A pedestrian was fatally struck early Monday by a Metrolink commuter train in Northridge, according to officials.
The person was hit in a “non-pedestrian area” on the tracks just before 5:30 a.m., according to Scott Johnson, a spokesperson for Metrolink. No one else was injured, but the southbound train on the Ventura County line was halted and removed from service.
The 60 passengers on board were assisted off and provided alternative transportation through ride-sharing apps, Johnson said.
The Los Angeles Police Department is investigating the incident, which occurred on the tracks near Corbin Avenue and Bahama Street, according to Officer Norma Eisenman, an LAPD spokesperson. The person who was killed had not yet been publicly identified.
“The tracks are still closed as officials respond,” Johnson said. That section of the railway between Chatsworth and Northridge remains closed, causing delays to Metrolink’s Ventura County line and the Pacific Surfliner, he said. Rail service will resume once the LAPD and the coroner’s office clear the scene.
“We want to remind everyone in the community to stay off the tracks,” Johnson said.
US federal officials are putting millions of dollars into fixing dangerous intersections where trains and cars meet.
The $570 million in infrastructure spending to replace, improve or study grade crossings will reduce the approximately 2,000 train-vehicle collisions that happen every year, the Biden administration said. The collisions kill about 200 people annually.
It will also reduce congestion at intersections where trains block traffic, the administration said. Nearly 26,000 blocking incidents have been reported to the federal Transportation Department in the last year, and more than 9,000 of those lasted for longer than one hour.
The Federal Railroad Administration said the funds will go toward 34 projects, including five in Texas, the state with the most grade crossing blockage complaints. A grade crossing refers to the area where a roadway intersects with or crosses a railroad track at the same level.
One of those projects, in Houston, will replace seven points where tracks and roads meet. Instead, the trains will have a protected route, and vehicle traffic will have four underpasses.
More than 850 blockages have been reported this year alone at those seven crossings, according to the Department of Transportation. The department said the project would save drivers fuel and frustration alike, and reduce noise where train operators blow loud horns as a warning to vehicles.
Amit Bose, the administrator of the Federal Railroad Administration, said grade crossings and blockages, in particular, present “significant challenges” in many parts of the country, including Houston, where multiple rail lines meet.
“The reality is far too many communities deal with collisions at grade crossings,” Bose said. “They deal with blockages due to stopped or stalled trains and deal with the risk of first responders being delayed by those incidents.”
High speed trains have proved their worth across the world over the past 50 years.
It’s not just in reducing journey times, but more importantly, it’s in driving economic growth, creating jobs and bringing communities closer together. China, Japan and Europe lead the way.
So why doesn’t the United States have a high-speed rail network like those?
For the richest and most economically successful nation on the planet, with an increasingly urbanized population of more than 300 million, it’s a position that is becoming more difficult to justify.
Although Japan started the trend with its Shinkansen “Bullet Trains” in 1964, it was the advent of France’s TGV in the early 1980s that really kick-started a global high-speed train revolution that continues to gather pace.
But it’s a revolution that has so far bypassed the United States. Americans are still almost entirely reliant on congested highways or the headache-inducing stress of an airport and airline network prone to meltdowns.
China has built around 26,000 miles (42,000 kilometers) of dedicated high-speed railways since 2008 and plans to top 43,000 miles (70,000 kilometers) by 2035.
“Many Americans have no concept of high-speed rail and fail to see its value. They are hopelessly stuck with a highway and airline mindset,” says William C. Vantuono, editor-in-chief of Railway Age, North America’s oldest railroad industry publication.
Cars and airliners have dominated long-distance travel in the United States since the 1950s, rapidly usurping a network of luxurious passenger trains with evocative names such as “The Empire Builder,” “Super Chief” and “Silver Comet.”
Deserted by Hollywood movie stars and business travelers, famous railroads such as the New York Central were largely bankrupt by the early 1970s, handing over their loss-making trains to Amtrak, the national passenger train operator founded in 1971.
In the decades since that traumatic retrenchment, US freight railroads have largely flourished. Passenger rail seems to have been a very low priority for US lawmakers.
Powerful airline, oil and auto industry lobbies in Washington have spent millions maintaining that superiority, but their position is weakening in the face of environmental concerns and worsening congestion.
Some of this will be invested in repairing Amtrak’s crumbling Northeast Corridor (NEC) linking Boston, New York and Washington.
There are also big plans to bring passenger trains back to many more cities across the nation – providing fast, sustainable travel to cities and regions that have not seen a passenger train for decades.
Add to this the success of the privately funded Brightline operation in Florida, which has been given the green light to build a $10 billion high-speed rail link between Los Angeles and Las Vegas by 2027, plus schemes in California, Texas and the proposed Cascadia route linking Portland, Oregon, with Seattle and Vancouver, and the United States at last appears to be on the cusp of a passenger rail revolution.
“Every president since Ronald Reagan has talked about the pressing need to improve infrastructure across the USA, but they’ve always had other, bigger priorities to deal with,” says Scott Sherin, chief commercial officer of train builder Alstom’s US division.
“But now there’s a huge impetus to get things moving – it’s a time of optimism. If we build it, they will come. As an industry, we’re maturing, and we’re ready to take the next step. It’s time to focus on passenger rail.”
Sherin points out that other public services such as highways and airports are “massively subsidized,” so there shouldn’t be an issue with doing the same for rail.
“We need to do a better job of articulating the benefits of high-speed rail – high-quality jobs, economic stimulus, better connectivity than airlines – and that will help us to build bipartisan support,” he adds. “High-speed rail is not the solution for everything, but it has its place.”
Only Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor has trains that can travel at speeds approaching those of the 300 kilometers per hour (186 mph) TGV and Shinkansen.
Even here, Amtrak Acela trains currently max out at 150 mph – and only in short bursts. Maximum speeds elsewhere are closer to 100 mph on congested tracks shared with commuter and freight trains.
This year, Amtrak plans to introduce its new generation Avelia Liberty trains to replace the life-expired Acelas on the NEC.
Capable of reaching 220 mph (although they’ll be limited to 160 mph on the NEC), the trains will bring Alstom’s latest high-speed rail technology to North America.
The locomotives at each end – known as power cars – are close relatives of the next generation TGV-M trains, scheduled to debut in France in 2024.
Sitting between the power cars are the passenger vehicles, which use Alstom’s Tiltronix technology to run faster through curves by tilting their bodies, much like a MotoGP rider does. And it’s not just travelers who will benefit.
“When Amtrak awarded the contract to Alstom in 2015 to 2016, the company had around 200 employees in Hornell,” says Shawn D. Hogan, former mayor of the city of Hornell in New York state.
“That figure is now nearer 900, with hiring continuing at a fast pace. I calculate that there has been a total public/private investment of more than $269 million in our city since 2016, including a new hotel, a state-of-the-art hospital and housing developments.
“It is a transformative economic development project that is basically unheard of in rural America and if it can happen here, it can happen throughout the United States.”
Alstom has spent almost $600 million on building a US supply chain for its high-speed trains – more than 80% of the train is made in the United States, with 170 suppliers across 27 states.
“High-speed rail is already here. Avelia Liberty was designed jointly with our European colleagues, so we have what we need for ‘TGV-USA’,” adds Sherin.
“It’s all proven tech from existing trains. We’re ready to go when the infrastructure arrives.”
And those new lines could arrive sooner than you might think.
In March, Brightline confirmed plans to begin construction on a 218-mile (351-kilometer) high-speed line between Rancho Cucamonga, near Los Angeles, and Las Vegas, carving a path through the San Bernardino Mountains and across the desert, following the Interstate 15 corridor.
The 200 mph line will slash times to little more than one hour – a massive advantage over the four-hour average by car or five to seven hours by bus – when it opens in 2027.
Mike Reininger, CEO of Brightline Holdings, says: “As the most shovel-ready high-speed rail project in the United States, we are one step closer to leveling the playing field against transit and infrastructure projects around the world, and we are proud to be using America’s most skilled workers to get there.”
Brightline West expects to inject around $10 billion worth of benefits into the region’s economy, creating about 35,000 construction jobs, as well as 1,000 permanent jobs in maintenance, operations and customer service in Southern California and Nevada.
It will also mark the return of passenger trains to Las Vegas after a 30-year hiatus – Amtrak canceled its “Desert Wind” route in 1997.
Meanwhile, construction is progressing on another high-speed line through the San Joaquin Valley.
Set to open around 2030, California High Speed Rail (CHSR) will run from Merced to Bakersfield (171 miles) at speeds of up to 220 mph.
Coupled with proposed upgrades to commuter rail lines at either end, this project could eventually allow high-speed trains to run the 350 miles (560 kilometers) between Los Angeles to San Francisco metropolitan areas in just two hours and 40 minutes.
CHSR has been on the table as far back as 1996, but its implementation has been controversial.
Disagreements over the route, management issues, delays in land acquisition and construction, cost over-runs and inadequate funding for completing the entire system have plagued the project – despite the economic benefits it will deliver as well as reducing pollution and congestion. Around 10,000 people are already employed on the project.
Costing $63 billion to $98 billion, depending on the final extent of the scheme, CHSR is to connect six of the 10 largest cities in the state and provide the same capacity as 4,200 miles of new highway lanes, 91 additional airport gates and two new airport runways costing between $122 billion and $199 billion.
With California’s population expected to grow to more than 45 million by 2050, high-speed rail offers the best value solution to keep the state from grinding to a smoggy halt.
Brightline West and CHSR offer templates for the future expansion of high-speed rail in North America.
By focusing on pairs of cities or regions that are too close for air travel and too far apart for car drivers, transportation planners can predict which corridors offer the greatest potential.
“It’s logical that the US hasn’t yet developed a nationwide high-speed network,” says Sherin. “For decades, traveling by car wasn’t a hardship, but as highway congestion gets worse, we’ve reached a stage where we should start looking more seriously at the alternatives.
“The magic numbers are centers of population with around three million people that are 200 to 500 miles apart, giving a trip time of less than three hours – preferably two hours.
“Where those conditions apply in Europe and Asia, high-speed rail reduces air’s share of the market from 100% to near zero. The model would work just as well in the USA as it does globally.”
Sherin points to the success of the original generation of Acela trains as evidence of this.
“When the first generation Acela trains started running between New York City and Washington in 2000, Amtrak attracted so many travelers that the airlines stopped running their frequent ‘shuttles’ between the two cities,” he adds.
However, industry observer Vantuono is more pessimistic.
“A US high-speed rail network is a pipe dream,” he says. “A lack of political support and federal financial support combined with the kind of fierce landowner opposition that CHSR has faced in California means that the challenges for new high-speed projects are enormous.”
According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), urban and high-speed rail hold “major promise to unlock substantial benefits” in reducing global transport emissions.
Dr. Fatih Birol, the IEA’s executive director, argues that rail transport is “often neglected” in public debates about future transport systems – and this is especially true in North America.
“Despite the advent of cars and airplanes, rail of all types has continued to evolve and thrive,” adds Birol.
Globally, around three-quarters of rail passenger movements are made on electric-powered vehicles, putting the mode in a unique position to take advantage of the rise in renewable energy over the coming decades.
Here, too, the United States lags far behind the rest of the world, with electrification almost unheard of away from the NEC.
Rail networks in SouthKorea, Japan, Europe, China and Russia are more than 60% electrified, according to IEA figures, the highest share of track electrification being South Korea at around 85%.
In North America, on the other hand, less than 5% of rail routes are electrified.
The enormous size of the United States and its widely dispersed population mitigates against the creation of a single, unified network of the type being built in China and proposed for Europe.
Air travel is likely to remain the preferred option for transcontinental journeys that can be more than 3,000 miles (around 4,828 kilometers).
But there are many shorter inter-city travel corridors where high-speed rail, or a combination of new infrastructure and upgraded railroad tracks or tilting trains, could eventually provide an unbeatable alternative to air travel and highways.
The train cars that derailed near a village in central Maine Saturday and caused a large fire were not carrying hazardous materials, officials said, adding there was no threat to public safety.
Officials say the derailed fright train cars were carrying lumber and wiring. Other carts were carrying hazardous materials but were unaffected by the derailment and the fire, a spokesperson for the Canadian Pacific Kansas City rail network said. Officials said the derailment likely was caused by a washout of ice and debris on the tracks.
The Rockwood Fire and Rescue Department said the train derailed north of Rockwood, a village in Somerset County that borders Moosehead Lake – the largest body of fresh water in the state.
Officials at the scene assessed the derailment and said the “hazardous materials are not at risk of leaking and are not at risk of catching fire,” Maine Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry spokesperson Jim Britt said in a statement.
Three railroad employees suffered non-life-threatening injuries in the derailment and are being treated at a nearby hospital, Britt added.
The derailment happened around 8:30 a.m. ET when the train came across a track washout in a rural wooded area, the rail network’s spokesperson C. Doniele Carlson said in a statement.
It wasn’t immediately clear which freight train carrier was operating the train Saturday.
“An early assessment indicates that the derailment may have been caused by a build-up of melting ice and debris that washed out part of the railroad track,” according to the Maine Forest Service.
The three locomotive engines and six rail cars that derailed were carrying lumber and electrical wiring and caught fire causing a small forest fire, according to the Maine Forest Service. The fire is now contained and being monitored by local emergency first responders, the service said.
Maine Governor Janet Mills tweeted she was briefed on the train derailment and stated her office “will continue to closely monitor the situation” but that there was “no threat to public health or safety.”
The rail network, which was inaugurated Friday, combines railways from Canada and the US to create “the first single-line railway connecting Canada, the U.S., and Mexico,” according to a press release.
“CPKC is the only railway connecting North America and has unrivaled port access on coasts around the continent, from Vancouver to Atlantic Canada to the Gulf of Mexico to Lázaro Cárdenas on Mexico’s Pacific coast,” the press release states.
A Norfolk Southern conductor was killed Tuesday after being struck by a dump truck at a facility in Ohio, prompting a National Transportation Safety Board investigation of the railway’s safety culture due to the “number and significance” of recent accidents.
The conductor, identified as 46-year-old Louis Shuster, was fatally injured early Tuesday morning at the Cleveland-Cliffs Cleveland Works property, the railroad said in a news release. It is the third incident involving the railroad in the state in just over a month.
Shuster was struck when a dump truck carrying limestone collided with the front left side of the first car of the train. He was outside the car when he was struck, a Cleveland police spokesperson told CNN.
Norfolk Southern is working with Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, the Cleveland Police Department and Cleveland-Cliffs representatives to learn more, it said.
The National Transportation Safety Board said on Twitter that it had sent crews to the scene.
The NTSB said in a statement later that its safety culture probe encompasses multiple incidents and three deaths since December 2021, including the toxic East Palestine derailment and the employee killed earlier Tuesday. It is already investigating a October 28 derailment in Sandusky, Ohio.
“The NTSB is concerned that several organizational factors may be involved in the accidents, including safety culture,” the board said in a statement. “The NTSB will conduct an in-depth investigation into the safety practices and culture of the company. At the same time, the company should not wait to improve safety and the NTSB urges it to do so immediately.”
Norfolk Southern’s CEO is scheduled to testify before a Senate committee Thursday.
“Norfolk Southern has been in touch with the conductor’s family and will do all it can to support them and his colleagues. We are grieving the loss of a colleague today. Our hearts go out to his loved ones during this extremely difficult time,” the railroad said.
Shuster was member of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen (BLET) and employed as a Norfolk Southern conductor, according to the union.
“Lou was a passionate and dedicated union brother,” said Pat Redmond, Local Chairman of BLET Division 607. “He was always there for his coworkers. He was very active in helping veterans who worked on the railroad and veterans all across our community.”
Shuster, a resident of Broadview Heights, Ohio, was president of BLET Division 607 in Cleveland. Shuster has a 16-year-old son and cared for his elderly parents, and was an Army veteran, the union said.
“This was a tragic situation and it’s a devastating loss for the Shuster family as well as the members of this union,” said BLET National President Eddie Hall. “All railroad accidents are avoidable. This collision underscores the need for significant improvements in rail safety for both workers and the public.”
Cleveland-Cliffs is a flat-rolled steel company, according to its website, and its Cleveland Works facility sits on the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland.
CNN has reached out to Cleveland-Cliffs, Cleveland police and the Ohio governor’s office for more information.
The conductor’s death comes as Norfolk Southern is facing criticism for two recent derailments in Ohio, including one in East Palestine last month that resulted in the release and burning of a toxic chemical that left nearby residents complaining of headaches, coughing and rashes they believe are tied to the fiery crash.
As the railroad works with the Environmental Protection Agency to remediate the site, it announced a new six-point safety plan Monday designed to help prevent similar derailments in the future.
And in Springfield, about 200 miles southwest of East Palestine, another Norfolk Southern freight train derailed Saturday.
The crash knocked out power and the area and resulted in a temporary shelter-in-place order for homes within 1,000 feet of the scene. Crews later determined nothing had spilled from the derailed cars and there was no environmental harm.
Casualties, including injuries and deaths, involving railroad employees are not uncommon, according to data from the Federal Railroad Administration, which shows there were more than 13,500 incidents involving on-duty employees across the industry in 2022, including 1,060 involving Norfolk Southern employees.
Forty-two rail employees died while on duty last year, the administration said. Five of those individuals were Norfolk Southern employees.
Norfolk Southern will revamp its hot bearing detector network as part of a new six-point safety plan, the company announced Monday.
“Hot bearing” or “hot box” detectors use infrared sensors to record the temperatures of railroad bearings as trains pass by. If they sense an overheated bearing, the detectors trigger an alarm, which notifies the train crew they should stop and inspect the rail car for a potential failure.
Currently, the average distance between detectors on the Norfolk Southern network is 13.9 miles. On Monday, the company announced it would examine every area where the distance between detectors is greater than 15 miles and would develop a plan to deploy additional detectors where needed.
Norfolk Southern said other new safety measures would include:
• Working with manufacturers of “multi-scan” hot bearing detectors, which are able to “scan a greater cross-section of a railcar’s bearings and wheels” to accelerate development and testing.
• Adding 13 “acoustic bearing” detectors that analyze the acoustic signature of vibration inside the axle and would be able to identify potential problems that a visual inspection could not. These detectors would be added to “high-traffic” routes in Norfolk Southern’s core network.
• Collaborating with Georgia Tech to advance safety inspection technology using “machine vision and algorithms powered by artificial intelligence to identify defects and needed repairs.”
• Accelerating the installation of new inspection technology, including the use of high-resolution cameras stationed in strategic locations on its Premier Corridor, which is the train line that connects the Northeast and the Midwest and runs through East Palestine.
About 200 miles southwest of East Palestine, NTSB investigators arrived Monday in Springfield Ohio – where a Norfolk Southern freight train derailed Saturday.
Investigators will be “looking at the condition of the track, the mechanical condition of the train, operations, the position of the cars in the train, and signal and train control among other things,” the NTSB said in a statement. “They will also be collecting event recorder data, on-board image recorders, and will conduct interviews with the crew and other witnesses.”
Investigators with the agency are expected to release a preliminary report in two to three weeks.
The 212-car freight train was heading south through Clark County en route to Birmingham, Alabama, when 28 of its cars derailed – downing large power lines, knocking out power and temporarily prompting shelter-in-place orders for homes within 1,000 feet.
“There was no release of any chemical or any hazardous material to the soil, to the air, to the water,” Ohio Environmental Protection Agency Director Anne Vogel said Sunday.
The cause of the derailment remains under investigation, Norfolk Southern said.
Four of the derailed tank cars had previously been carrying diesel exhaust fluid and an additive commonly used in wastewater treatment, but they were empty when they derailed, Norfolk Southern General Manager of Operations Kraig Barner said.
“There’s always a small residual amount left in the tanks,” Smith told CNN. “The derailed tank cars are not hazardous.”
Those empty tankers carried residual product in “very minor amounts” that “dried very quickly,” Springfield Fire Assistant Chief Matt Smith said. He said his team checked the crash site and confirmed nothing had spilled onto the ground.
But one car was carrying PVC pellets that affected the soil at the crash site, Vogel said. She said that the EPA “will be onsite ensuring that as cars are removed by Norfolk Southern that the soil is not impacted under the ground.”
After the derailment, authorities sought to assure the community in Clark County that their air, water and soil are safe.
“Since there have been no releases, we’re looking at clean air, clean soil and clean water for our residents,” Clark County Health Commissioner Charles Patterson said. “Technicians will continue to be on site to ensure that there isn’t any contamination that has been missed.”
While the two recent train derailments in Ohio have made national news, data from the Federal Railroad Administration Office of Safety Analysis shows there have been at least 1,000 derailments in the United States each year during the past decade.
The process of removing soil from under the tracks at the East Palestine derailment site started Saturday, the federal Environmental Protection Agency said. The agency had ordered Norfolk Southern to remediate the site, including the excavation of potentially contaminated soil.
The work could take up to two months, depending on weather conditions and other unforeseen delays, the agency said. The EPA said nearby residents might notice additional odors during that time.
Some 1,900 feet of rail has been fully removed from the crash site, and about one half of the contaminated soil beneath the removed line has been excavated, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine’s office said Monday.
About 3.2 million gallons of liquid waste and about 2,000 tons of solid waste have been removed, DeWine’s office said, citing the state’s EPA.
While the soil work is underway, Norfolk Southern has agreed to provide financial assistance to residents for variousnecessities, including temporary lodging, travel, food and clothing, the EPA said.
Impacts from the East Palestine derailment were also felt in other nearby communities in Pennsylvania, where Norfolk Southern has made an “initial agreement” to pay millions for damages there, officials said Monday.
The railroad will establish a $1 million community relief fund to support local businesses and residents impacted by the crash in Beaver and Lawrence counties, a news release from Gov. Josh Shapiro’s office said.
Norfolk Southern also agreed to pay $5 million to reimburse Pennsylvania fire departments that have to replace damaged or contaminated equipment after responding to the derailment, the release said. The agreement also includes money to cover some operating and response costs for Pennsylvania’s environmental protection, health and emergency management departments.
These payments would be separate from other “applicable legal obligations” that may be imposed, the release said.
Norfolk Southern earned a record $3.3 billion in net income last year, more than 400 times greater than the $7.4 million that Shapiro said the company agreed to pay to Pennsylvania communities.
The company spent $4.2 billion on share repurchases and dividends to shareholders and has plans to repurchase another $7.5 billion in shares going forward, or more than 1,000 times the initial amount it has promised to Pennsylvania.
The train was hauling the dangerous chemical vinyl chloride and other chemicals that are feared to have leaked into the surrounding ecosystem.
Some employees who responded to the East Palestine crash site were not given proper protective equipment and have experienced migraines and nausea, the American Rail System Federation – a union for railroad workers – said in a letter last week.
Norfolk Southern said it had not received any reports of injury or illness from employees involved in the initial response.
“Norfolk Southern was on-scene immediately after the derailment and coordinated our response with hazardous material professionals,” the railroad said in a statement.
The company also said “required PPE was utilized, all in addition to air monitoring that was established within an hour.”
The nation’s major freight railroads have long desired to have only one crew member, a lone engineer, in the cab of their locomotives. And that desire hasn’t changed despite the derailment of a Norfolk Southern train on February 3 that released toxic chemicals into the air, water and soil of East Palestine, Ohio, that is still being cleaned up.
But that accident very well may have ended the railroad’s chances of getting that one-person crew goal.
The rail safety legislation, introduced in Congress Wednesday with bipartisan support, would include a prohibition on single-person crews. There is no such existing law or federal regulation requiring both an engineer and a conductor to be on a train. Instead, it is only labor deals with the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and the transportation division of the Sheet Metal, Air, Rail, Transportation union (SMART-TD), which represents the conductors, that require at least one member of each union in the locomotive’s cab.
The Association of American Railroads confirmed that its position in favor of one-person crews has not changed. It believes it will be more efficient, and just as safe, to have engineers responding to problems with trains by driving along tracks in trucks rather than riding in the cab of the locomotive.
“The position on crew size has not changed. Railroads have been clear that they support fact-driven policies that address the cause of this accident and enhance safety,” said an AAR statement. “As we continue to review this bill, it is clear it includes many of the same wish list items AAR and others have clearly said would not prevent a similar accident in the future, such as the… arbitrary crew size rule. Railroads look forward to working with all stakeholders to meaningfully advance real solutions.”
Union Pacific said the opposition to a two-person crew mandate does not mean the railroads don’t care about safety.
“No data shows a two-person crew confined to a cab is safer, and train crew size should continue to be determined through collective bargaining,” a statement from UP. “Proposed legislation limits our ability to compete in a business landscape where technology is rapidly changing the transportation industry.”
CSX also said it believes the decision on crew size should be decided in collective bargaining, not through legislation, but said it is not currently pursuing a change in crew size. Negotiations between the railroads and unions is not due to start again until 2024, and the railroads historically have negotiated deals that apply across the industry. The other two major freight railroads – Norfolk Southern andBurlington Northern Santa Fe – did not responded to questions about the legislation. But the AAR is the trade group that lobbies on their behalf.
The AAR’s statement did not address the question as to whether that rule is now more likely to pass. But Jeremy Ferguson, president of SMART-TD, said this accident has completely changed the chances of getting the two-person crew requirement written into US law.
“Absolutely,” he said when asked in an interview with CNN Business if he thinks the provision will now pass. “When an incident like this happens, it brings all the issues to light, how unsafe the rail industry truly is. I didn’t think we had any chance before this. The railroads and AAR do a very good job of lobbying in DC. So generally it’s difficult to get people to vote for something like this rule. But sometimes it takes a disaster to drive home the point. Any time you turn the TV on, there’s still an issue. It’s not going away.”
The senators, both Democrat and Republican, sponsoring the rail safety bill say they’re hopeful there is now bipartisan support to change the law.
“Rail lobbyists have fought for years to protect their profits at the expense of communities like East Palestine,” said Sen. Sherrod Brown, the Ohio Democrat. “These commonsense bipartisan safety measures will finally hold big railroad companies accountable, make our railroads and the towns along them safer, and prevent future tragedies, so no community has to suffer like East Palestine again.”
“Through this legislation, Congress has a real opportunity to ensure that what happened in East Palestine will never happen again,” said Sen. J.D. Vance, the Ohio Republican who is a co-sponsor. “We owe every American the peace of mind that their community is protected from a catastrophe of this kind.”
If the law is changed due to the East Palestine derailment, it won’t be the first disaster that changed rules and laws governing trains. In 2013, a runaway Canadian freight train carrying tanker cars of oil crashed in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, causing a massive fire that killed 47 people and destroyed 40 buildings in the town. Canada responded by changing its law to require two person crews on trains carrying hazardous materials.
But calls to change the law in the United States because of that accident fell on deaf ears.
The fact that there were three employees on the train that derailed in East Palestine — an engineer, a conductor and a trainee — did not prevent this accident from happening.
After the fire started, the train passed three trackside detectors meant to determine if there is a problem causing overheating. But the first two did not signal a problem, even as the fire raised the temperature more than 100 degrees. The detectors are designed not to alert the crew until there is a 200-degree rise in the temperature detected. Finally the third detector registered a rise in temperature of more than 250 degrees, triggering an alarm in the locomotive’s cab.
The NTSB said the engineer responded immediately to the alarm by applying the brakes in an attempt to stop the train, but the wheel bearing on the car that was on fire failed before he could bring the train to a halt, causing the derailment.
Ferguson said that while the crew could not prevent this derailment from happening, there are an uncounted number of times that they detect a problem and prevent a derailment. He said not having the conductor on the train would miss many of those problems and cause many more derailments.
“When a detector goes off, you stop the train and the conductor can walk back and check if there is an overheating axle and make an immediate decision,” Ferguson said. An engineer is not allowed to get out of the locomotive, even if it’s stopped. Only the conductor can check to see if what the problems is that triggered an alarm.
But if the conductor is driving around in a truck, rather than riding in the cab of the locomotive, it could be an hour or more before the conductor gets there, and the axle might have cooled down. At that point, the conductor might have to send the train back on its way, according to Ferguson, even though the original problem tripping the heat detector — a faulty axle or bearing — is still a problem that could quickly cause a derailment.
“So having a guy wandering around in the truck may cause a derailment,” said Ferguson.
Beyond the problems of this kind, having a second person in the cab can just offer greater attention to detail during long train rides.
“You’ve got two sets of ears and two set of eyes. It always helps,” Ferguson said.
And it also helps in case of a medical emergency. In January, a CSX engineer suffered a heart attack while bringing a freight train into Savannah, Georgia, according to the engineers’ union. The conductor was able to recognize he was in distress, give him an aspirin and to call ahead to have an ambulance waiting for him in the rail yard.
The engineer needed emergency bypass surgery, but survived the heart attack.
“This happens more often than people realize,” Ferguson said. “It’s not necessarily always a heart attack. But having two people up there always pays dividend for the crew members themselves.”
CSX confirmed the incident with one of its engineer having a heart attack occurred in January.
“We commend the heroic actions of all CSX employees who render aid during any medical emergency,” said CSX’s statement.
The fact that the current labor contracts require two crew members is little comfort to the engineers and conductors unions.
They point out that under the Railway Labor Act, they can have a contract that is opposed by some or all of the rail unions imposed upon them by Congress, as happened this past December. While this current contract did keep the provision for two-person crews in place, that’s not necessarily going to be the case in all future contracts, even if the unions continue to make the issue a priority.
Congress generally enacts what is recommended by a panel appointed by the president to propose a deal that hopefully both labor and management can accept. But it might have one or two provisions which are deal breakers for the unions, such as allowing single-person crews.
“Given the wrong president, we could lose this in a hurry,” said Ferguson.
The Federal Railroad Administration is also considering a rule that would require two-person crews. But Ferguson said getting the requirement written into law would be better than a simple regulation. An FRA regulation could be easier to change in a new administration than it would be to get a change in the law.
Union Pacific shares jumped 10% in premarket trading Monday after the railroad company announced CEO Lance Fritz will leave the company by year-end, following a call by an activist hedge fund for his ouster.
Union Pacific just reported a record profit for the second straight year. But the hedge fund, Soroban Capital Partners, put out a statement saying that Fritz had lost the confidence of “shareholders, employees, customers, and regulators.”
“UNP’s total shareholder return has been the worst in the industry,” said Soroban’s letter to the board. “Among all S&P 500 companies, UNP is rated by employees as the worst place to work and has the lowest employee CEO approval rating (ranked 500th out of 500 in both),” said the letter. And it said that the Surface Transportation Board, one of the regulators of freight railroads, ranked Union Pacific as providing the worst service among the major railroads.
Soroban only owns about 1% of Union Pacific’s shares.
“It is my honor and privilege to serve this great company. I am proud of our team and all we have built together,” said Fritz in a statement. “Union Pacific has been my home for 22 years and I am confident that now is the right time for Union Pacific’s next leader to take the helm.”
Union Pacific said its process of looking for a new CEO had been ongoing for a year and that it decided to make a public statement in light of Soroban’s public call for a change.
“The Board is grateful to Lance for his unwavering leadership, dedication and oversight in driving our company forward over the last eight years as CEO. Lance created an environment that has allowed Union Pacific to make a measurable impact with our customers, communities and employees alike,” said Michael McCarthy, lead independent director of the Board. “He has capably led our company during a time of significant challenge and change.”
But, overall, the level of service and on-time performance in the freight railroad industry has been declining for years, as the railroads attempted to trim costs and staffing.
Despite the industry’s record profits, stocks in major freight railroads have lagged other sectors. Shares of Union Pacific
(UNP) are down about 20% over the last 12 month through Friday’s close, even with a rebound in share price so far in 2023. That’s worse than the drop in share price at other major railroads like Norfolk Southern
(NSC) and CSX
(CSX).
As far as employee relations, Union Pacific was seen as a leader among freight railroads in contentious labor negotiations last year that would have resulted in an economy-crippling strike had Congress not stepped in and imposed an unpopular contract. The contract granted employees an immediate 14% raise, including back pay, but denied them the paid sick days they had sought.
Union Pacific and other railroads argued during the negotiations that it couldn’t afford to meet union demands for paid sick days, even though the unions estimated it would cost the entire industry $321 million a year at a time when the railroads are each making billions of dollars in profits.
Union Pacific last year earned a net income of $7 billion, up about $500 million, or 7%, from the previous record profit it posted for 2021. Total employee compensation for the year came to $4.6 billion, far less than the $6.3 billion that Union Pacific spent repurchasing shares of stock in the period.
Last week, Union Pacific reached an agreement with two of its smaller unions granting their members up to four sick days a year, as well as greater flexibility to use three personal days as sick days without prior notice and approval.
“We will continue to work with other unions to address paid sick time solutions,” according to the company’s statement on sick pay last week. The move came after another major railroad, CSX, reached deals granting sick days with six of its unions. UP did act before a third railroad, Norfolk Southern, reached a deal with one of its unions on sick days in the wake of a major train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, which released toxic materials into the area.
Editor’s Note: Watch East Palestine, Ohio, residents pose questions to Norfolk Southern CEO Alan Shaw, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine and EPA Administrator Michael Regan. “A CNN Town Hall: Toxic Train Disaster, Ohio Residents Speak Out” airs tonight at 9 p.m. ET on CNN.
CNN
—
A fiery train wreck that released toxic materials in an Ohio town is raising new questions in the halls of the nation’s capital over the regulation of the rail industry and if stricter measures could have prevented the disaster.
News of the East Palestine, Ohio, derailment – and its potential harmful effects on the environment and health of local residents – has propelled both Democrats and Republicans in Congress to press the Biden administration on whether there’s enough oversight to keep rail workers and communities near railroads safe. And the supervising agency broadly responsible for regulating rail safety, the Department of Transportation, is calling on Congress to make it easier to institute safety reforms.
This rare, general bipartisan agreement about taking action in the wake of the derailment follows years of Republicans generally supporting deregulation of the rail industry, including with the broad rollback of transportation rules during the Trump administration.
Unions, current and former regulatory officials, and members of Congress from both parties have signaled some optimism about the possibility that the Ohio disaster may mark a rare opportunity for Washington to get something done to enhance the rail industry’s safety standards. But what’s unclear is whether there’s enough momentum for both parties in Congress to propel the issue forward into tangible actions. Nor is it clear whether the rail industry’s strong lobbying efforts will pare down any proposed measures or play a hand in eliminating them altogether.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said in an interview with CNN on Tuesday that that he’s fed up with the rail industry’s pressure campaigns to diminish regulatory reforms.
“I’ve had it,” he said. “We have had situation after situation where even modest, reasonable reform gets just a full court press.”
“I do think if the railroads, like Norfolk Southern, are in a mode right now where they’re saying, ‘We’re going to do everything it takes and everything we can.’ Let’s give them a chance to show it,” Buttigieg later added. “But let’s be very clear, I’m not waiting for them to do this work. I’m just saying they have a chance to put their money where their mouth is.”
Experts point out several areas of opportunity to enhance rail safety and hold rail companies further accountable: updating trains’ braking system, shortening the lengths of freight trains, further separating cars with hazardous material, requiring more crew member be on board, and increasing penalties.
Many of these proposals, experts say, have been around for decades, and have oftentimes been diminished or entirely eliminated after rail lobbying efforts. Data compiled by the nonprofit OpenSecrets show that Norfolk Southern spent $1.8 million on federal lobbying last year.
Norfolk Southern posted record profits from railway operations of $4.8 billion in 2022, up from its previous record of $4.45 billion in 2021. The company did not respond to questions Wednesday on whether it expects to change its share repurchase plans in the wake of the derailment.
“Unfortunately, derailments like this are preventable and they become inevitable when there’s more risk in the system,” Sarah Feinberg, a former administrator of the Federal Railroad Administration during the Obama administration, told CNN. “The industry has fought tooth and nail against safety regulations, but I also think that’s typical of any industry.”
Lobbying influence from the rail industry is “a big problem and they have a stranglehold on Congress, especially in the Senate,” Greg Hynes, national legislative director for the SMART Transportation Division union, told CNN.
“It’s all about the bottom line and they adhere to the operating ratios that Wall Street is so hungry for, which includes lowering head counts – which includes fewer safety inspections, fewer brake tests, fewer people doing the job that they need to do,” he added.
Buttigieg recently sent a letter Sunday to Norfolk Southern CEO Alan Shaw demanding accountability and calling for greater safety regulations. And DOT subsequently announced on Tuesday that it would take a three-pronged approach to enhance rail safety – push companies to voluntarily adopt additional safety measures, call on Congress to do more and bolster administration efforts to regulate the industry.
Among other plans to advance existing efforts or deploy existing funding, DOT says it’s initiating focused safety inspections as well as pursuing additional federal rulemaking on high-hazard flammable trains and electronically controlled pneumatic brakes.
DOT also says it’s working to advance a proposed rule that would require a minimum of two crew members for most railroad operations. Leadership for Norfolk Southern met with Buttigieg and other DOT officials and expressed concerns about the proposed rule. Among other issues, Norfolk Southern argues it will lead to significant labor costs
Crucial to efforts to enhance rail safety, administration officials and rail experts say, is Congress’ ability to untie the executive branch’s hands.
DOT is asking Congress to increase the maximum fines that can be issued to rail companies for violating safety regulations. And similar to its regulatory efforts announced Tuesday, DOT is calling on Congress to expand the rules “governing high-hazardous shipments, including high-hazard flammable trains, pushing past industry opposition” and follow through “on new bipartisan support to modernize braking regulations and increase the use of electronically controlled pneumatic brakes.”
“The apparatus that exists was to allow safety regulators to write and finalize common sense safety regulations that will protect people – protect their homes, protect their water, protect their children, protect their health – it’s totally broken,” Feinberg said. “And the reason it’s totally broken is because the Congress and others – other administrations – will insert themselves into the process and take it over … from safety regulators and say, ‘I know better and I’m going to protect the industry from whatever you’re trying to force its hand on.’”
The American Association of Railroads, an industry group, has said that “until NTSB has completed their investigation, AAR will not comment on potential policy changes in relation to this event as the cause and any underlying factors have not yet been fully determined.” The NTSB is set to release a preliminary report on the derailment investigation Thursday morning.
Congressional committees are set to review the environmental and safety impacts of the East Palestine derailment. Although efforts to enhance regulatory oversight of the rail industry have generally broken along party lines, some Republicans and Democrats appear to be moving in the same direction.
Senate Commerce Committee Chair Maria Cantwell, a Washington state Democrat, sent a letter last week to seven of the largest railroad company CEOs, inquiring about safety practices involved in rail transportation of hazardous materials. She’s also requested a joint staff-level briefing with the Environment and Public Works Committee, asking federal transportation and environmental agencies to appear, according to Politico.
House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chair Sam Graves, a Missouri Republican, scheduled a bipartisan briefing for members of the committee last week, and there may be further briefings for committee and all House members to help keep them informed of the status and relevant issues, Graves’ office told CNN.
Republican Sens. J.D. Vance of Ohio and Marco Rubio of Florida sent a letter to DOT requesting information about the administration’s regulatory oversight, questioning whether the three crew members on board the Norfolk Southern train that derailed were enough to staff the 149-car locomotive.
Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, the leading Republican on the Senate Commerce committee, last week tweeted that he fully agreed with Minnesota Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar, who wrote, in part, “We need Congressional inquiry and direct action from [Buttigieg] to address this tragedy.”
Republican candidates for president Nikki Haley and former President Donald Trump have criticized President Joe Biden for not visiting the site of the derailment, arguing that his trip to Ukraine and Poland this week shows he’s more focused on a foreign crisis than what’s happening at home – an increasingly frequent critique of the president and his administration.
Trump – whose administration sidelined the pending rule to require freight trains to have at least two crew members – appeared in East Palestine on Wednesday alongside Vance.
“Anybody who has seen fit to get on television and talk about this incident, talk about this issue, can do right by the people of East Palestine and everybody else who lives near a railroad,” Buttigieg told CNN. “Not just when it comes to this case, but when it comes to the future, by getting on the right side of this issue, and helping to raise – not lower – the bar of accountability for the railroad industry.”
Biden on Wednesday posted on Instagram about his phone call with his EPA Administrator Michael Regan and officials from Ohio and Pennsylvania to discuss the East Palestine situation. He also accused the Trump administration of limiting the ability to strengthen rail safety measures and said some of his current Republican critics were trying to dismantle the EPA.
“The Department of Transportation has made clear to rail companies that their pattern of resisting safety regulations has got to change,” the caption stated. “Congress should join us in implementing rail safety measures. But the Department of Transportation is limited in the rail safety measures they can implement. Why? For years, elected officials – including the last (administration) – have limited our ability to implement and strengthen rail safety measures.”
Following repeated calls for Buttigieg to visit the Ohio site, the secretary said earlier this week that he intended to visit East Palestine when the time was right. And then on Wednesday, DOT announced that he would visit on Thursday.
A DOT spokesperson said Buttigieg had planned to go when it was “appropriate and wouldn’t detract from the emergency response efforts. The Secretary is going now that the EPA has said it is moving out of the emergency response phase and transitioning to the long-term remediation phase.”
Norfolk Southern CEO Alan Shaw pledged Tuesday the freight railroad will spend $6.5 million to help those affected by the release of toxic chemicals from its derailment nearly three weeks ago in East Palestine, Ohio. But in a plan released earlier this year, the company said it’s planning to spend more than a thousand times that amount — $7.5 billion — to repurchase its own shares in order to benefit its shareholders.
The company spent $3.4 billion on share repurchases last year, and $3.1 billion in 2021, bringing its recent share repurchases to $6.5 billion. That towers over what it said is its financial commitment to East Palestine, which it said exceeds $6.4 million in direct aid to families and government agencies, in addition to what will be required in cleanup costs.
There is no estimate as to the total cost to Norfolk Southern from the derailment, including the cost of cleanup that the Environmental Protection Agency says will be the railroad’s responsibility.
It’s not clear how much of the accident’s cost will fall on Norfolk Southern. The company revealed Wednesday during a conference call with investors that it has as much as $1.1 billion worth of liability insurance coverage that it can draw upon to compensate third parties for losses caused by the accident. It also has about $200 million worth of insurance coverage to cover damage to its own property, such as tracks or equipment.
In March 2022, Norfolk Southern
(NSC) announced a new $10 billion share repurchase plan. Its latest annual financial report, filed just hours before the derailment this month, shows that it still had $7.5 billion available to buy additional shares under that repurchase plan as of December 31.
Norfolk Southern did not respond to questions Wednesday on whether it expects to change its share repurchase plans in the wake of the derailment.
The company also returned an additional $1.2 billion to shareholders in the form of dividend payments in 2022, and $1 billion in 2021, bringing total payments to shareholders to $4.6 billion last year and $4.1 billion in 2021.
The shareholders did much better than the company’s 19,000 employees. Total employee compensation in 2022 came to $2.6 billion, up from $2.4 billion in 2021.
The amount that Norfolk Southern and other major freight railroads are spending on shareholders got a lot of attention in December, when they successfully fought a move in Congress to require them to give hourly workers at least seven sick days a year as part of a labor contract imposed on the industry by Congress in order to avoid an economically crippling rail strike. And it’s getting new attention in the wake of the derailment, along with questions about whether the environmental disaster could have been avoided if the railroad had spent more on staffing and safety.
“Corporations do stock buybacks, they do big dividend checks, they lay off workers,” said Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio, on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday. “They don’t invest in safety rules and safety regulations, and this kind of thing happens.”
The accident is under investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board. While the cause has yet to be determined, it is known that freight railroads have fought tougher safety rules in the past.
One rule the industry successfully fought would have required a more modern braking system on trains carrying significant amounts of hazardous materials. The Federal Railroad Administration, which proposed the rule under the Obama administration, estimated a more modern braking system would reduce by nearly 20% the number of rail cars in a derailment that puncture and release their contents.
The FRA estimated those better brakes would cost the entire industry $493 million, spread over a period of 20 years. The Association of American Railroads, the trade industry group that represents most US freight railroads, estimated a much greater cost — about $3 billion, but again, spread over 20 years. That would mean around $150 million a year for an entire industry that is earning billions of dollars of annual profits.
Still, it was able to block the rule from ever taking effect, based partly on the argument it was too costly for the potential benefit.
“The railroads are quick to point out their lack of funds to provide adequate staffing, paid sick leave and improved safety, yet they have billions of dollars to spend on stock repurchases,” said Eddie Hall, national president of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, the industry’s second-largest union behind the one that represents conductors.
Share repurchases are designed to help increase the value of the stock by reducing the number of shares outstanding.
In theory, each remaining share becomes more valuable since it represents a greater percentage of the company’s overall ownership. The earnings per share, a key measure used by investors to judge a company’s profitability, can rise even if the total dollars earned by the company goes down, as the pool of shares available to the public shrinks further.
But Norfolk Southern’s profits aren’t going down. They’re going up — by quite a bit. It posted record profits from railway operations of $4.45 billion in 2021, and broke that record in 2022 when it earned $4.8 billion on that basis.
Other freight railroads are also reporting improving profits, and have joined Norfolk Southern in massive share repurchases.
Union Pacific
(UNP) purchased $6.3 billion worth of shares in 2022, and has plans to purchase an additional 84 million shares, worth more than $16 billion at its current value. CSX repurchased $4.7 billion worth of shares last year and has plans to buy an additional $3.3 billion going forward. Like Norfolk Southern, both UP and CSX spent more on share repurchases than they did on total employee compensation.
Share repurchases are not limited to the rail industry. Chevron
(CVX) recently announced plans to repurchase $75 billion worth of its stock with windfall record profits that came from high oil prices. Across corporate America, share repurchases reached almost $1 trillion for the first time last year, coming in at $936 billion according to S&P Dow Jones Indices, up from $882 billion in 2021.
Share repurchases are forecast to top $1 trillion this year.
Norfolk Southern CEO Alan Shaw defended his company’s actions since the disaster caused by the derailment of one of its trains in East Palestine, Ohio, and promised the railroad will pay for the cleanup.
“Norfolk Southern is committed to the community and citizens of East Palestine,” Shaw told CNN Tuesday. “We’re going to be here today, we’re going to be here tomorrow, we’re going to be here a year from now and we’re going to be here five years from now.”
Shaw’s defense of his company came as Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro charged that Norfolk Southern’s “corporate greed, incompetence and lack of care for our residents is absolutely unacceptable to me.” He announced that his state has made a criminal referral to investigate the railroad’s handling of the derailment, which occurred near the Ohio-Pennsylvania state line.
Shaw said the company has already paid out $6.5 million to citizens living near the site of the derailment 19 days ago that ignited a days-long inferno, shot plumes of black smoke into the air and led to the intentional release of vinyl chloride to help avert a more catastrophic blast.
Shaw said the railroad has been in agreement with the actions of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and local efforts on the ground in East Palestine since the train derailment.
“From day one I’ve made the commitment that Norfolk Southern is going to remediate the site,” Shaw said. “We’re going to do it through continuous long-term air and water monitoring. We’re going to help the residents of this community recover and we’re going to invest in the long-term health of this community and we’re going to make Norfolk Southern a safer railroad.”
In response to a question about a criminal referral being sent to the Pennsylvania attorney general and criticism from the governor of Pennsylvania that Norfolk Southern provided officials with inaccurate information, conflicting models of data and refused to explore alternative courses of action with the derailment in the early days, Shaw said he did not see the press conference where these statements were made and could not respond.
He went on to describe coordination during the controlled burn and release after the derailment.
“I was at unified command, and I can tell you that the governors of Ohio and Pennsylvania, Mayor Conaway, Fire Chief Drabick, the National Guard and Norfolk Southern were aligned,” Shaw said in an interview with CNN Tuesday. “The controlled burn — controlled release was the safest course of action for the citizens of East Palestine.”
Shaw said Norfolk Southern has been coordinating with the Ohio EPA and local officials and, so far, has been very present in the community since the February 3 accident. He said he first came to East Palestine in the immediate aftermath of the accident and visited a family assistance center that the company put in place, where he checked in on residents, making sure that they had everything that they needed.
“We’re also very focused on reimbursing the residents in this community for what they’ve been through so far,” he said.
There are no estimates from the railroad or public officials as yet as to the costs of the accident, either from clean-up or compensation to the communities and residents.
Norfolk Southern “started as soon as the derailment occurred,” he said. “Within an hour we had air testing in place and about an hour after that we had water testing in place.”
Shaw said his company continues to monitor air and water quality and has conducted hundreds of tests with thousands of data points, “all of which have come back clean.”
In an interview on CNBC, Shaw said if East Palestine was his home, he would be OK having his own children return to the town, saying that Tuesday was the third day he has been on the site since the derailment.
“I know they’re hurt. I know they’re scared. I know they’re confused,” he said of local residents. “They’re looking for information about who to trust. I encourage them to ask questions. They’re going to see that all the testing, whether it’s done by the EPA or local health officials or our independent contractors, show that it’s safe to return to this community.”
“This has been a traumatic experience. All toxicity reports, all the testing shows that we’re clean. However if folks are experiencing symptoms with which they’re not accustomed, I would strongly encourage them to go see a trusted medical professional,” he said.
He said that while testing of water and air have come back safe so far, “if folks in this community want additional air testing in their homes, they’ll get it. If folks in this community want additional water testing, they’ll get it. If folks in this community want bottled water, they’re going to get it.”
The US Environmental Protection Agency is ordering Norfolk Southern to handle and pay for all necessary cleanup after a train carrying toxic chemicals derailed in East Palestine, Ohio.
The EPA announced its legally binding order Tuesday, 18 days after the freight train derailed. The disaster ignited a dayslong inferno, shot plumes of black smoke into the air and led to the intentional release of vinyl chloride to help avert a more catastrophic blast.
“Norfolk Southern will pay for cleaning the mess that they created and the trauma that they inflicted on this community,” EPA Administrator Michael Regan said Tuesday.
As part of the EPA’s legally binding order, Norfolk Southern will be required to:
• Identify and clean up any contaminated soil and water resources,
• Reimburse the EPA for cleaning services to be offered to residents and businesses to provide an additional layer of reassurance, which will be conducted by EPA staff and contractors,
• Attend and participate in public meetings at the EPA’s request and post information online, and
• Pay for the EPA’s costs for work performed under the order.
“In no way, shape or form will Norfolk Southern get off the hook for the mess that they created,” Regan said.
If the rail company fails to meet the demands, the EPA said it will immediately step in, conduct the necessary work and then seek to compel Norfolk Southern to pay triple the cost.
In response to the EPA’s announcement, Norfolk Southern said it has been working to clean up the site and will continue helping residents.
“We recognize that we have a responsibility, and we have committed to doing what’s right for the residents of East Palestine,” Norfolk Southern said in a statement to CNN.
“We have been paying for the clean-up activities to date and will continue to do so. We are committed to thoroughly and safely cleaning the site, and we are reimbursing residents for the disruption this has caused in their lives. We are investing in helping East Palestine thrive for the long-term, and we will continue to be in the community for as long as it takes. We are going to learn from this terrible accident and work with regulators and elected officials to improve railroad safety.”
Hours before the EPA’s announcement, Regan and Gov. Mike DeWine visited an East Palestine home and tried to reassure residents that the municipal water supply is safe.
They raised two glasses filled with water straight from the tap and toasted before drinking.
The municipal water supply comes from five wells deep underground that are encased in steel, state officials have said. But residents with private well water should get that water tested before using it, since that water may be sourced closer to the ground’s surface.
“State and local authorities will continue the water sampling efforts, and EPA will continue indoor air screenings to residents within the evacuation zone,” Regan said Tuesday.
But “I recognize that no matter how much data we collect or provide, it will not be enough to completely reassure everybody,” the EPA chief said.
“It may not be enough to restore the sense of safety and security that this community once had. But we’re going to work together, day by day, for as long as it takes to make sure that this community feels at home once again.”
The soil under the railroad track at the site of the wreck is still contaminated, and the tracks need to be lifted to remove that soil, the director of Ohio’s Environmental Protection Agency said Tuesday.
The governor acknowledged residents’ concerns about the contaminated soil and said 4,588 cubic yards of soil and 1.1 million gallons of contaminated water have been removed from East Palestine.
“The railroad got the tracks back on and started running and the soil under the tracks had not been dealt with,” DeWine said. “The tracks will have to be taken up, and that soil will have to be removed.”
The health clinic will have registered nurses, mental health specialists and – at times – a toxicologist, the Ohio Department of Health said.
Medical teams from the US Centers for Diseases Control and Prevention and the US Department of Health are expected to arrive in the community as early as this week to help assess what dangers might remain.
Authorities have repeatedly assured residents that the air and municipal water supply in the town are safe. Crews have checked hundreds of homes and have not detected any dangerous levels of contaminants, the EPA said.
Still, life in East Palestine has been uprooted as residents question the findings and wonder whether it’s really safe to drink the water or breathe the air.
“It will be important to monitor people’s health and the environment around the train derailment for some time to come since health impacts may not emerge until later,” said Dr. Erin Haynes, an environmental health scientist at the University of Kentucky.
“We should never say we’re done looking at this community for potential exposures and health impacts.”
Some waterways were contaminated after the crash, killing an estimated 3,500 fish. But officials have said they believe those contaminants have been contained.
Norfolk Southern installed booms and dams to restrict the flow of contaminated water from Sulphur Run and Leslie Run – two streams where fish were found dead, the EPA said.
“The spill did flow to the Ohio River during that initial slug, but the Ohio River is very large, and it’s a water body that’s able to dilute the pollutants pretty quickly,” Ohio Environmental Protection Agency official Tiffani Kavalecsaid last week.
Kavalec said the agency is pretty confident that the “low levels” of contaminants that remain are not getting passed on to water customers.
A series of pumps have been placed upstream to reroute Sulphur Run around the derailment site, Norfolk Southern said Monday.
“Environmental teams are treating the impacted portions of Sulphur Run with booms, aeration, and carbon filtration units,” Norfolk Southern added. “Those teams are also working with stream experts to collect soil and groundwater samples to develop a comprehensive plan to address any contamination that remains in the stream banks and sediment.”
Water intakes from the Ohio River that were shut off Sunday “as a precautionary measure” were reopened after sampling found “no detections of the specific chemicals from the train derailment,” the Greater Cincinnati Water Works and Northern Kentucky Water District said Monday.
A third utility provider – Maysville utility in Kentucky – announced that it temporarily shut off water intakes from the Ohio River on Saturday, when the toxic chemicals released into the river from the derailment were expected to arrive at the water treatment intake in Kentucky, utility general manager Mark Julian said.
Water measurements have been below the level of concern, Julian said, and Maysville took precautionary measures in temporarily shutting down their Ohio River intake valve due to the public concern.
“The takeaway is that anyone along the Ohio River where the contaminants made their way can breathe a sigh of relief,” he said.
Meanwhile, the majority of the hazardous rail cars remain at the crash site as investigators continue to probe the wreck. But about 15,000 pounds of contaminated soil and 1.1 million gallons of contaminated water have been removed from the scene, Norfolk Southern announced Monday.
The contaminated soil became a point of contention last week after a public document sent to the EPA on February 10 did not list soil removal among completed cleanup activities. It is not yet known what significance or impact the soil that was not removed before the railroad reopened on February 8 will have had on the surrounding areas.
As skepticism spreads about the safety of the air and water, some local businesses say they’ve seen fewer customers.
“Everybody’s afraid … They don’t want to come in and drink the water,” Teresa Sprowls, a restaurant owner in East Palestine, told CNN affiliate WOIO.
A stylist at a hair salon told WOIO there’s no doubt the salon lost business and that customers may be worried about what may be in the water washing their hair.
“I know a lot of our businesses are already suffering greatly because people don’t want to come here,” local greenhouse owner Dianna Elzer told CNN affiliate WPXI.
Her husband, Donald Elzer, echoed her concerns, saying, “It’s devastating. The longer it goes on, the worse it gets.”
Dianna Elzer also worried about longer-term economic impacts to the community.
“Our property values – who is going to want to buy a house here now?” she told WPXI. “It’s going to be a long struggle to get back to where we were.”
As residents call for accountability from both Norfolk Southern and government officials, US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said he plans to visit East Palestine “when the time is right” – but did not announce a date.
He did announce Monday new efforts by the Department of Transportation to improve rail safety.
“We are accelerating and augmenting our ongoing lines of effort on rail regulation and inspection here at the US DOT, including further regulation on high hazard flammable trains and electronically controlled pneumatic brakes – rules that were clawed back under the previous administration – to the full extent of that we are allowed to under current law, and we will continue using resources from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to fund projects that improve rail safety,” Buttigieg said.
A DOT news release said the agency will continue to press for the “Train Crew Staffing Rule,” which would require a minimum of two crew members during most railroad operations. Norfolk Southern has opposed the proposed rule.
Norfolk Southern has committed millions of dollars’ worth of financial assistance to East Palestine, including $3.4 million in direct financial assistance to families and a $1 million community assistance fund, among other aid, the company said.
Norfolk Southern CEO Alan Shaw posted an open letter telling East Palestine residents, “I hear you” and “we are here and will stay here for as long as it takes to ensure your safety and to help East Palestine recover and thrive.”
“Together with local health officials,” Shaw said, “we have implemented a comprehensive testing program to ensure the safety of East Palestine’s water, air, and soil.”
Correction: An earlier version of this story misspelled the first name of Ohio Environmental Protection Agency official Tiffani Kavalec.
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Washington CNN
—
On the eve of President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address, American infrastructure is back in the worst kind of spotlight.
The fiery derailment of train cars carrying hazardous chemicals on the eastern edge of Ohio has led to an evacuation zone across both Ohio and Pennsylvania.
Five of the derailed train cars are carrying vinyl chloride – a chemical that is currently unstable and could explode, hurling toxic fumes into the air and shooting deadly shrapnel as far as a mile away, officials said.
“There is a high probability of a toxic gas release and/or explosion,” Columbiana County Sheriff Brian McLaughlin warned. “Please, for your own safety, remove your families from danger.”
The derailment is, of course, felt most acutely in the surrounding community, where residents who don’t evacuate face arrest. But the incident also highlights the exact kind of concern that led to a considerable investment in rail projects as part of the $1.2 trillion bipartisan Infrastructure law passed in late 2021.
To better understand the derailment in Ohio, and how current or future legislation could help avoidsimilar situations, we turned to Najmedin Meshkati, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Southern California.
Our conversation, conducted over the phone and lightly edited for flow and brevity, is below.
Since the fire in Ohio is still burning, investigators haven’t been able to walk around the crash site.
But officials have identified the point of derailment and found video showing “preliminary indications of mechanical issues” on one of the railcar axles. The National Transportation Safety Board is still investigating when the potential defect happened and the response from the crew.
LEBLANC: What are the investigators going to be looking into here?
MESHKATI:This accident will be investigated by the National Transportation Safety Board, which is an independent federal safety investigation organization. They do a very good job and thorough job, independently.
They will look at this accident from an interdisciplinary standpoint. They’ll look forequipment failure, they’ll look for mental fatigue, the signaling electronics, and also they will look at the human factors and organizational safety culture.
The other organization that most probably will do an investigation is the Federal Railroad Administration, which is a regulatory agency, part of the Department of Transportation.
NTSB typically does an excellent job, and the FRA.Hopefully they will come up with some recommendations to proactively address this issue.
LEBLANC: How often do these recommendations actually turn into new policies or guidance?
MESHKATI: That’s an excellent question without an excellent answer.
The National Transportation Safety Board, they issue a report at the end of the year. They have something which is called the “most wanted list” that they put their recommendations for safety improvement for railroads on based on accident investigations.
And then it’s up to these different organizations or private sector regulatory agencies to implement recommendations. Again, NTSB doesn’t have enforcement power. They can make recommendations.
Rail travel is recognized as the safest method of transporting hazardous materials in the US, according to the US Department of Transportation’s Federal Railroad Administration.
“The vast majority of hazardous materials shipped by rail tank car every year arrive safely and without incident, and railroads generally have an outstanding record in moving shipments of hazardous materials safely,”FRA says on its website.
LEBLANC: How common is it for freight trains to carry hazardous material? Is it unusual?
MESHKATI: No. They do that, and they do it fairly safely. Unfortunately, this type of thing happens, but they’re preventable because these are thetypes of accidents, if it’s a derailment – the causes of derailment are fairly understandable.
It could be due to the mentalfatigue or the tracks or it could be the speed or not following the procedures.
Passenger and freight rail received $66 billion in the sprawling bipartisan infrastructure bill passed in 2021. Implementation, however, will take years.
LEBLANC: Once fully implemented, will the $1.2 trillion infrastructure package help prevent derailments similar to this one? Is there other legislation that could help?
MESHKATI: I think money and funding is important, but what we need – this is my personal opinion based on my 38 years of research – what we need in the railroad industry is dedicated, committed leadership to safety.
You can throw around as much money as much as you want. But see, here is the thing – technological systems are composed of three subsystems: ahuman subsystem, organizational subsystem and technological subsystem.
And they are like the three links in a chain. A chain breaks at its weakest link. We can put all the money that we have on the technological subsystems, get the better tracks, get better computers, get better positive train control and everything.
But what about the human and organizational subsystems? We need to give adequate attention to them. And that’s where a committed, informed leadership comes into play.
When a freight train travels across the country, two people are in the cab of the locomotive working to keep the train, its often hazardous and flammable contents, and the communities they are passing through, all safe.
Now the railroads are saying that, given today’s modern technology, just one person is enough. But the railunions say single-person crews pose a tremendous safety risk, not just to the engineer working alone in the cab for hours on end, but to all the communities the trains pass through.
LEBLANC: What are your thoughts on this proposal to staff freight trains with just one person?
MESHKATI: I have studiedthis issue for many, many years.
I’ve seen the disastrous impact that the consolidation and crew reduction could have on the safety of technological systems. This is something that we need to learn from other industries and just curb our irrational exuberance for this because the technology is available.
Yes, there is an AI technology that can monitor the routine pattern.
“That’s why we don’t need a human” – this is a very simple-minded, irrational exuberance.
Long-needed improvements are coming to train travel along the nation’s busy Northeast Corridor, thanks in part to the federal infrastructure funding package that President Joe Biden signed into law in the fall of 2021.
The president is making two big funding announcements this week to address bottlenecks at century-old train tunnels in Baltimore and New York City – two projects that have struggled for years to acquire enough money to get off the ground.
Construction is expected to begin as early as this year, though completion is years away.
In Maryland, the 150-year-old Baltimore and Potomac tunnel will be replaced with two new tubes for Amtrak and Maryland Area Regional Commuter (MARC) trains.
Running under densely populated West Baltimore, the 1.4-mile tunnel is the oldest on the Northeast Corridor rail line and the only way for certain trains to travel south from Baltimore’s Penn Station to Washington, DC, and Virginia.
More than 10% of weekday trains are delayed, according to Amtrak. Tight curves in the tunnel currently require trains to slow down to speeds of 30 miles per hour. The tunnel also suffers from a variety of age-related issues, such as excessive water infiltration, a deteriorating structure and a sinking floor.
The improvements are expected to nearly triple capacity in the tunnel and soften the curves, allowing trains to travel as fast as 110 miles per hour. There are also plans for new signaling systems, five new roadway and railroad bridges in the area surrounding the tunnel, and a new West Baltimore MARC station that’s Americans with Disabilities Act-accessible.
The White House said Monday that the project could get up to $4.7 billion in funding from the infrastructure law. Maryland’s transportation agency has committed $450 million. In total, the new tunnel project is expected to cost around $6 billion.
The project previously received $44 million through a 2009 federal stimulus package called the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act for preliminary engineering and permitting. But it had lacked a viable funding source to continue construction.
The new tunnel will be named after Maryland native and abolitionist Frederick Douglass.
Roughly 200,000 passengers make trips on either Amtrak or New Jersey Transit trains that run between New York and New Jersey under the Hudson River each weekday.
First opened in 1910, the tunnel has several age-related problems and also suffered damage when Hurricane Sandy inundated the tubes with salt water in 2012.
Still in early stages, the most recent plans call for the construction of a new rail tunnel beneath the Hudson River and then rehabilitation of the existing tunnel, known as the North River Tunnel.
In 2019, New York and New Jersey created the Gateway Development Commission to help facilitate the project. Last year, the commission estimated it could cost $16.1 billion and anticipated a 2038 completion date.
Funding sources are still being determined, but are expected to include federal, state, local and possibly private funding.
The White House said Tuesday that Amtrak, which owns the tunnel, will receive a $292 million grant from the infrastructure law to help complete construction of concrete casing underground on the Manhattan side of the river. The concrete casing will protect the path of the new tunnel from the Hudson River’s edge to New York’s Penn Station.
If this casing is not built now, the White House said, the foundations from the new Hudson Yards development would likely impede the path of the tunnel and make the project extremely difficult.
The $1.2 trillion federal infrastructure package was signed into law in November 2021 after receiving bipartisan support in Congress. It will provide roughly $550 billion of new federal investments over five years for everything from bridges and roads to the nation’s public transit, broadband, water and energy systems.
The funds are delivered in two ways: through formula programs that send money directly to states and through competitive grant programs that require state and local agencies to apply.
A lot of the formula programs have long been sending federal money to states on an annual basis but are now delivering much more funding for the five-year period covered by the infrastructure law.
For example, the Federal Highway Administration released nearly $60 billion to states last year through 12 formula programs to support investment in roads, bridges and tunnels; carbon emission reduction; and safety improvements. That’s an increase of $15.4 billion compared with fiscal year 2021, the last fiscal year before the infrastructure law was implemented.
Dozens of major, specific projects have been selected for funding through grant programs over the past year. Funding for the Infrastructure for Rebuilding America grant program (known as INFRA), which is meant for freight and highway projects of national or regional significance, increased by more than 50% last year. About $1.5 billion was released for 26 transportation projects in September.
In August, the Rebuilding American Infrastructure with Sustainability and Equity program, known as RAISE, released $2.2 billion for 166 specific road, bridge, transit, rail, port or intermodal transportation projects across the country. In 2021, the program could only afford to fund 90 projects.
The infrastructure law also created new funding programs, like the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Formula Program, which released $615 million to states last year. That money can be used for installing public electric vehicle charging stations.
This story has been updated with additional information.
Railroad workers could get the paid sick days that were at the heart of their threat to go on strike – if the Biden administration steps in with an executive order.
Workers have been unsuccessful getting their demands for paid sick leave met through months of negotiations with the freight rail companies, or through congressional action.
But on Friday, 70 Democrats in Congress signed a letter asking for President Joe Biden or some federal agency to issue an order giving rail workers the seven sick days a year they were seeking.
The letter pointed out that both the House and Senate supported legislation to do so, with some nominal Republican support in both chambers along with nearly unanimous Democratic support. But the legislation failed because it didn’t get the 60 votes it needed in the Senate.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the letter from the unions’ congressional allies.
But officials with the rail unions said they have been talking to the administration about some kind of executive action to get them the sick time they’ve been seeking, and that they are hopeful action could be forthcoming.
“I mean, the Biden administration has been helpful,” said Greg Hynes, national legislative director for the transportation department of the Sheet Metal, Air, Rail Transportation Union, (SMART-TD), the largest rail union representing about 28,000 conductors. “Of course, they want to do this. Whether they can do it, we’re going to find out.”
The congressional letter said executive action, either by Biden himself, the Labor Department or the Federal Railroad Administration, is needed because the lack of paid sick days poses a safety hazard to the general public by having rail workers try to do their jobs when sick.
“If a rail worker comes down with COVID, the flu, or some other illness and calls in sick, that worker will not only receive no pay, but will be penalized and, in some cases, fired. We cannot allow that to continue,” said the letter.
The main lobbying group for the nation’s railroads, the Association of American Railroads, said it believes the question of sick days should be addressed in negotiations with the unions.
“Following the conclusion of the latest bargaining round, the industry looks forward to using the new agreements as a springboard for further discussions on the structure of our paid leave benefits, enhancing schedule predictability, and addressing overall work-life balance interests,” said the AAR.
“Railroads remain committed to working with their employees to address these priorities holistically and strike the right balance, be it as an industry or on a railroad-by-railroad basis with each union,” the AAR added.
The railroads insist that the workers can use personal or vacation days if they are too sick to report to work.
“If you wake up sick, no one wants you out on the railroad, and management does not want workers coming to work if they are sick,” said Ian Jefferies, CEO of the AAR, in an interview with CNN last month.
The unions said that members could use their bank of paid time off when sick more easily in the past, but deep staff cuts in recent years have left the railroads so understaffed it is rare that workers can get approval to be off in those instances when they wake up not feeling well. If they do so, not only do they risk losing pay, they also risk being disciplined. And the AAR’s own statement on sick pay availability said workers can call off sick without penalty as long as “they maintain reasonable overall availability.”
The Biden administration asked Congress to vote to block a strike by the unions that could have started this past Friday, saying a work stoppage would be too great a blow to the nation’s economy.
The unions argued they needed the right to strike in order to win things they were seeking at the bargaining table, like sick days.
But despite being disappointed most of the unions’ leadership have been restrained in criticizing Biden for imposing unpopular contracts on their members that did not include sick days.
Asked if the reason that most union leaders did not criticize Biden’s decision was because they are hopeful that he will be willing to issue an executive order to get them the disputed sick days, Hynes replied, “I think you’re answering your own question.”
The rail unions are planning rallies around the country in support of rail workers. The lack of sick days will be a major issue at the rallies.
Among the speakers at the Washington DC rally will be Sen. Bernie Sanders, the main author of the congressional letter. That letter points out that President Barack Obama issued such a rule on federal contractors in 2015, but that it did not cover the unionized rail workers.
“Over 115,000 rail workers in this country are looking to you to guarantee them the dignity at work they deserve and to ensure that our rail system is safe for its workers and for millions of Americans who cross rail tracks every day,” said the congressional letter. “Through executive order, agency rulemaking, and any other applicable authority, we ask that you take quick and decisive action to guarantee these workers paid sick leave.”
President Joe Biden said Tuesday he is “confident” a rail strike will be avoided while meeting with the top four congressional leaders, though any one senator could slow down the process of approving legislation that would avert such a strike – and at least one said he was planning to do so.
“I asked the four top leaders in Congress to ask whether they’d be willing to come in and talk about what we’re gonna do between now and Christmas in terms of legislation and there’s a lot to do, including resolving the train strike,” Biden said while meeting with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.
“It’s not an easy call but I think we have to do it,” Biden said. “The economy is at risk.”
On Monday, Biden called on Congress to “immediately” pass legislation to avert a railroad shutdown by officially adopting a September tentative agreement approved by labor and management leaders. Rank-and-file members of four unions have rejected the agreement and are prepared to go on a railroad strike on December 9 without either a new labor agreement or congressional action.
Biden, a longtime labor ally, along with Labor Secretary Marty Walsh and other administration officials helped unions and management reach a tentative deal averting a freight railroad strike in September.
A railroad strike could clog supply chains and lead to a spike in prices on necessities such as gasoline and food – dampening an economy that many fear is heading toward a recession. It could also cost could cost the US economy $1 billion in its first week alone, according to an analysis from the Anderson Economic Group.
Michael Baldwin, president of the Brotherhood of Railroad Signalmen, one of the four unions whose members voted no on the deal, said Tuesday that Biden has let the union and its members down.
“We’re trying to address an issue here of sick time. It’s very important,” Michael Baldwin, the president of the Brotherhood of Railroad Signalmen, told CNN’s Jim Sciutto on “Newsroom.” “This action prevents us from reaching the end of our process. It takes away the strength and the abilities that we have to force bargaining or force the railroads into a situation to actually do the right thing.”
Pelosi said Tuesday the chamber could vote as soon as Wednesday on legislation to adopt the September tentative agreement and avert a possible rail strike. Once passed, Senate action could occur later this week or next, several Senate sources have told CNN. The Senate is expected to have the votes to break a filibuster on the bill to avert a potential railway strike, the Senate sources also said. There are likely to be at least 10 Republicans who will vote with most Senate Democrats to overcome a 60-vote threshold.
After the meeting, McConnell expressed openness to backing the legislation, and told reporters “We’re gonna need to pass a bill.”
But any one senator can slow the process down as timing agreements to move along legislation typically require unanimous consent from all 100 members of the chamber. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, criticized the proposed deal to avert a rail strike on Tuesday. Sanders reiterated his threat to slow down rail measure unless he gets sick-leave amendment vote in a tweet Tuesday afternoon.
“At a time of record profits in the rail industry, it’s unacceptable that rail workers have ZERO guaranteed paid sick days. It’s my intention to block consideration of the rail legislation until a roll call vote occurs on guaranteeing 7 paid sick days to rail workers in America,” he wrote.
Any one member can delay a quick vote and potentially put off final action until after the December 9 deadline to avert a strike.
Some Republicans are still skeptical of congressional intervention, arguing they would rather the issue be dealt with administratively.
Maine Sen. Susan Collins, a frequent swing vote, told CNN that the measure “deserves careful consideration.”
“I’m going to wait and listen to the debate at lunch today before reaching any kind of conclusion,” she said.
Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst, a member of GOP leadership, also told CNN she was still evaluating the plan.
BARSTOW, Calif., November 28, 2022 (Newswire.com)
– On the heels of the recent BNSF Railway announcement to develop the largest railway hub in the western United States in Barstow, the City of Barstow is making its first notable infrastructure development by planning the replacement of the city’s historic bridge.
Built in 1930 and modified in 1943, the North First Avenue two-lane steel and wooden bridge has served as a thoroughfare for several decades. It was deemed a focal point of the railroad industry but no longer meets the structural and functional standards needed as the city undergoes a major railway industry transformation.
“As we gear up for the major BNSF Railway project, which will double our city’s population, this bridge replacement marks the beginning of the transformational change to our community,” said Barstow City Manager Willie Hopkins. “The bridge has served as the main thoroughfare for schools, hospitals and other services, and the new one will be a mark of improved goods movement as we embark on enhancing our city’s infrastructure.”
The new bridge is being funded through various sources, including the Federal Highway Bridge Program, state funds, Measure I funds, and the City of Barstow. Ground is slated to be broken in January 2023. As construction takes place, a temporary bridge will be erected parallel to the existing bridge so traffic will not be impacted.
Domingo Gonzales, City of Barstow engineering services administrator, said the new bridge will be more modern and constructed out of concrete. It will have a wider sidewalk on one side for a pedestrian walkway, eight-foot shoulders for bicyclists, and a lookout point for individuals to view the prominent railroad. It will be approximately 1,179 feet long with a width of 50 feet that expands to over 62 feet to accommodate a left turn lane that extends onto the bridge structure. Its aesthetics will mimic the city’s popular destination of the Harvey House with its antique lighting and quaint touches.
The new bridge is the first replacement in a series of three bridges slated for renovation. The next two are over the Mojave River and the river’s overflow area. Construction of those will start in two to three years.
Hopkins said the bridges are one of several infrastructure changes that will take place in the city prior to BNSF breaking ground on its massive railway project, which was announced in October.
BNSF Railway plans to invest more than $1.5 billion to construct a state-of-the-art master-planned rail facility in Barstow. The Barstow International Gateway will be an approximately 4,500-acre new integrated rail facility on the west side of Barstow, consisting of a rail yard, intermodal facility and warehouses for transloading freight from international containers to domestic containers. The facility will allow the direct transfer of containers from ships at the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach to trains for transport through the Alameda Corridor onto the BNSF mainline up to Barstow. Once the containers reach the Barstow International Gateway, they will be processed at the facility using clean-energy powered cargo-handling equipment and then staged and built into trains moving east via BNSF’s network across the nation. Westbound freight will similarly be processed at the facility to more efficiently bring trains to the ports and other California terminals.
“A lot of positive changes are in the works for Barstow, and we are excited to see it all come to fruition over the next several years,” Hopkins said.
More information on the City of Barstow can be accessed at www.BarstowCA.org.
A North-South rail superhighway may make Iowa “Roll-Over” Country
BNSF
A $31 billion merger between Canadian Pacific and the Kansas Southern Railways is roiling Iowa’s hotly contested U.S. Senate race, where just three percentage points separate Iowa Senate candidate Admiral Mike Franken from the long-time incumbent, Senator Chuck Grassley.
Franken, who worked on railroad issues while a military officer, is concerned that the merger risks making his oft-characterized “fly-over” state into a “roll-over” state. He is worried that, as the railways buy local acquiescence, dangling cash and minor rail improvements before Iowa’s hard-pressed riverside communities, the new railway superhighway will degrade Iowa’s quality of life.
The big merger, of course, is a national economic boon for Canada, creating the first direct, single-line railway between Canada and Mexico. But, in Iowa, voters are upset that the supersized railway will channel all the north-south rail traffic to a single-track-bed along much of the Mississippi River, subjecting Iowa’s reinvigorating riverside towns to an enormous amount of rail traffic as long trains roar through.
The problem goes beyond Iowa. Nationwide, the railroads are simply outgrowing their original tracks. Once a civic glue, tying small communities together, modern American railroads have aggregated into massive cross-country powerhouses, intent only on moving massive amounts of cargo across the country. “Roll-through” country gets left behind. Canadian Pacific and the Kansas Southern Railways merger will not do much to expand Iowa’s rail access, but will grow local rail traffic by up to four-fold.
To do this, the two railways expect to use Iowa’s old railbeds, appropriating tracks that still wind through Iowan town centers—Though towns with poorly controlled railway crossings and few railway overpasses. The increased train traffic, longer trains and bigger rolling-stock will wear down Iowa’s fragile and aging town infrastructure and increase the danger of accidents. And since tax advantages favor laying new tracks, towns will engage in a cat and mouse game with the railroads, as old rail lines subjected to intensive super-train use must have far more extensive inspections to assure Iowa voters that railway companies are keeping rails safe and aren’t just letting old rail lines decay for a small gain on Tax Day.
Until modern times, railways were always tightly integrated into Midwest towns. Iowan villages either sprung up around rail crossroads or lied, begged, and stole to get railways to lay a track through town. Back in the 1930s, back when Chuck Grassley, Iowa’s 89-year-old “Senior” Senator was born, railroads were commercial engines and community-building powerhouses. Little trains weaved through the center of every Iowan burg and village, knitting Iowans and Iowa businesses together.
Mike Franken worries about the civic cost of absorbing cross-country rail traffic
Jason Walsmith
Rail Superhighway, Meet Urban Village:
Iowa’s new railway superhighway risks degrading the quality of life for a significant number of Iowans. Over half a million Iowa voters—some 20% of the Iowan electorate—live in Mississippi River towns and hamlets. The list of historic communities impacted by the merger—Keokuk, Burlington, Fort Madison, Muscatine, Davenport, Dubuque, Bettendorf, Clinton, Bellevue, Guttenberg, Lansing, Harpers Ferry and others—comprise the future of Iowa.
Rather than modernize the railbed, sending trains down safer, high-speed tracks built outside Iowa cities and towns, the big train companies will keep using an old riverside rail bed that, very often, cuts river towns in two, severing their connection to the Mississippi.
The timing couldn’t be worse. America is rediscovering the Mississippi. Rail companies are laying claim to Iowa’s riverfront just as Viking River Cruises is set to begin regular river service, calling at three Iowa river cities. Soon, tourists, the second they depart from Viking’s modern riverboats, will need to contend with strings of big freight trains. Freight traffic will make efforts to add more passenger rail service to the Mississippi river basin untenable. Other efforts to build livable communities around the riverfront will suffer as the freight traffic generates more local noise and disruption than ever before.
While Franken acknowledges rail superhighways are efficient and do a great job of moving freight, he notes that they can be tremendously disruptive to the communities they pass through. And it is about to get worse. Right now, the average train length is about 1.2 miles, but, with new technology, the trains are set to grow—Union Pacific UNP even tested a 3.5-mile-long behemoth in 2010. And as train operators continue pressing for better margins, the longer, faster, and more frequent the train, the more money a railroad can make. But the rail profits come with a cost. Air and noise pollution are irritants to nearby homeowners, businesses, and environmentalists. Heavier train cars risk the foundations to the older buildings usually found along rail lines, as well.
It’s not just a matter for the folks abutting the rail line. Busy freight lines disrupt entire communities. The trains themselves can generate community-splitting traffic jams, stopping and starting at random. Without local ordinances to prevent abuse, super-sized trains can be left to sit, blocking town streets for hours. The stress leads to dangerous behaviors. In Iowa, train-racing is already commonplace, as locals rush to get across the tracks before a train arrives. That habit will only get worse.
The international rail chokepoints become regional security challenges as well. In times of tension, rival states, terrorists, and cyber criminals will relish opportunities to disrupt the Canada-to-Mexico rail line. Narco-traffickers and smugglers may jump at a chance to speed their wares into the upper Midwest, setting up shop where mid-sized communities, overwhelmed by the rail traffic, are unready to handle collateral challenges of customs enforcement and freight monitoring.
To address rail traffic and security problems, communities are often left to face down big rail companies on their own. By pressing for better security, speed limits, better crossing controls, horn use reduction and traffic changes, old railbeds can still safely support high traffic patterns, but Iowa towns aren’t well equipped to make these arguments. To big rail companies, anything that forces big trains to slow down becomes a problem, and there’s a significant risk that small municipalities may, in the future, see their rights to control local rail constrained by federal regulation.
The real solution is to build dedicated high-speed rail lines, appropriate for mega-train use. It would move the massive amount of through-traffic out of small, Midwest towns, speeding cross-country commerce. Let the older, more urban-integrated rail lines support local traffic, passenger trains, and other, more disaggregated freight.
The Lac Megantic derailment is an example of what can happen when trains and towns mix.
Copyright 2013 AP. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Safety And Security Is A Big Deal
Safety is another challenge for small Iowa river towns. Aside from the speed, railway cars are far larger than they once were. And with bigger freight cars, urban derailments become enormously scary things. At just a couple miles per hour, the inertia wrapped up in a simple grain car can rip apart a building.
A grain car derailment is the least of Iowa’s worries. The merger-driven pulse of speedy north-south traffic will carry a lot of petrochemical products from Canada’s shale sands. If things go bad on the tracks, toxic and flammable cargoes can destroy towns. It has happened before. In 2013, a train derailment leveled the small Canadian town of Lac-Megantic, Quebec, killing 47 people and causing hundreds of millions of dollars in damages.
And with much of the proposed north-south rail superhighway trundling on or over the Mississippi River, near state borders, the security and emergency response challenge becomes far more complex for the area’s underfunded and unready first responders.
Even worse, the U.S. government has yet to fully integrate local rail safety with river transit and river water levels. In 2021, south of Spechts Ferry, Iowa, a 1.5 mile-long coal train slammed into an encroaching barge that was sheltering along the river bank. While the rail company had done everything right, updating navigational charts of the nearby rail line, the integration effort still failed. Two locomotives and ten hopper cars went off the tracks, with six entering the river—which was, given the river’s water level at the time, less than ten feet from the rail line.
To keep the Midwest’s waterfront viable, America’s nascent north-south railway superhighway needs to be moved out of towns, into a modern, safe railbed. But moving a rail line is an expensive, long-term process. Instead, railway executives are buying out Iowa’s cash-strapped communities, gaining access for comparative peanuts. Rather than seek a unified, long-term and regional solution, Iowa communities that don’t know what they are agreeing to are acceding to a railway superhighway for a few million dollars, getting little more than some better signage and some modest track improvements.
The rail superhighway needs a federal solution. Franken has an advanced vision of regional economic collaboration as well as building wider awareness of Iowa’s contributions to the global economy. To him, this is an opportunity, but only if done right. “Cleaner fuels, additional electrification of locomotives, tech-enabled regulation enforcement, improved GPS traffic management, and better focus on minimizing the disruptive aspects of trains is the long-term goal for these big, commodity-oriented rail lines. But Dubuque, Davenport, and other communities most affected here in Iowa should united to demand rail bypasses to their communities. Large, long, and heavy freight and petroleum-ladened trains should then be routed to those newly constructed bypasses, so they can get to where they are going faster and with less risk” said Franken in a telephone interview.
In the interim, Franken, if elected, will seek funding to improve Eastern Iowa’s emergency response capabilities to cover potential contingencies, but “the long-term effort is to get more speedy trains linking the Midwest together,” said Franken.
Franken also wants to reform the Surface Transportation Board, a powerful independent federal board that has wide economic regulatory oversight over railroads in the United States.
In a discussion, Franken was clear that America needs better rail, but he saw no need for America’s new north-south supertrains to turn Iowa’s Mississippi waterfront into “roll-over” country as well. Though there’s little immediate relief in sight, Franken sees better, safer rail lines as a good thing for Iowa.
For Franken, it’s a simple solution. With a little help from Congress, America can both benefit from speedy, super-fast freight, while, at the same time, keep Iowa development going without hurting Iowa’s small towns. This may prove to be an optimistic interpretation of the Senate’s ability to make concrete improvements in American life, but it may also be why Franken, in the last stage of the race, is out-raising his opponent and surging at the polls.
A union of railroad track maintenance workers has rejected a tentative agreement with the nation’s freight carriers, renewing the threat that there could be a strike that shuts down this vital link in the nation’s already struggling supply chain.
The vote, announced Monday by the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employes Division, was 43% in favor of the proposed five-year contract, and 57% opposed.
About 12,000 of the 23,000 members of the BMWE participated in the vote. It is the third largest of the major freight railroad unions. The two largest freight unions, which represent the more than 50,000 engineers and conductors who make up the two-person train crews, are conducting the their own rank-and-file ratification vote by mail. Those votes will be counted on Nov. 17.
TheBWME said it will now enter negotiations with the association that represents management at the nation’s major freight railroads in an effort to reach a new deal. Without a new deal there could be a strike, but not until at least Nov. 19, according to the union. Things will remain status quo with the union’s contract until then.
A statement from the association negotiating on behalf of railroad management said it was “disappointed” with the vote, but given that the two sides had decided to maintain thestatus quo, “the failed ratification does not present a risk of an immediate service disruption.”
Even if the members of the two larger unions vote in favor of their deals, they would not report to work if the BMWE were to go on strike. And the fact that the BMWE voted down the contract is probably a sign that rank-and-file anger towards railroad management could lead to no votes at the two larger unions as well.
“I think this is the canary in the coal mine for the engineers’ and conductors’ votes,” said Todd Vanchon, professor of labor studies at Rutgers University. “They were the ones you anticipate would reject a deal. The fact that the BMWE voted no suggests a no vote [by train crew members] is more likely.”
The tentative labor deals were reached on Sept. 15 following a marathon 20-hour bargaining session that included direct intervention from President Joe Biden and Labor Secretary Marty Walsh. The new contracts include an immediate 14% raise with back pay dating to 2020, and raises totaling 24% during the five-year life of the contract that runs from 2020 through 2024. They also gives union members cash bonuses of $1,000 a year. All told, the backpay and bonuses will give union members an average payment of $11,000 per worker once the deal is ratified.
But the deal was difficult to reach not because of the financial terms, but because of work rules that unions said had brought engineers and conductors to a breaking point. Staffing shortages had required crew members to be on call seven days a week, ready to report to work at short notice. And union leadership said those rules, which were adjusted as part of the contract, had caused great anger at management among rank-and-file members.
Despite that discord, the unions’ leadership expressed confidence that their members would ratify the deals, even if they didn’t get everything they wanted at the bargaining table.
“I think we got everything we could,” Dennis Pierce, president of the engineers union, told CNN on the day the deal was reached. “And I think once our membership understands where we sit and what’s in it, I think it’ll ratify.”
Numerous smaller unions have already approved the deal. The only group that initially rejected it, the Machinist union which represents about 5,000 mechanics for locomotives and track equipment and facility maintenance personnel, has subsequently reached a new tentative agreement without a strike. The Machinists’ rank and file is again considering that deal.
The Biden administration was desperate to avoid a rail strike because of fears it would upend already strained supply chains. The major railroads carry 30% of the nation’s freight when measured by weight and distance traveled, and a strike could have caused shortages and higher prices for such essentials as food and gasoline, forced factories without parts to close down and left store shelves empty during the holiday shopping period. The only potential good news for the Biden administration is that if there is a strike, it would now take place after the midterm elections.
Rank and file union member anger hasn’t just been expressed at railroads. Union members working in other industries have recently balked at approving deals, even when recommended by their unions’ leadership. Although most union contracts are ratified, there have been some very high-profile examples of angry union members voting no.
About 10,000 members of the United Auto Workers at farm equipment maker John Deere went on strike last fall after rejecting a tentative agreement. That rejected offer included immediate raises in their base pay of 5% to 6%, and additional wage increases later in the contract that could have increased average pay by about 20% over the six years. And it had a cost-of-living adjustment that would give them additional pay based up future inflation.
But more than 90% of the UAW members at Deere voted no and went on strike, and then stayed on strike after rejecting a subsequent deal. They finally returned to work after five weeks after a third vote on a similar package passed.
Striking workers at cereal maker Kellogg
(K) also rejected a tentative deal and decided to stay on strike in December before finally agreeing to a deal weeks later.
And only 50.3% of film production workers voted in favor of a deal last fall that achieved virtually all the bargaining goals of their union, a contract that averted a strike by 63,000 technicians, artisans and craftspeople which could have brought production of movies, television and streaming shows to a halt.
