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Tag: trains

  • Despite toxic disaster, railroads still want single-person crews | CNN Business

    Despite toxic disaster, railroads still want single-person crews | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    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 and Burlington 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.

    The National Transportation Safety Board’s initial finding on the disaster was that a fire originally started when a rail car carrying plastic pellets was heated by a hot axle.

    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.

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  • Death toll from rail disaster rises to 57 as anger boils in Greece | CNN

    Death toll from rail disaster rises to 57 as anger boils in Greece | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Anger in Greece over poor railway safety grew on Thursday as the death toll from one of the country’s worst train crashes in recent years reached 57.

    Demonstrators poured onto the streets after the head-on collision between a passenger train carrying more than 350 people and a freight train on Tuesday evening in Tempi, near the city of Larissa.

    Protesters clashed with police in the capital Athens, the country’s transport minister resigned in the wake of the tragedy and a rail workers’ union is going on strike, accusing the government of “disrespect” in the sector.

    Another 48 people remain in hospital as a result of the crash, which left toppled carriages and scorched debris in its wake. Six of the injured being treated are in critical condition due to head wounds and serious burns, public broadcaster ERT reported Thursday.

    After a train station manager in Larissa was arrested in connection to the collision, Greek authorities on Thursday also released striking dispatch audio recordings that show one of the train drivers receiving instructions to ignore a red light.

    “Proceed through red traffic light exit until traffic light entry of Neon Poron,” the station master is heard saying.

    “Vasilis, am I good to go?” the train driver responds, to which the train master says “Go, go.”

    In a second conversation, the station master can be heard ordering an employee to keep one of the trains on the same track.

    “Shall I turn it now?” the employee asks.

    “No, no, because 1564 is on this route,” the station master says.

    The station master has been charged with mass deaths through negligence and causing grievous bodily harm through negligence. Upon arrest he blamed the collision on a technical fault, though later admitted to “making a mistake.”

    Protesters gathered outside the central Athens headquarters of Greek rail company Hellenic Train again on Thursday evening in a demonstration organized by student and worker unions.

    Police already had a presence outside the Hellenic Train headquarters before the demonstrators arrived. The protest was peaceful, following unrest on Wednesday in which demonstrators clashed with police.

    Most of the passengers involved in the accident were young, a local hospital told ERT. The accident came soon after a holiday weekend.

    Search and rescue operations will continue on Thursday and Friday at the site of the crash, according to the Fire Service.

    Meanwhile, relatives of those missing are still awaiting news regarding their loved ones as the identification process continues at Larissa General Hospital.

    Speaking earlier to Greek media, Dimitris Bournazis, who is trying to get news about his father and brother, said no one has given him any information. Bournazis said he was trying to contact the company to find out where on the train his relatives were sitting at the time of the crash. He said he called the offices of Hellenic Train three times but no one has called him back.

    “The prime minister and the health minister came here yesterday. Why? To do what? To explain what? Where are they today?” Bournazis told Greek broadcaster SKAI, adding that “no one has given us any information, no one knows how many people really were inside.”

    “We cannot only blame one person for this because of a mistake. Where is everyone else now? They all await the election to speak,” he said.

    Speaking to ERT, passenger Andreas Alikaniotis, who was in the second carriage during the collision, described the moments following the crash.

    “What we did was to break the glass, which was already cracked, and to throw the luggage outside the carriage, so we can land somewhere soft,” he told ERT, describing how he helped around 10 people escape.

    “We jumped 3 to 4 meters,” he added, “first the more seriously injured and then us with lighter injuries”

    Alikaniotis added that he remembers pulling up two or three girls and helping them get to the window to jump. “There was panic,” he added.

    An aerial drone photograph taken on Wednesday shows emergency crews searching wreckage of the accident, which killed dozens and left scores injured.

    Greece has a weak record of railway passenger safety compared with other countries in Europe, recording the highest railway fatality rate per million train kilometers from 2018 to 2020 among 28 nations on the continent, according to a 2022 report from the European Union Agency for Railways.

    In an extraordinary meeting, the Greek federation of rail workers decided unanimously to launch the 24-hour strike on Thursday to highlight poor working conditions and chronic understaffing.

    It accused the federal government of “disrespect” towards railways for causing the crash, saying “more permanent staff, better training and mainly the implementation of modern security systems, are permanently thrown in the bin.”

    Separately, another 24-hour strike was announced by Greek metro workers, who said in a statement: “There are no words to describe such tragedy.”

    Greek transport minister Kostas Karamanlis said the railway system the government inherited was “not up to 21st century standards” as he stepped down from his role Wednesday.

    In a televised address after visiting the crash site, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said the collision was “mainly” due “to tragic human error.”

    He said the transport minister’s decision to resign was honorable, and added that the heads of Hellenic Railways Organization and its subsidiary ERGOSE have also submitted their resignations.

    Protesters, pictured on Wednesday, clash with riot police on the streets of Athens, after Tuesday's collision killed dozens and left scores injured.

    Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis attributed the crash to

    Condolences have poured in from across the world, while a three-day period of mourning is under way in Greece.

    Britain’s King Charles said in a statement that he and his wife Camilla, Queen Consort, have been “most shocked and profoundly saddened by the news of the dreadful accident.”

    French President Emmanuel Macron tweeted: “My thoughts go out to the families of the victims of the terrible accident that took place last night near Larissa. France stands alongside the Greeks.”

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  • At least 29 dead, 85 injured as trains collide in Greece | CNN

    At least 29 dead, 85 injured as trains collide in Greece | CNN

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    Rescue workers are in a desperate search for survivors after a head-on collision between two trains in central Greece killed dozens of people and injured scores.

    At least 29 people were killed and more than 85 injured when a passenger train carrying more than 350 people collided with a freight train on Tuesday evening, shortly before midnight, in Tempi, central Greece, near the city of Larissa, the Greek Fire Service said.

    “We just heard a bang… the (train) car started spinning, before ending up sideways when we managed to exit,” one male passenger told Greek public broadcaster ERT.

    “It was 10 nightmarish seconds with fire, you couldn’t see much from the smoke,” said a second passenger.

    Recovery efforts are underway and the death toll is expected to rise, the Greek Fire Service said.

    The passenger train had been traveling from the capital Athens to Thessaloniki, Greece’s second-largest city, which is renowned for its festivals and vibrant cultural life. The collision follows a nationwide carnival at the weekend which ended with a public holiday on Monday.

    Images on Greece’s state-owned public broadcaster ERT showed plumes of thick smoke pouring out of toppled carriages and long lines of rescue vehicles next to them.

    Meanwhile, rescue workers with torches searched carriages for survivors as paramedics led shell-shocked passengers from the scene.

    Rescue operations are underway and the death toll is expected to rise.

    Passengers who survived the train crash near the city of Larissa arrive in Thessaloniki, Greece, on March 1, 2023.

    The images also showed some surviving passengers arriving in Thessaloniki.

    Greek Fire Service spokesman Vassilis Varthakogiannis said that 194 passengers had been taken safely to Thessaloniki.

    At least 150 firefighters with 17 vehicles and 40 ambulances are involved in the rescue operation, he added.

    A passenger is seen walking on a road after the collision in Larissa city.

    The Greek railway company, Hellenic Train, said in a press release that there was “a head-on collision between two trains: a freight train and train IC 62 which had departed from Athens to Thessaloniki.”

    Authorities said it is still not clear what led to the collision.

    Hellenic Train, the main Greek railway company, was acquired by Ferrovie dello Stato Italiane in 2017 and is now fully controlled by Trenitalia. The company operates both passenger and freight transport. The main line on which daily connections are offered is Athens-Thessaloniki.

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  • A first report on the Ohio toxic train wreck was released. Here’s what it found — and what investigators are still looking into | CNN

    A first report on the Ohio toxic train wreck was released. Here’s what it found — and what investigators are still looking into | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    After federal officials released an initial report concluding that this month’s toxic train wreck in Ohio was completely preventable, investigators will begin examining procedures, practices and design prior to the derailment that has sparked long-term concerns among hundreds of frustrated residents.

    The National Transportation Safety Board on Thursday released its preliminary report on the investigation into the February 3 train crash in East Palestine, Ohio, where residents have been complaining about feeling sick after hazardous chemicals seeped into the air, water and soil.

    Ohio environmental officials made a civil referral this week asking the state attorney general’s office to begin “legal and/or equitable civil actions” against Norfolk Southern, which could result in a civil complaint if negotiations with the company were to fail.

    The NTSB report found that one of the train’s cars carrying plastic pellets was heated by a hot axle that sparked the initial fire, according to Jennifer Homendy, the chair of the safety board. As the temperature of the bearing got hotter, the train passed by two wayside defect detectors that did not trigger an audible alarm message because the heat threshold was not met at that point, Homendy explained. A third detector eventually picked up the high temperature, but it was already too late by then.

    “This was 100% preventable. … There is no accident. Every single event that we investigate is preventable,” Homendy said during a news conference Thursday. “The NTSB has one goal, and that is safety and ensuring that this never happens again.”

    The next phase of the investigation will examine the train’s wheelset and bearing as well as the damage from the derailment, the NTSB report noted. The agency will also focus on the designs of tank cars and railcars along with maintenance procedures and practices.

    Plus, investigators will review the train operator’s use of wayside defect detectors and the company’s railcar inspection practices. More specifically, determining what caused the wheel bearing failure will be key to the investigation, Homendy said.

    On Friday, Homendy said on “CNN This Morning” that she’s concerned politics could cloud the investigation and prevent safety improvements. Former President Donald Trump visited the site of the train derailment on Wednesday where he criticized President Joe Biden’s administration’s handling of the railway disaster.

    “This is not a time for politics,” Homendy said. “There is a time for politics. It is not this.”

    On Thursday, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg also visited the derailment site, and when asked how political figures like Trump could help, Buttigieg addressed the former president directly saying he could “express support for reversing the deregulation that happened on his watch.”

    Another key aspect of the investigation will focus on the response to the chemical disaster, particularly the manual detonations of tanks carrying toxic chemicals.

    Five of the 38 derailed train cars were carrying more than 115,000 gallons of vinyl chloride, according to the NTSB’s report. Exposure to high levels of vinyl chloride can increase cancer risk or cause death.

    Those five cars “continued to concern authorities because the temperature inside one tank car was still rising,” indicating a polymerization reaction which could have resulted in an explosion, the report said. To help prevent a potentially deadly blast of vinyl chloride, crews released the toxic chemical into a trench and burned it off on February 6 — three days after the derailment.

    Since then, some East Palestine residents have said they are experiencing headaches, dizziness, nausea and bloody noses — a host of health issues they say they did not have prior to the crash.

    At the same time, officials have been adamant in reassuring residents of the air’s safety and the municipal water supply.

    Around 2 million gallons of firefighting water from the train derailment site are expected to be disposed in Harris County, Texas, according to the county’s chief executive.

    Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo said her office was told by Texas Molecular on Thursday that the shipments began arriving around last Wednesday, she said.

    Texas Molecular was hired to dispose of the potentially dangerous water from the train derailment, the company, which said it has more than four decades of experience in managing water safely, has told CNN.

    The company told Hidalgo’s office Thursday that half a million gallons was already in the county.

    Hidalgo expressed frustration that she first learned about the water shipments from the news media – not from a government agency or Texas Molecular,

    “It’s a very real problem we were told yesterday the materials were coming only to learn today they’ve been here for a week,” Hidalgo said.

    She added that although there’s no legal requirement for her office to be notified, “It doesn’t quite seem right.”

    Texas Molecular is receiving the water from trucks, but it’s unclear if trucks are used for the entire trip, Hidalgo said. The company told her office they’re receiving about 30 trucks of water a day, she said.

    CNN is seeking comment from Texas Molecular about how the water is being transported.

    Hidalgo said her office is looking for information about the disposal, including the chemical composition of the firefighting water, the precautions that are being taken, and why Harris County was the chosen site.

    “There’s nothing right now to tell me – to tell us – there’s going to be an accident in transport, that this is being done in such a way that is not compatible with the well, that there’s a nefarious reason why the water is coming here and not to a closer site,” Hidalgo said. “But it is our job to do basic due diligence on that information.”

    A total of 1.7 million gallons of contaminated liquid has been removed from the immediate site of the derailment, according to a Thursday news release from the Ohio Emergency Management Agency.

    More than 1.1 million gallons of “contaminated liquid” from East Palestine has been transported off-site so far, with the majority going to Texas Molecular and the rest going to a facility in Vickery, Ohio.

    CNN has asked the Ohio agency the location of the remaining 581,500 gallons which have been “removed” but not “hauled off-site.”

    Congresswoman Debbie Dingell of Michigan said she was “not given a heads up” that contaminated soil from East Palestine would be transported to the US Ecology Wayne Disposal in Belleville, Michigan.

    “We were not given a heads up on this reported action,” Dingell said in a press release on Friday, “Our priority is to always keep the people we represent safe.”

    Dingell said inquires to the EPA, Department of Transportation, Norfolk Southern, US Ecology, the state of Ohio and others involved are in the process.

    On Friday afternoon, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine released an update on the removal of the contaminated site in East Palestine, saying that soil would be transported to Michigan.

    So far, 4,832 cubic yards of soil have been removed from the ground in East Palestine. Approximately six truckloads of that contaminated soil are on their way to the hazardous waste disposal facility in Michigan, according to a press release from DeWine.

    The 149-car train operated by Norfolk Southern on February 3 had three employees on board: a locomotive engineer, a conductor and a trainee who were all in the head end of the locomotive, Homendy told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Thursday.

    So far, the investigation found the crew did not do anything wrong prior to the derailment, though the crash was “100% preventable,” Homendy said.

    Video of the train before the derailment showed what appeared to be an overheated wheel bearing, according to the NTSB report. Footage showed sparks flying from underneath the train.

    NTSB investigators are now focusing on one train car’s wheel set and bearing to figure out what may have caused the overheating, Homendy said.

    “We have a lot of questions about that,” she said Friday, including the “thresholds and why they vary so much between railroads.”

    Ultimately, it’s the railroads that set the temperature thresholds for the detectors, Homendy said.

    Releasing publicly a probable cause or causes for the derailment could take 12 to 18 months, Homendy said during the news conference.

    “We are very deliberative. We are the gold standard when it comes to investigations globally, and we are methodical in our approach,” Homendy said. “But if we see a safety issue that we need to be addressed immediately, something systemic, we will not hesitate to issue an urgent safety recommendation.”

    In the meantime, here’s what the NTSB preliminary report found so far:

    • One wheel bearing’s temperature reached a “critical” level — 253 degrees Fahrenheit above the ambient temperature — and prompted an audible alarm that instructed “the crew to slow and stop the train to inspect a hot axle,” the report says.
    • The train’s engineer applied the train’s brakes and additional braking after the alert of an overheating axle, the report states. “During this deceleration, the wheel bearing failed,” Homendy explained. “Car 23 derailed, and the train initiated an emergency brake application and came to a stop.”

    Even after reading the preliminary NTSB report, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost told “CNN This Morning” that there’s still a lot of facts he doesn’t know.

    Among his biggest questions are: “Had the train been shorter, had there been additional staff, could this have been averted? Based on the alerts that occurred, how long is the reaction time and how is that influenced by the size of the train?” Yost told CNN.

    The US Environmental Protection Agency has ordered Norfolk Southern to cover the full cost of cleaning up the aftermath of the train crash.

    “EPA has special authority for situations just like this where we can compel companies who inflict trauma and cause environmental and health damage to communities, like Norfolk Southern has done, to completely clean up the mess that they’ve caused and pay for it,” EPA administrator Michael Regan said.

    Norfolk Southern will be required to:

    • Provide a descriptive work plan on how they intend to clean up the water, soil and debris
    • Reimburse the EPA for providing residents a cleaning service of their homes and businesses
    • Show up to public meetings and explain their progress

    If the company does not follow the order, the EPA will step in to complete the duties, while fining Norfolk Southern up to $70,000 a day, Regan said Wednesday during a CNN town hall.

    “And the law gives us the authority to charge Norfolk Southern up to three times the amount that the cleanup will cost us,” he said.

    The company plans to take a series of measures moving forward to minimize the long-term impacts of chemicals on the land and groundwater, including ripping up the tracks where the train derailed and removing soil underneath, Norfolk Southern CEO Alan Shaw said.

    Shaw added his company is working with the Environmental Protection Agency on a “long-term remediation plan.”

    Yost, who received the referral from the Ohio EPA to initiate necessary legal civil actions against Norfolk Southern this week, told CNN any criminal referral in Ohio regarding the derailment would be a decision made by local prosecutors.

    “We’ve been in contact with the local county prosecutor, and … we may be assisting him, but at this point, he has not empaneled a grand jury, to my understanding,” he said Friday on “CNN This Morning.”

    Ohio environmental officials made a civil referral Tuesday asking Yost’s office to “initiate all necessary legal and/or equitable civil actions” and “seek appropriate penalties” against Norfolk Southern, according to a copy of the referral provided by the attorney general’s office.

    “I respectfully request that this referral result in the filing of a civil complaint in the appropriate court if efforts on your part to resolve this matter through negotiation fail,” Ohio Environmental Protection Agency Director Anne Vogel wrote in a letter to Yost.

    Vogel cited potential violations of state laws regarding air and water pollution and solid and hazardous waste.

    Expanding the definition of a high-hazard flammable train – a standard the derailed train did not meet, despite sparking a major fire – is among the changes NTSB advocated for in the past, Homendy said Friday.

    NTSB urged regulators to include in the classification “a broad array of flammable materials,” rather than focusing on crude oil, she said.

    Additionally, NTSB will look at whether vinyl chloride needs to be carried in more fortified cars, Homendy said.

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  • East Palestine derailment spurs rare signs of bipartisan agreement on rail safety. Will Washington act? | CNN Politics

    East Palestine derailment spurs rare signs of bipartisan agreement on rail safety. Will Washington act? | CNN Politics

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    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.

    Rubio and Buttigieg, meanwhile, are in a spat – with the secretary suggesting the senator was previously parroting lines from the rail industry and Rubio calling for Buttigieg’s resignation.

    “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.”

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  • East Palestine residents worry rashes, headaches and other symptoms may be tied to chemicals from train crash | CNN

    East Palestine residents worry rashes, headaches and other symptoms may be tied to chemicals from train crash | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Some residents of East Palestine, Ohio, say they have developed rashes, sore throats, nausea and headaches after returning to their homes this week, and they’re worried these new symptoms are related to chemicals released after a train derailment two weeks ago.

    The February 3 incident caused a massive fire and prompted officials to evacuate hundreds of people who lived near the site because of fears that a hazardous, highly flammable material might ignite. To prevent a potentially deadly explosion, toxic vinyl chloride gas was vented and burned, releasing a plume of black smoke over the town for days.

    Other chemicals of concern at the site include phosgene and hydrogen chloride, which are released when vinyl chloride breaks down; butyl acrylate; ethylene glycol monobutyl ether acetate; and 2-ethylhexyl acrylate, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency. All these chemicals can change when they break down or react with other things in the environment, creating a stew of potential toxins.

    Residents were given the all-clear to return to their homes February 8 after air monitoring in East Palestine did not detect any elevated chemicals of concern.

    Officials say further testing of indoor air in about 500 homes has also not shown any hazards. Tests of tap water from the municipal system didn’t show any chemicals at levels that would pose a health hazard, although officials are still testing water from rivers, streams and residential wells in the area.

    These test results have failed to reassure some residents, who say something is making them sick – even if officials can’t find it.

    “When we went back on the 10th, that’s when we decided that we couldn’t raise our kids here,” Amanda Greathouse said. There was a terrible, lingering smell that “reminded me of hair perming solution.”

    Greathouse said she was back in their house, about a block from the crash site, for 30 minutes when she developed a rash and nausea.

    “When we left, I had a rash on my skin on my arm, and my eyes were burning for a few days after that,” said Greathouse, who has two preschool-age children.

    She and her husband have returned to their home only twice since the derailment, to pick up paperwork and clothing.

    “The chemical smell was so strong that it made me nauseous,” Greathouse said. “I just wanted to quickly pick up what I needed and leave. I only took a few pieces of clothes because even the clothes smelled like chemicals, and I’m afraid to put them on my kids.”

    She says she’s also kept her children out of preschool since the derailment. Even though her son’s teacher has promised her that students are using only bottled water, she’s worried about other types of contamination.

    “I don’t want to take my son out of the preschool they’re in because I really like the teachers he has, but I’m still scared. Some teachers have even expressed their concerns about the air quality,” Greathouse said.

    “We are very fortunate that we rent our home. Didn’t think I would ever say that. I feel awful for my landlord, but I just can’t risk my family’s health.”

    Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine said a request for medical experts from the US Department of Health and Human Services has been granted, and officials should be arriving early next week to help prop up a clinic for patients.

    “We know the science indicates that this water is safe, the air is safe. But we also know very understandably that residents of East Palestine are concerned,” he said Friday.

    DeWine said he plans to set up a clinic where HHS officials and others will answer questions, evaluate symptoms and provide medical expertise.

    The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, part of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, also says it expects to have a team on site Monday, according to a CDC spokesperson who requested that they not be named because they weren’t authorized to share the details. The team will conduct an Assessment of Chemical Exposure investigation, which surveys the impact of a chemical release on people and the community.

    The volatile organic compounds released by the controlled explosion can cause symptoms similar to those reported by some East Palestine residents, including headache, sore throat, and nose and eye irritation, but experts say it’s extremely difficult to connect chemical exposures to health effects.

    “That is a major challenge,” says Erin Haynes, chair of the Department of Epidemiology and Environmental Health at the University of Kentucky.

    “The community is now exposed to a mixture of numerous petroleum-based volatile organic compounds, so it may not just be one, it could be the mixture of them,” Haynes said.

    Haynes, who has experience investigating toxic exposures in communities, says she is seeking approval from her university’s Institutional Review Board to start a study in East Palestine to help give residents more information on their chemical exposures in air, water and soil.

    “They need all the help they can get,” she said. “This is a major emergency. This is a major disaster. They need all the assistance that we all can provide.

    “The evidence of a toxic exposure could very well be the rashes,” she said.

    Audrey DeSanzo would like some answers, too.

    “How safe is it, really?” said DeSanzo, who lives about half a mile from the derailment with her two grade-school-age children. “It’s not in all these people’s heads that are getting rashes, that are having the conjunctivitis, the pinkeye, from chemicals.”

    “You have a sore throat when you’re staying here. It smells out here.”

    After the derailment, DeSanzo evacuated with her kids just over the state line in Pennsylvania, where her uncle had an empty duplex. They slept on the floor and the couch.

    When she came home this week, DeSanzo says, she aired out her house, changed the furnace filter and washed their sheets and clothes. Even so, she says, they all recently went to a local immediate care clinic because her kids were coughing, and “our throats were raw.”

    Tests for strep throat were negative. The doctor prescribed cough medicine for the kids and told DeSanzo that the chemicals were probably to blame.

    The doctor said she had seen a number of East Palestine residents with similar symptoms, DeSanzo said, and advised them to call poison control and go to the local hospital for a blood test. She hasn’t gotten the blood test yet.

    Debbie Pietrzak, a spokesperson for Salem Regional Medical Center, which runs the clinic DeSanzo went to, confirmed that it has treated a small number of residents with symptoms like sore throats and respiratory problems. The hospital’s emergency room has seen fewer than 10 patients from East Palestine, she said.

    “Our facilities and primary care providers stand ready to help anyone who is seeking medical attention, and we are working closely with the County’s Health Department and other local, state and federal agencies, which are monitoring the situation,” Pietrzak said in an email.

    Natalie Rine, a pharmacist who directs the Central Ohio Poison Center, said the state’s poison control centers are getting calls from East Palestine residents, too. Experts who staff the help lines are trained in toxicology and can help if chemicals are a health concern.

    DeSanzo says she wants to leave but can’t afford to. Her mortgage is about $400 a month, less than half of those of other homes she’s found in the area that are farther from the accident site.

    “I make $14 an hour. Where am I supposed to go?” she said. “I don’t want to be here now with with my kids.”

    Ayla and Tyler Antoniazzi and their two daughters have been living in East Palestine since April. After the train crash, they weren’t sure about moving out, Ayla says, but they’re now considering it.

    The Antoniazzis returned to their house less than a mile from the accident site the day after the evacuation notice was lifted.

    “Before bringing my kids back home, I washed all the linen and a bunch of clothes, cleaned surfaces and aired the house out,” Ayla said. “But the next day when they woke up, they weren’t themselves. My oldest had a rash on her face. The youngest did too but not as bad. The 2-year-old was holding her eye and complaining that her eye was hurting. She was very lethargic, so I took them back to my parents’ home.”

    Ayla says her daughters are staying with her parents in Leetonia, about 20 minutes west of East Palestine, until the couple is able to make sure their home is safe.

    The kids’ symptoms got better in Leetonia, she said, but one got another rash when she returned to school in East Palestine on February 13.

    Ayla Antoniazzi's 4-year-old daughter developed a rash after going back to school in East Palestine.

    “I did allow my 4-year-old to return to preschool, which is in the East Palestine Elementary School. She went back for two days and developed another rash on her hands and started complaining of itching, so I pulled her back out,” Ayla said.

    Ayla has scheduled a medical appointment with her daughters for next week to discuss their symptoms and testing options, she said.

    That’s the right thing to do, says Dr. Kari Nadeau, an allergist and chair of the Department of Environmental Health at Harvard’s TH Chan School of Public Health.

    Nadeau says rashes, sore throat, and headaches can be clinical signs of a chemical sensitivity.

    “There are people that are highly sensitive to chemicals and can feel it before necessarily a monitor can pick it up,” Nadeau said. “There’s not a great diagnostic pathway for chemical sensitivities. A lot of it is based off clinical symptoms, including rashes.”

    Nadeau and other environmental health experts advise people who are having symptoms to see a health care provider, primarily for medical care but also so their case can be documented.

    “So that if there is a cluster, or if there’s a group of people that all of a sudden have complained about a rash or given symptoms, that really helps doctors come together with institutions like the CDC and do a little bit more fact-finding,” she said.

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  • A freight train derailment in Ohio puts US infrastructure back in a bruising spotlight | CNN Politics

    A freight train derailment in Ohio puts US infrastructure back in a bruising spotlight | CNN Politics

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    A version of this story appears in CNN’s What Matters newsletter. To get it in your inbox, sign up for free here.


    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 avoid similar 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 for equipment 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 the types of accidents, if it’s a derailment – the causes of derailment are fairly understandable.

    It could be due to the mental fatigue 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: a human 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 rail unions 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 studied this 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.

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  • Century-old train tunnels in Baltimore and New York to get funding from Biden’s infrastructure law | CNN Politics

    Century-old train tunnels in Baltimore and New York to get funding from Biden’s infrastructure law | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    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.

    Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie killed an earlier version of the plan to build a new tunnel in 2010.

    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.

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  • City of Barstow Readies for Replacement of Historic Bridge Amid Plans for Major Railway Hub Development

    City of Barstow Readies for Replacement of Historic Bridge Amid Plans for Major Railway Hub Development

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    Press Release
    –

    Nov 28, 2022 14:30 EST


    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.

    Source: City of Barstow

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  • Railway Superhighway Supercharges Iowa Senate Race Between Mike Franken And Chuck Grassley

    Railway Superhighway Supercharges Iowa Senate Race Between Mike Franken And Chuck Grassley

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    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.

    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.

    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.

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    Craig Hooper, Senior Contributor

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  • Westport RTM Member and State Representative Candidate Greg Kraut (R-136) Calls on State Bonding Commission to Reject Governor Malloy’s Request for $10m Toll Study and Immediately Enact Bond Moratorium

    Westport RTM Member and State Representative Candidate Greg Kraut (R-136) Calls on State Bonding Commission to Reject Governor Malloy’s Request for $10m Toll Study and Immediately Enact Bond Moratorium

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    WESTPORT, Conn., July 23, 2018 (Newswire.com)
    –
    Westport RTM Member and State Representative candidate Greg Kraut (R-136) today called on the State Bonding Commission to reject Governor Malloy’s request for a $10m Toll Study that the elected legislature has already turned down and enact a Bond Moratorium for non-essential items for the rest of this calendar year.

    “Gov. Malloy and his majority party have had 8 years to properly deal with our Transportation crisis. Borrowing $10m for a Tolling Study in the last 6 months of the administration is a complete waste of taxpayers’ money and at this point we must have a Bond Moratorium until the end of the calendar year,” Kraut stated.

    Connecticut has the highest net tax-supported debt per capita of any U.S. state at $6,505. Connecticut’s net tax-supported debt per capita was the highest of any state, according to a Moody’s Investors Service report last year. The figure has grown from $5,185 in Moody’s 2013 report.

    “We need to implore the State Bonding Committee to finally cut Governor Malloy’s maxed out Credit card. This type of tax and spend failed fiscal policies has led to debt which is strangling our state and municipalities. Our ratio of indebtedness to the statutory debt limit is approaching 90 percent. State Statutes require the Governor to review unissued bond authorizations and recommend that the General Assembly repeal authorizations to bring the ratio below 90 percent,” Kraut stated.

    According to Bloomberg, Connecticut only complicated its own problems. It has been downgraded three times in as many years by S&P Global Ratings, had a fiscal 2017 net pension liability of $37.2 billion (up almost $10 billion from a year ago) and easily has the most tax-supported debt per resident among U.S. states. On top of all that, it has the fewest jobs in finance, insurance and real estate since 1996.

    “I would not want to be his personal credit card company when he leaves office nor would I want to be the CFO of his next job, unfortunately, he has left us with debt that our children may not be able to pay back,” Kraut said. 

    “Enough is Enough”

    Source: Kraut for CT

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  • The Western Group is Expanding Transportation Outreach With New Business Development Associate

    The Western Group is Expanding Transportation Outreach With New Business Development Associate

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    Ogden, Utah, June 30, 2017 (Newswire.com)
    –
     The Western Group of Ogden, Utah, a railroad industry consortium, welcomes Ed Pajor as Vice President of Business Development. He will be responsible for identifying, securing, and managing business development opportunities in railroad transportation and related activities. Pajor comes to The Western Group with over 30 years of experience in logistics & transportation (rail, marine and trucking,) with a heavy focus on business development. 

    Railroading runs in the Pajor family. Ed’s mom worked for the Illinois Central Railroad (IC) and his great uncle headed up the IC accounting department at that same time. After graduating from college, Ed sent out over 100 resumes and had various interviews. Railroading sparked the most interest to Ed. Through most of the positions and companies Pajor has worked for, the majority were involved in mergers, acquisitions, and corporate reorganizations.

    “Ed’s role with the Western Group will be to assist each of our trade partners in advancing growth. He will support all of our business affiliates in galvanizing transportation potential with existing and new customers.”

    Bruce Carswell, Senior Vice President of the Western Group

    “Ed’s role with the Western Group will be to assist each of our trade partners in advancing growth,” said Bruce Carswell, senior vice president, “He will support all of our business affiliates in galvanizing transportation potential with existing and new customers.”   

    The Western Group is a collection of short line railroads and rail-related entities serving businesses throughout the western and mid-western United States. Affiliates comprising the Western Group include Western Railroad Builders, Inc.; Wyoming Colorado Railroad, Inc. (Oregon Eastern Branch); Clarkdale Arizona Central Railroad, LC; Verde Canyon Railroad, LC; Southwestern Railroad, Inc.; Texas & Eastern Railroad, LC, Texas State Railroad and Cimarron Valley Railroad, LC.

    The Western Group consortium continues to expand by developing each segment of its present business, improving sales and profitability of each company, and investing in fresh business opportunities and strategic acquisitions.

                                                      

    Media Contact: Teresa Propeck
    Phone: 623-374-3185
    tpropeck@thewesterngroup.net

    Source: The Western Group

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  • Hot box detectors didn’t stop the East Palestine derailment. Research shows another technology might have | CNN

    Hot box detectors didn’t stop the East Palestine derailment. Research shows another technology might have | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    A failing, flaming wheel bearing doomed the rail car that derailed and created a catastrophe in East Palestine earlier this month, but researchers have offered a solution to the faulty detectors that experts say could have averted the disaster unfolding in the small Ohio town.

    These wayside hot box detectors, stationed on rail tracks every 20 miles or so, 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.

    So why did these detectors miss a bearing failure before the catastrophe?

    An investigation into hot box detectors published in 2019 and funded by the Department of Transportation found that one “major shortcoming” of these detectors is that they can’t distinguish between healthy and defective bearings, and temperature alone is not a good indicator of bearing health.

    “Temperature is reactive in nature, meaning by the time you’re sensing a high temperature in a bearing, it’s too late, the bearing is already in its final stages of failure,” Constantine Tarawneh, director of the University Transportation Center for Railways Safety (UTCRS) and lead investigator of the study, told CNN.

    As part of the investigation, the UTCRS researchers developed a new system to better detect a bearing issue long before a catastrophic failure. The key: measuring the bearing’s vibration in addition to its temperature and load.

    The vibration of a failing bearing, Tarawneh says, often begins intensifying thousands of miles before a catastrophic failure. So his team created sensors that can be placed on board each rail car, near the bearing, to continuously monitor its vibration throughout its travels.

    “If you put an accelerometer on a bearing and you’re monitoring the vibration levels, the minute a defect happens in the bearing, the accelerometer will sense an increase in vibration, and that could be, in many cases, up to 100,000 miles before the bearing actually fails,” he said.

    Tarawneh, who argues the technology should be federally mandated, says had it been on board Norfolk Southern’s line it would have prevented the derailment in East Palestine.

    “It would have detected the problem months before this happened,” he said. “There wouldn’t have been a derailment.”

    A preliminary report from the East Palestine derailment, released Thursday by the National Transportation Safety Board, found hot box sensors detected that a wheel bearing was heating up miles before it eventually failed and caused the train to derail. But the detectors didn’t alert the crew until it was too late.

    The bearing, according to the report, was 38 degrees above ambient temperature when it passed through a hot box 30 miles outside East Palestine. No alert went out, the NTSB said.

    Ten miles later, the next hot box detected that the bearing had reached 103 degrees above ambient. Video of the train recorded in that area shows sparks and flames around the rail car. Still, no alert went to the crew.

    It wasn’t until a further 20 miles down the tracks, as the train reached East Palestine, that a hot box detector recorded the bearing’s temperature at 253 degrees above ambient and sent an alarm message instructing the crew to slow and stop the train to inspect a hot axle, the report said.

    The crew slowed the train, the report added, leading to an automatic emergency brake application. After the train stopped, the crew observed the derailment.

    The reason those first two hot box readings didn’t trigger an alert, the report said, is because Norfolk Southern’s policy is to only stop and inspect a bearing after it has reached 170 degrees above ambient temperature. The NTSB is planning to review Norfolk Southern’s use of wayside hot box detectors, including spacing and the temperature threshold that determines when crews are alerted.

    “Had there been a detector earlier, that derailment may not have occurred,” said NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy at a Thursday press conference.

    In a statement responding to the NTSB report, Norfolk Southern stressed that its hot box detectors were operating as designed, and that those detectors trigger an alarm at a temperature threshold that is “among the lowest in the rail industry.” CNN has reached out to Norfolk Southern for comment on vibration sensor technology.

    Hot box detectors are unregulated, so companies like Norfolk Southern can turn them on and off at their own discretion and choose the temperature threshold at which crews receive an alert.

    There are several causes for overheated roller bearings, including fatigue cracking, water damage, mechanical damaging, a loose bearing or a wheel defect, according to the NTSB, and the agency says they’re investigating what caused the failure in East Palestine.

    “Roller bearings fail, but it is absolutely critical for problems to be identified and addressed early so these aren’t run until failure,” Homendy said. “You cannot wait until they’ve failed. Problems need to be identified early, so something catastrophic like this does not occur again.”

    Hum Industrial Technology, a rail car telematics company, has licensed the vibration sensor technology created by Tarawneh and his team. And it has launched pilot programs with several rail companies. But at this point, those sensors are on very few trains operating in the United States, which Tarawneh largely blames on the cost of retrofitting and monitoring cars and what he sees as companies prioritizing profit.

    It’s not clear exactly what it would cost to retrofit every train car in operation with sensors today, but Hum Industrial Technology stressed that it would cost less to put a sensor on a bearing than to replace a bearing.

    “They see it as, well, why should we do it if it’s not mandated?” Tarawneh said. “It’s like a lot of people are saying, ‘well, I’m willing to take the risk. It’s not that many derailments per year.’”

    But Steve Ditmeyer, a former Federal Railroad Administration official, says equipping every rail car with on board sensors may not be financially feasible.

    “What they’re proposing will work, but it’s very, very expensive,” Ditmeyer told CNN. “And one does have to take cost into consideration.”

    It would take more than 12 million on board sensors, according to Tarawneh, to fully equip the roughly 1.6 million rail cars in service across North America.

    Ditmeyer says railroads should invest more heavily in wayside acoustic bearing detectors, which sit along the tracks – much like hot box detectors – and monitor the sound of passing trains. They listen for noise that indicates a bearing failure well before a potential catastrophe.

    As of 2019, only 39 acoustic bearing detectors were in use across North America compared to more than 6,000 hot box detectors, according to a 2019 DOT report.

    “They are the only way that I can think of that would have prevented the accident by having caught a failing bearing earlier,” Ditmeyer said.

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