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On June 20, after millions of Americans had suffered through a sweltering heat wave for three days, Amtrak sent an ominous warning over social media: Trains connecting the largest cities in Northeast could face up to an hour of delay from high temperatures.
As the planet rapidly warms, train delays and breakdowns are becoming more frequent as America’s antiquated rail infrastructure struggles to remain functional during prolonged extreme weather events that were not typical when the system was constructed.
A New York Times analysis of Amtrak data found that the rail service’s passengers have faced record delays in recent years caused by inclement weather such as heat waves, storms, floods, high winds, low temperatures, tornadoes, lightning and wildfires.
Amtrak had weak points “that climate change is already attacking,” he added, such as the Hudson River tunnels that flooded in 2012 when Hurricane Sandy shut down rail traffic for days and forced months of service cuts during repairs.
“These blanket speed orders can cause huge costs from delay,” said Jacob Helman, a senior data consultant at Resilient Analytics, a research group that builds models to predict future effects of climate change on various infrastructure.
The study labeled New York as “a notable vulnerability hot spot” for a confluence of problems in rail operations caused by heat and heavy rain, including flooding, sun kinks, equipment malfunction and power outages.
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