Pardon me boys, is this the Special Interest Express?

The Washington Post published a smart editorial on Monday on why the proposed Railway Safety Act is a bad idea. The legislation is being pushed through Congress on the specious grounds that it will increase public safety. It is a case study in how such efforts can serve as a cover for special interests.

The main special interest in this case is the International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail, and Transportation Workers-Transportation Division (SMART-TD), which, as the name indicates, represents railway industry workers. Other unions are backing the bill as well. SMART-TD claims that the legislation can prevent another accident like the 2023 train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio by mandating minimum crew sizes.

“Working Americans have the right to go home in one piece, the same way we came to work. The Railway Safety Act of 2026 puts real enforceable standards in place—on 2-Person Crews, on inspections, on hazardous materials handling, on defect detectors, on long train safety and on emergency preparedness,” said SMART-TD President Jeremy Ferguson in the union’s endorsement.

Note that first on the list is the two-person requirement. The other items on Ferguson’s list were likely included to make that requirement seem equivalent to things like “hazardous materials handling.” The union’s argument is: the more people present, the safer things are.

The cold truth is there is no evidence that links crew size to safety, as both the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) and the National Transportation Safety Board have repeatedly found. The FRA examined the issue first in 2016 when the Obama administration first proposed a two-person crew minimum and again in 2019. A hard look at the evidence found no need for it. “FRA cannot provide reliable or conclusive statistical data to suggest whether one-person crew operations are generally safer or less safe than multiple-person crew operations,” the agency said in a 2016 statement.

“Never mind that there were three crewmen in the cab during the East Palestine accident,” The Washington Post added.

SMART-TD, which represents about 206,000 workers and has an annual budget of $161 million, doesn’t want railroad crew sizes to shrink any further because that might put its members out of work. The union has worked overtime to conflate crew size and safety as an issue in the wake of the East Palestine accident. It spent $5 million on lobbying in 2025 alone, according to its most recent Labor Department filing. During the Biden administration, the FRA reversed itself in 2024, citing “additional relevant information.”

The big difference this time is that Vice President J.D. Vance, a former Ohio senator, cosponsored the 2023 version of the legislation and is reportedly still a fan. That gives the requirement bipartisan backing that might get it through Congress.

A two-person crew requirement would prohibit the railroad industry from experimenting with further automation. If any industry should be at the cutting edge of automation, it ought to be the railways, which don’t use public roads or the skies.