The National Transportation Safety Board says the train that derailed Monday as it made its way from Seattle to Portland was going more that twice the posted speed limit when it jumped the tracks on a bridge over a busy interstate highway.

“Preliminary indications are that the train was traveling 80 miles per hour in a 30 mile per hour track,” NTSB member Bella Dinh-Zarr said Tuesday.

Three people where killed and more than 100 injured when one of two engines and 12 cars derailed, many of them tumbling onto a busy interstate highway below.

As rain poured down Tuesday, cranes moved in to clear the damaged cars from Interstate 5, one of the busiest highways on the West Coast, which authorities said may remain closed for several days.

NTSB officials said that investigators had not spoken with the train crew and they were uncertain whether the crew was familiar with the speed limits in the zone. The train was making its inaugural run on a 14.5-mile stretch of recently refurbished track.

Two of the three people who died Monday were identified as Zack Willhoite and Jim Hamre, both train buffs who were eager to be aboard the inaugural run of the Amtrak train over the new route.

If the automatic braking system known as positive train control (PTC) had been operating, sensors along the track bed would have slowed the train before it entered the left-hand curve where it derailed, and the fatal wreck could have been avoided, investigators said.

“It can prevent collision,” said Deborah A.P. Hersman, former chairman of the NTSB and now head of the National Safety Council. “This technology has been proven. And each year we delay the mandate to put it on these routes is another year that passengers and communities are at risk.”

Congress initially took action after a 2008 collision of a commuter train and a Union Pacific freight locomotive that killed 25 people and injured 135 in Chatsworth, Calif. At that time, Congress mandated that all railroads have PTC installed by the end of 2015.

Though the Federal Railroad Administration pressed the railroads to complete the PTC system, the railroads told Congress in 2015 that PTC technology was too complex and the $14.7 billion cost to equip freight and commuter lines was prohibitive.

Congress, which has received $56 million in campaign contributions from the railroads since 1990, relented. The lawmakers voted to extend the PTC deadline until 2018 and left open the possibility they might grant a further extension until 2020.

“The shameful part, the disappointing part, is that positive train control should have been implemented nationwide long ago, and it hasn’t been,” Dinh-Zarr said Tuesday. “That’s one reason people have been losing their lives.”

How the Washington Amtrak crash unfolded View Graphic How the Washington Amtrak crash unfolded

SoundTransit, which owns the track on which the Amtrak train was operating Monday, planned to comply with the congressional mandate and install PTC sensors next year. Although Amtrak trains are equipped with PTC, the Washington State Department of Transportation said the necessary trackside sensors to enable it were not yet in place.

“It is now the end of 2017 and we still don’t have positive train control protecting people on these passenger routes,” Hersman said. “And there really is no reason not to move forward with positive train control.”

Willhoite was an IT specialist at Pierce Transit, which said in a statement: “He will be sincerely missed. Our thoughts are with Zack’s family, as well as the families of the other victims, during this very difficult time.”

The death of Hamre, a former Washington State Department of Transportation employee, was confirmed by the group All About Washington, on whose board he served. Hamre posted photos on Facebook on Friday of the Amtrak train pulling into a station on the old coastal scenic route where the train used to run.

Both men were passionate advocates for passenger railroad.

“Jim was among the country’s most respected and effective rail advocates, and a good friend and mentor to me,” said Rail Passengers Association President Jim Mathews. “Both Jim and Zack have been advocates of transit and passenger rail for decades, and we can’t thank them enough for their work.”

Amtrak was running what railroaders call a push-pull operation, with a locomotive at either end of the 12-passenger cars. Dinh-Zarr said the data recorder had been retrieved from the engine that was at the tail end of the train.

A second data recorder, this one from the lead locomotive, was found Tuesday, and from that investigators were able to determine that the emergency break was automatically engaged and not activated by the engineer. Surveillance cameras from onboard the train are being sent to laboratories to try to extract video footage, Dinh-Zarr said.

By Tuesday afternoon, crews had removed two train cars, including one that was dangling from the overpass, and were in the process of removing at least two others to a site where the NTSB would continue the investigation, the Washington State Department of Transportation said.

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Claudia Baker, another transportation spokeswoman, said that until the train cars are removed the agency won’t know whether there is damage to the highway. But she said that it is a possibility that damage to the road could extend the lanes closure.

An Amtrak locomotive weighs about 200 tons, while passenger cars are about 65 tons.

The wreck left locomotives and rail cars scattered — several of them on the highway below, one tucked under the bridge it was to cross, others beside the railroad embankment and one dangling from the bridge with an end resting on the rail car that had been in front of it.

[Amtrak crew member’s call to 911: ‘We went on the ground’]

At least five vehicles passing below on I-5 — including two tractor-trailers — were heavily damaged as the rail cars from Amtrak Cascades train 501 fell from above.

There were 80 passengers, three crew members and two cafe car workers aboard the train. The 100 people police said were taken to the hospital reflected that some of the injured were traveling in vehicles on I-5.

The NTSB’s lead investigator is Ted Turpin, who also worked on the 2015 Amtrak derailment in Philadelphia and was the lead investigator for the Long Island Rail Road train crash at New York’s Atlantic Terminal this year.

NTSB officials will spend Tuesday making sure they have all the photos and doing a 3-D scan on those rail cars to understand how the damage occurred and how people may have been injured.

They will document the external and internal parts of the train and walk the tracks to determine whether there are any track issues. They also will interview survivors and crew members.

As the investigation continues, they will collect records, including those of the test runs before Monday’s inaugural trip. If needed, they may subpoena phone records of crew members to determine whether they were distracted.

“They will want to rule out any mechanical or equipment defects first,” Hersman said. “They have the recorder, and the recorder does tell them things like whether or not the brakes were applied.”

Interviewing the engineering crew and anyone who was in the locomotive cab will be critical to understand whether the crew saw the speed limit signs that are posted along the route.

“The recorders, the interviews, the physical evidence on the scene, it all will help paint the complete picture for the investigators,” she said.

The Amtrak train was on its first run on tracks that had been rebuilt at a cost of $181 million, using a bypass and avoiding a more scenic but slower passage along the coastline. The new service is said to save 10 minutes in travel time between Seattle and Portland.

The new Amtrak Cascades service is part of an expansion of Amtrak intercity passenger rail service that includes station upgrades and expansions and the addition of new locomotives. Washington and Oregon jointly operate the Amtrak Cascades intercity passenger service. Officials celebrated the opening of the Tacoma station along the rebuilt route with a ribbon-cutting Friday.

The Republican overhaul of the tax code sets the stage for years of politically fraught debate over what the government should provide for its citizens and how much it should demand in taxes.

President Trump and Republicans in Congress are celebrating the $1.5 trillion legislation as a big tax cut for workers and businesses. And for the time being, it is that — 80 percent of the country will pay lower taxes next year.

But the short-term gains come with a cost: The legislation also makes the country’s debt problem even worse, in all likelihood forcing policymakers in coming years to make difficult decisions about spending cuts, tax increases or both.

The debate could touch on some of the most value-laden questions facing the nation — what type of financial security to provide the elderly, what safety net services should be offered to the poor, and how much the government should try to shrink economic inequality.

The challenging landscape is partly the result of choices Republicans made with their tax bill and partly the result of deeper economic forces in the economy. The GOP decided to cut taxes without offsetting spending cuts, driving up the deficit.

But the country is also going through a profound demographic Doshift in which millions of baby boomers are retiring from the labor force and joining the rolls of Medicare and Social Security.

The nation already owes $15 trillion to investors and foreigners. Even before the tax bill, the country was on track to hit $25 trillion in debt in the next decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

That would be the highest in modern American history. The tax bill adds another $1 trillion to $2 trillion to the total.

“We are just dooming ourselves to a larger tax increase or spending cuts in the future,” said Marc Goldwein, senior policy director for the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. “At some point our leaders are going to look at our finances — or the markets will force them to — and say this is unsustainable.”

[The final GOP tax bill is complete. Here’s what is in it.]

Republicans are already previewing how they intend to address the debt. They say they are looking as soon as next year to begin an overhaul of the entitlement system — Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security — in hopes of limiting spending.

They are also seeking to target the safety net, pledging to curb eligibility in an effort to encourage people to seek work instead of relying on government assistance.

“We are going to focus next year on people. On getting people from welfare to work,” House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) said Tuesday on the House floor.

The GOP is not unified on these questions. Trump promised not to touch Medicare and Social Security, two programs that are popular among his base of working-class white voters.

Democrats, meanwhile, say they expect to roll back significant elements of the tax plan if they gain power in the future. Democrats have taken issue with the plan’s disproportionate benefits for the wealthy and corporations.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) went as far as to call the bill “Armageddon.”

“I think the problem with the bill is it increases deficits by at least $1 trillion, largely to finance a giant tax cut for the wealthy and corporations,” said Lily Batchelder, a tax law professor at New York University and former Obama administration official.

[Trump, at last, looks to notch a legislative win with tax bill. But can he redirect his presidency?]

Democrats might not have a chance to do so unless they recapture the White House in 2020, but there is precedent — President Obama and congressional Republicans agreed to end the George W. Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans in a fiscal pact forged on New Year’s Eve, 2012.

Still, asking Americans to stomach spending cuts or tax hikes can prove difficult. Technically speaking the tax-cut legislation is supposed to trigger an equivalent amount of spending cuts under a congressional rule enacted in 2010 out of concern for the mushrooming federal debt. Congress is widely expected to waive the rule.

And while Republicans set a significant part of their package — tax cuts affecting individuals — to expire in 2025, to comply with a Senate rule limiting the impact of legislation on the deficit, they say their expectation is those tax cuts will be extended, bringing the price tag of the tax bill well beyond $1.5 trillion.

For the next eight years, however, the GOP tax bill itself gives the vast majority of Americans a tax cut. Only 5 percent will pay more next year, according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center’s analysis of the final bill, and most of those are people earning six figures who live in major cities like New York and San Francisco.

“It’s not the kind of disaster many in the media have made it out to be,” says economist Tyler Cowen of George Mason University. “There’s a good chance it will prove popular next year once people see their taxes go down.”

Whatever the future holds, it’s clear the GOP’s decision to increase the deficit to cut taxes breaks with recent precedent. Republicans started the year promising to fix America’s corporate tax code, but to do it in a way that was deficit neutral.

A big fiscal deal nearly achieved in 2011 by Obama and then-House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) would have raised taxes while cutting spending — modeled after the bipartisan Simpson-Bowles Commission that had made similar recommendations.

Even President Ronald Reagan’s tax overhaul in 1986, which many Republicans regard as the gold-standard, was structured to be revenue neutral. The new GOP bill took a far different approach.

“The bill is very consistent with Republican ideology that the solutions are all in the private sector,” said William Gale, co-director of the Tax Policy Center and former staff economist at the Council for Economic Advisors under President George H.W. Bush. “Businesses, corporations and pass-throughs are getting big breaks at the ultimate expense of the government’s ability to address any of the pressing social or domestic issues.”

There’s widespread agreement that in the short term, the tax bill will grow the economy a bit faster, perhaps eclipsing a rate of 4 percent for a quarter or two.

The question is what happens after the initial bounce. Republicans argue that upswing will continue for many more years, as businesses invest more. If this projection proves accurate, it will alleviate many of the fiscal pressures facing the country, since economic growth itself will help stabilize the debt.

“I don’t think the tax bill pays for itself, but I’m not as concerned about deficit impact as others are,” says Glenn Hubbard, dean of Columbia Business School and President George W. Bush’s chief economist. “We need to raise productivity growth in the U.S. A tax cut on business income is a very big step in that direction.”

But if that optimism proves unwarranted, as many analyses predict, it could present a peril to the nation, especially if an economic downturn or a foreign policy crisis requires the government to step up spending.

“I thought it was bad enough we had debt at record levels,” says Goldwein. “But it’s going to get worse.”

Read more:

Will your taxes go up or down in 2018 under the new tax bill?

The Finance 202: The GOP tax plan’s lopsided numbers