Railroad Regulation Continues to Evolve After East Palestine

The train derailment in East Palestine in February was high-profile and high-impact, but the Federal Railroad Administration reported 102 others in the United States in that month alone. 

It has been 15 years since Congress passed the Railroad Safety Improvement Act of 2008. No additional legislation has been passed since then, even though technology and the rail industry are changing. 

The derailment in East Palestine caused about 50 of the 150 cars to go off the tracks, resulting in a “controlled burn” after toxic chemicals were spilled from the tank cars. In response, two bills were introduced to add more regulations for rail: one in the House of Representatives and one in the Senate. Rep. Emilia Strong Sykes, D-Akron, and Rep. Bill Johnson, R-Youngstown, introduced the bipartisan RAIL Act to the House, but it’s been sitting in a subcommittee since March.

The Senate’s bill, the Railway Safety Act of 2023, was introduced by Ohio senators J.D. Vance, R-Cincinnati, and Sherrod Brown, D-Cleveland. It has passed committee and is awaiting consideration on the floor. 

“We have strong bipartisan support,” Brown said. “This bill will be on the Senate floor, it will pass. I’m concerned about its future in the House of Representatives because the Speaker of the House is pretty close to the railroad lobby, and the railroad lobby for 100 years has had too much power but we’re going to overcome it in the Senate.” 

Both bills include provisions to increase regulations on training first responders, wayside detectors, inspections and transporting hazardous materials. 

The Railway Safety Act goes a step further and includes a section called the Safe Freight Act of 2023, which requires trains to have crews of at least two people. 

New technology is continuing to change rail workers’ jobs. Constantine Tarawneh is the director of the University Transportation Center for Railway Safety at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. He is developing on-board detectors that replace the need for wayside detectors, which are sensors that detect when wheel bearings begin to overheat. He said these predict accidents more reliably than humans inspecting wheel bearings. 

The bills include requiring smaller distances between wayside detectors along tracks. An overheated wheel bearing is believed to be the cause of the derailment in East Palestine.

The development of on-board sensors, instead of trackside detectors, and more new technology impacts the process of inspections and the need for rail workers. Matt Weaver, a union representative and rail worker, described the effect it has on workers.

“Inspectors are pushed to get trains out of the yard, pushed to make inspections quick. It used to be two or three guys walking down each side of the train to inspect wheels, bearings, the knuckles, the brake valves, the air, all the inspection stuff, and it would take them two or three minutes per car,” he said.

“Now they’re pushing for one guy to do a full car in less than a minute. That leaves a lot of room for missing something or being in a rush,” Weaver said. 

After East Palestine, the Ohio Legislature passed a law that required all trains to have two-person crews. Before that law went into effect in July, Jefferies and the AAR sued the state in an attempt to turn it over, saying federal laws overrule the new requirement. 

The Railway Safety Act of 2023, which Brown expects will pass by January, would change federal law to require two-person crews.

“Our position is that we’ve successfully negotiated crew staffing issues with our unions for over four decades,” Jefferies said. “All the while, we’ve seen safety continuously improve in the industry over that time period, and that it’s not appropriate to include a provision along these lines in real safety legislation.”

This is in direct conflict with the Railway Safety Act of 2023, and Brown believes two-person crews make a difference in rail safety. 

“A big part of this is the railroads laid off a third of their workforce. They compromised public safety and what happens – no surprise – is something like East Palestine,” Brown said.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports the industry lost 40,000 jobs between 2018 and 2020. Before that, Tarawneh said the railroad industry became safer since the 1990s, when railroads deployed a new type of wheel bearing and started to require wayside detectors. Since then, however, the number of accidents has hit a plateau. 

“We reached a constant where the derailments have not improved. Basically, we got all we could. But we continue to see derailments, and the current system in place cannot mitigate more derailments,” he said.