Railway Safety Act in the balance

Today, the House Transportation and Infrastructure (T&I) Committee is marking up the BUILD America Act — the surface transportation reauthorization bill. Among the amendments under consideration is the Railway Safety Act (RSA), a pro-union measure that has consistently failed to advance as a standalone bill but has suddenly gained new life with President Trump’s endorsement.

The RSA purports to be aimed at ensuring an accident like the East Palestine, Ohio disaster does not happen again. Indeed, that is the president’s stated rationale for supporting the measure. However, as so often happens after a disaster, on hearing a cry that “something must be done,” opportunistic forces advance a policy wish list saying, “this is something, so let’s do this.” That is certainly the case with the RSA, which advances a long-held rail union position that two-person crews are necessary for safety.

This is untrue. Research has shown that modern trains can operate safely with one-person crews. As T&I Committee Chairman Sam Graves (R-MO) said opposing the amendment,

I find it fascinating that in a world where we have autonomous vehicles with no driver, autonomous trucks with no driver, we have aircraft with no pilot, and … we have the only mode of transportation operated on a rail and we say we have to have 2 individuals in the cab to prevent something… We don’t need anybody in the cab with today’s technology.

It should also be noted that the East Palestine train had three people in the cab – two engineers and a trainee. That did not help avert the disaster.

The effects of this and other RSA mandates would ripple throughout the economy. Shipping is an input cost to just about every household good. Increasing those costs will increase household costs at a time when everyone is worried about persistent inflation and squeezed pocketbooks. As CEI and other organizations wrote in our letter opposing the RSA earlier this year,

RSA-style mandates would impose extensive new regulatory requirements on freight railroads and the broader supply chain without clear evidence of improved safety outcomes. That means higher operating costs, reduced flexibility, and higher prices for American consumers.

Freight rail is a critical part of the US supply chain. Higher rail costs directly increase the price of food, fuel, building materials, manufactured goods, and energy. Adding new regulatory mandates to surface transportation legislation would undermine stated goals of affordability, competitiveness, and economic stability.

Finally, inserting these regulatory provisions into a bill that is meant to focus on funding and maintaining transportation infrastructure is inappropriate. As the letter also noted,

Surface transportation bills are intended to modernize infrastructure, improve mobility, and support economic growth. As such, they are not an appropriate vehicle for resurrecting rail mandates that have repeatedly failed to advance through Congress on their own merits and have even been set aside by the committees of jurisdiction due to concerns about cost, feasibility, and unintended consequences.

With Chairman Graves signaling opposition to the bill, American consumers should hope that the T&I Committee follows his lead and rejects this amendment.