue.

Last fall, the Obama administration proposed tightening the rules to give the Federal Transit Administration greater control. States could continue to oversee transit safety but would have to follow new federal regulations. States could opt out of oversight and turn that responsibility over to the federal government. Legislation that would require the changes was introduced in the Senate on Monday.

This nicely illustrates how public transit safety is a secondary concern. The use of public transit has never really been part of a national transportation plan that is mostly focused on planes and cars. So it does make sense that regulation is de-centralized. By that logic, new federal regulations would suggest an acknowledgment of public transit’s national importance.