The rail industry continues to lobby against safety regulations

Months after rail lobbyists pressured the Biden administration to reject rail workers’ demands for safety restrictions on train lengths, new data shows that longer freight trains significantly increase the risk of derailments across the country.

According to a new academic study that assessed federal data from the last decade, trains with one hundred cars are 11 percent more likely to derail than trains with two hundred cars, and trains with two hundred cars are 24 percent more likely to derail. than in the case of trains with four and fifty wagons. car trains. The study used other data showing that train derailments have increased since the 2023 disaster in East Palestine, Ohio.

“Even accounting for reductions in the number of freight trains served, when the average train is longer, longer freight trains are associated with an increase in the cumulative risk of freight train derailment,” wrote researchers from Georgetown University, Virginia Tech and Brigham Young University. “As the Rail Safety Act 2023 is the subject of debate, including the advantages and disadvantages of longer trains, an important factor in these debates is the additional risk of derailment in a system that features longer trains.”

A graph showing the odds ratio of derailment (with 95% confidence interval) by the number of cars on a train compared to a train of 50 cars. (“The relationship between the length of a freight train and the risk of derailment”, *Risk assessment*)

This legislation was proposed in the wake of the February 2023 derailment of a Norfolk Southern train in East Palestine, Ohio. Toxic chemicals including vinyl chloride that spilled from a 3,000-foot, 151-car train affected an estimated 110 million Americans in sixteen states, according to new data from University of Wisconsin researchers.

Railroad officials blamed the derailment partly on the train’s enormous size.

Despite this disaster, the Railroad Safety Act was weakened and derailed in Congress after the rail industry spent millions of dollars on lobbying and gave more than $150,000 to key lawmakers who control congressional transportation oversight committees.

Also derailed was an October 2023 request by the Brotherhood of Engineers and Railroad Workers for Biden administration officials to issue an emergency order limiting the length of freight trains. In response, a Washington rail industry lobbying group pressured the Federal Railroad Administration to deny the request – and the matter has stalled ever since.

Instead, the agency issued a press release in May saying it was “leading the charge for greater transparency and data in this area” and noting that “there is no federal law to limit train lengths.”

Since Congress stalled passage of the Railroad Safety Act and federal regulators declined to issue an emergency order on train length, the rail industry has contributed more than $4 million in campaign cash to the 2024 election, according to data compiled by OpenSecrets. The primary recipient of the money is Rep. Sam Graves, a Missouri Republican who chairs the House Transportation Committee, which has refused to pass the rail safety bill.

The new train length study follows a 2019 report by the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office that found that since 2008, average train length has increased by about 25 percent. The increase came despite concerns from rail experts and union officials that “railroads do not always properly assemble longer trains,” which “may increase the likelihood of derailment.”

According to a 2023 industry fact sheet, the average length of mainline freight trains operating in the United States today is more than a mile, with some stretching nearly three miles.

Even as the dangers of long trains become more obvious, rail industry groups are lobbying against limits on train lengths, arguing that these massive trains are safe and should remain on the nation’s rails.

“Experience shows that these trains are safe,” wrote Ian Jefferies, president and CEO of the Association of American Railroads, in a letter to the Federal Railroad Administration last October. “There was absolutely no safety justification,” he continued, issuing an order limiting train length to less than 7,500 feet.

The Association of American Railroads, the industry’s main lobbying group, spends millions of dollars lobbying in Washington every year. Federal disclosures show the association spent more than $4.4 million on lobbying last year, including on “train length issues.” In the first quarter of 2024, the group spent $1.3 million on lobbying on “rail safety issues” and other topics.

Additionally, Norfolk Southern, the company responsible for the Ohio derailment, has spent more than $5.7 million since January 2021 lobbying the Federal Railroad Administration, Congress and other regulators on issues including train length and weight, according to disclosures information.

Just days before the Ohio crash, the same Norfolk Southern train that derailed broke down because of its length and weight, workers said CBS News.

Railroad unions and safety advocates have repeatedly called on Congress to pass a bipartisan Railroad Safety Act, but Congress has stalled due to fierce lobbying from railroad companies, the chemical industry and the Koch network.

The Rail Safety Act, if enacted, would require the Department of Transportation to review the potential hazards posed by long trains and update safety regulations accordingly, taking into account “the impact of train length and weight on the safe transportation of high-risk trains.” “

It would also prohibit the operation of trains 7,500 feet or longer without a minimum crew.

In the past, railways have increased the size and length of trains as a modest response to union demands for minimum crew numbers on each train. Longer trains can also carry more cargo, providing a financial incentive for railways to increase train lengths.

In recent years, as trains have become longer, the Federal Railroad Administration has begun to examine the issue more closely. In 2022, the agency released a report documenting safety concerns about long trains. She found that although employee groups raised various concerns about train lengths and safety, the railroads had an unwavering belief that the trains were safe.

Railroad workers have told federal officials that longer trains cause fatigue for workers who are forced to work longer hours on larger trains; that workers were not given sufficient time to properly monitor them; and that rail infrastructure was not always designed for such long trains. For example, long trains stopping in populated areas essentially cut communities in half for hours, blocking emergency vehicles and forcing children to crawl under train cars to get to school.

Several high-profile long train derailments have recently attracted regulatory attention.

In May 2023, the Federal Railroad Administration issued a safety advisory warning about the “complexity” of long trains – noting that since 2022, there have been three “significant incidents” involving trains of two hundred or more cars.

All three incidents – two in Ohio and one in Iowa – involved trains over two miles long and weighing over seventeen thousand tons. Although a federal investigation into these incidents is still ongoing, the Federal Railroad Administration noted that the train composition likely contributed to the incidents.

Norfolk Southern, the owner of the train that derailed in East Palestine, helped in 2017 overturn federal safety regulations that sought to modernize braking systems used in the Civil War-era railroad industry. The company also helped persuade government officials to repeal brake regulations and corporate lobbyists to relax safety regulations for transporting hazardous materials.

Although Norfolk Southern lobbied lawmakers to ease safety restrictions, it also insisted on scaling back its own safety operations, advocating the use of one-person crews to manage increasingly long trains – a policy the company abandoned a month after the disastrous Eastern Crisis. The derailment of Palestine. In April, the Federal Railroad Administration issued a final rule requiring trains to be operated by at least two employees.

Occidental Petroleum, the oil company whose vinyl chloride leaked from a derailed train in East Palestine, gave $2 million to Republican senators as lawmakers softened their approach and held up proposed reforms. The American Chemistry Council, a lobbying group for the chemical industry, gave $250,000 to House Republicans.

Instead of eliminating the risk of derailment, the Biden administration has toyed with greenlighting even riskier rail projects and largely stayed out of the fight to regulate the industry.