(Source: Press release from the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, & Transportation, May 8, 2023)
WASHINGTON, D.C. — U.S. Senator Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), Chair of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, said today that the Committee will vote Wednesday, May 10, on bipartisan railway safety legislation. The Railway Safety Act of 2023 builds upon legislation introduced by Ohio and Pennsylvania Sens. Sherrod Brown, J.D. Vance, Bob Casey and John Fetterman, along with Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), following the devastating train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio.
The legislation includes key provisions championed by Sen. Cantwell to support firefighters who bravely respond to disasters like the East Palestine derailment. It also reforms the Department of Transportation’s (DOT) Hazardous Materials Emergency Preparedness (HMEP) programs to ensure fire departments can purchase personal protective gear and creates a new program to make fire departments whole after responding to a derailment. The legislation also requires two crew members to operate trains to help prevent situations where only one person is on the train in an emergency.
The Norfolk Southern train that derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, in February 2023 had more than one crew member, which significantly helped them figure out the immediate risks from the derailed train to the community. The conductor on the train in East Palestine quickly inspected the train to see what had happened, identified that a fire had started, set the manual brakes so railcars could not roll away, and quickly alerted first responders, all while ensuring the entire crew could get away to safety.
Railroads have proposed eliminating conductors from the cab of the locomotive and having them follow the train in trucks. It is hard to imagine that a conductor stationed in a pickup truck with no immediate knowledge of what happened in the derailment could have aided the locomotive engineer after the derailment. This law creates a statutory requirement that all trains operated by Class I railroads are operated with two crew members. This ensures that the public is not used in a test case for finding out if things could have been worse with only one crew member on the East Palestine train.
Full story: www.commerce.senate.gov