But the Trump administration repealed the braking mandate in 2017, after a National Academy of Sciences study failed to conclusively determine that ECP braking technology was superior to others.
The DOT under Obama had issued a rule in 2015 requiring railroads to use those kinds of electronically controlled pneumatic brakes on certain especially dangerous trains, in response to a spate of fiery derailments of freight cars transporting crude oil. Mike DeWine pledged during a television interview Wednesday to make Norfolk Southern “pay for everything” needed to deal with the aftermath of the disaster, while Vance said in a statement that questions remain about the train’s brakes and DOT’s “regulatory approach to our nation’s rail system.”įeinberg also touched on the brake issue, saying she believes that a type of advanced brake could have lessened the damage from the Ohio disaster. “The government does not allow Norfolk Southern and the other railroads to carry hazardous materials,” said rail analyst Tony Hatch. That’s because railroads are considered “common carriers,” which are obligated to transport any legally permitted product. “Our radios aren’t built for the distances that these trains are built for,” Cassity said.Īt the same time, one industry analyst noted, freight railroads such as Norfolk Southern, which operated the trains in the Ohio disaster, cannot refuse to carry hazardous materials such as vinyl chloride, one of the toxic, flammable chemicals released in East Palestine. Others, especially labor unions, say the trains are too long for crews on opposite ends to communicate with each other, and that workers on board sometimes can’t hear track-based warning alarms up ahead. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine is also studying the issue. The FRA wrote in a December report that it lacks the data “to determine safety consequences” of long trains, and in some cases doesn’t have enough authority to act on them. “Comparable length trains have been safely operating for decades and the industry’s safety record has seen dramatic improvements over those same decades,” said Jessica Kahanek, a spokesperson for the Association of American Railroads.īut the GAO authors note multiple concerns about train length, including that it can hamper crews’ ability to operate the trains, it can take longer for brakes to stop them, and safety risks can arise when firetrucks can’t get past multiple blocked rail crossings. The freight rail industry’s main trade group dismissed concerns about length. The GAO found that average freight train lengths had increased by 25 percent since 2008, and noted that some stretch to nearly three miles long. In a 2019 study, the Government Accountability Office said 150 cars is more than twice the average length of freight trains operated by major railroads from 2008 through 2017. Indeed, 150 cars is the FRA’s threshold for classifying a train as “very long,” even though no formal definition exists.
#Union train sketch plus#
"t is not unreasonable to ask whether a crew of two rail workers, plus one trainee, is able to effectively monitor 150 cars,” they wrote. Vance (R-Ohio) raised the length issue in a letter Wednesday to Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, noting that only a handful of workers were on the train before it went off the tracks. “For years, the FRA and other safety regulators have raised concerns about trains of that size.” “One hundred fifty cars is a really, really significant ,” said Sarah Feinberg, who dealt with multiple oil-train disasters and a fatal Amtrak derailment as leader of the Federal Railroad Administration under Barack Obama. Such NTSB probes typically examine any conceivable cause that could have led to a crash, including equipment malfunctions, poor system design, the lack of safety precautions, inadequate training, crew fatigue and myriad other factors. However, derailments like these typically have multiple points of failure, and the NTSB’s investigation will likely take over a year to complete.
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