The train operators' dependence on government subsidies

A crowded commuter train that had apparently lost its brakes barreled into a station in a busy commercial area of Argentina's capital during the Wednesday morning rush, killing at least 49 people and injuring more than 600, officials said.Burberry bags, burberry ties, burberry watches cheap on sale.

Federal police spokesman Fernando Sostre said 49 people were confirmed dead in the accident, one of the worst in Argentina's history. But rescuers, who spent much of the morning pulling victims from the wreckage, said the toll could rise.

The train, on the Sarmiento line that connects the capital with communities to the west, was packed with commuters when it headed into the Once de Septiembre station around 8:30 a.m.

The accident, the most catastrophic of a series of recent train wrecks in Argentina, triggered an immediate barrage of criticism of leftist President Cristina Kirchner's policy of offering heavy subsidies to the transportation sector, with scant regulatory oversight.

The train "couldn't brake and the bumper impacted" against the platform, Edgardo Reynoso, a railways union official, told the local media.

Transportation Secretary Juan Pablo Schiavi described www.fashiontoy.com the accident as "very grave" and attributed it to "some flaw in the brakes."

Firemen rescued wounded passengers from the train that crashed in Buenos Aires Wednesday.

Television images showed rescuers working for several hours to pull passengers out of the roof of a mangled train car. First-aid workers attended victims on the scene. Officials said that nearly a score of ambulances were dispatched to the scene.

A passenger interviewed by Argentina's Todo Noticias TV said, "It entered very fast into the station. It was a strong blow, people fell on top of me. We were all desperate to get out." Officials said the train was moving at about 12 miles an hour at the time of impact.

The crash at the Once de Septiembre station was the latest of a series of Argentine train accidents. In September, another train in the capital crashed into a bus and a train headed in a different direction, resulting in 11 deaths and more than 200 injuries.

In November, a crash between a train and a bus in San Luis province resulted in eight fatalities.

Argentina once boasted a vast train network crisscrossing the pampas and Patagonia. At the start of the 1990s, with the train system losing close to $1 billion a year, the government dismantled it and auctioned off concessions for various routes.

Rescue workers extricate a wounded person after Wednesday's crash of a commuter train in Buenos Aires that killed at least 49 people.Burberry sunglasses, burberry scarves, burberry shoes 2012 outlet.

But the system has still been fraught with service and financial problems since privatization. The woes were exacerbated after Argentina endured an economic collapse and devaluation of the peso in 2001-2002. In the aftermath of the crisis, Argentina froze tariffs for public services, while paying subsidies to operators.

The subsidies in the transportation sector currently amount to a large sum by international standards, about 1% of Argentina's gross domestic product, said Lucio Castro, an economist at the Center for the Implementation of Public Policies, a Buenos Aires think tank. The train operators' dependence on government subsidies, rather than on fees paid by customers, have made them less responsive to consumers and led them to give relatively short thrift to service and safety, he said.

In addition, the trains "are not heavily enough www.buymyfavorite.com regulated," said Mariana Schweitzer, a specialist in urban planning at the University of Buenos Aires. The Sarmiento line is operated by Trenes de Buenos Aires, which said in a statement Wednesday that it was conducting an internal investigation to determine what had gone wrong.