Two-person crews are now required for almost all freight trains in an effort to improve railroad safety

Photo by Laurent Jollet, Unsplash

More than a year has passed since the Norfolk Southern train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, where cars carrying vinyl chloride exploded and a "controlled chemical burn" was completed and then later disputed as unnecessary. Although East Palestine isn't the only town to face the devastating consequences of a rail disaster, the small town's crisis brought rail safety back into the forefront, and now the federal government has put a new rule in place.

"The Biden administration rolled out a mandate requiring nearly all freight trains nationally to operate with two-person crews," reports Daniel C. Vock of Route Fifty, "ending for now a decade-long fight by the railroad industry to stymie similar efforts in Congress and in statehouses around the country. . . .Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said the new Federal Railroad Administration rules will 'address the patchwork of differing uncoordinated requirements that had been developing across the states.'"

"More than 13,000 people commented when the FRA announced its two-person crew proposal, Buttigieg said, and nearly all of them were supportive of the idea," Vock writes. "One worker told the agency that asking someone to run a train by themselves for a 12-hour shift is 'kind of like solitary confinement.'"

The rail industry has maintained that it remains the safest way to move dangerous chemicals, "something the head of the National Transportation Safety Board agreed with in recent testimony in the House -- though officials acknowledge the railroads need to continue improving safety," reports Josh Fund of The Associated Press.

Ian Jeffries, the president and CEO of the Association of American Railroads, pushed against the new regulations, saying that they had "no proven connection to rail safety," Vock reports. "The FRA's rules require two workers to staff freight trains unless a railroad gets a special exemption from the agency. When companies seek an exemption, the public and railroad workers will get a chance to weigh in before the agency decides."