Despite the recent uptick in accidents, complaints about Amtrak’s passenger train service are nothing new, write Ryan Beene and Thomas Black for Bloomberg Businessweek.

Amtrak has been having issues with revenue and has been reliant on tracks owned and maintained by other companies since its inception nearly a half-century ago. It was created as a part-public, part-private government corporation that would take over train routes that were losing money, while American railroads focused on freight transport.

Since then, it has never broken even.

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This lack of profits is slowing attempts to make train travel safer. In 2008, Congress ordered that passenger trains and critical sections of track have to be outfitted with Positive Train Control, a system that can slow or stop a train automatically.

However, the deadline of 2015 had to be extended to the end of this year. An additional two-year extension was also made available recently for railroads that have made substantial progress.

Amtrak says it will be able to meet the deadline for its trains and tracks, but may have to suspend services on tracks that have failed to activate the system in time.

Read more about train travel in Bloomberg Businessweek here.

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