Proposed Railway Rule Slammed As Union Giveaway

The Daily Caller discusses a new regulation by the Federal Railroad Administration with Marc Scribner. 

“It forces a redundancy that won’t improve safety and will add some nontrivial costs,” CEI Transportation Expert Marc Scribner told The Daily Caller News Foundation. “It potentially limits the innovation in the railroad industry which is moving towards automation like the auto industry is.”

“Its also contradictory to current federal policy that since 2008, Congress enacted a law requiring railroads to install what is called positive train control technology,” Scribner said. “The railroads have spent billions and billions of dollars of their own money in an attempt to comply.”

“The only people that are pushing this are unions or people acting on behalf of the unions,” Scribner continued. “In the future one advantage is that you don’t need people in there. They would have no problem operating the train without two engineers but obviously the union doesn’t like the idea of cutting the workforce.”

“This is a pure union giveaway which goes in the opposite direction the industry wants to go in the future with new technology and potentially getting to the point where you have unmanned drone trains that wouldn’t require any engineer in the cab,” Scribner added. “That’s ultimately where everyone wants to go but of course the unions don’t like that.”

Read the full article at the Daily Caller.