By Eddie Hall, BLET National President
This commentary appeared in The Houston Chronicle, both in print and online, on April 26, 2023
Virtually every day, Union Pacific moves a train of up to 80 cars – many of them filled with ethanol, liquid petroleum, and a variety of highly toxic chemicals – from its Settegast yard to the nearby Basin Railyard. The cars travel through the heart of Houston – not in a fenced-in railyard – but over railway crossings, under I-610, and skirting residential neighborhoods. Along the way, they pass schools, churches, a food bank, a community center, a hospital and a school bus depot.
If the cars were to derail and spill their contents, Houston would face the sort of emergency that confronted the residents of East Palestine, Ohio, where a derailment spilled 1.6 million pounds of hazardous chemicals. But the disaster would likely be far worse. Houston is home to 2.3 million residents. East Palestine: 4,700.
This month, NBC News exposed the nation to Union Pacific’s and the other Class I railroads’ dirty little secret that many of these trains carrying dangerous cargo, such as the one just described, are being operated in metropolitan areas such as Houston, Tucson and Denver by remote control – without a licensed engineer onboard. If you don’t believe the news media, trust your own eyes. Head over to Northeast Houston to see the signs at rail crossings warning that “locomotive cabs may be unoccupied.”
It’s absurd that government regulations allow for operators with joy sticks to remotely control these bombs across Houston road crossings. It’s unbelievable that Union Pacific, and the other self-regulated railroads, have chosen not to use a certified locomotive engineer in the cab of these trains. This is the railroad equivalent of having your vehicle operated by a backseat driver. But, with the assistance of armies of lobbyists, the railroad companies have spent millions convincing lawmakers to allow self-regulation – that is, to “trust us” to protect the public from hazards. But those assurances are nothing but broken promises. The companies often don’t comply with their own best practices. They initially agreed that they would only operate trains remotely within the safe confines of a switching yard. They now roll through our neighborhoods operated remotely by a worker who lacks access to all of the train’s controls and safety features.
In the wake of the East Palestine disaster, our public officials may finally be turning away from the railroad companies’ assurances to “trust us.” That tragedy has spurred the attention of three Republican and three Democratic U.S. Senators to introduce new legislation to, “enhance safety requirements for trains transporting hazardous materials, and for other purposes.”
As a locomotive engineer, employed by Union Pacific, who was operating trains as recently as last December, and now as the national president of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen, I truly hope this bill, The Rail Safety Act of 2023, becomes law. I’m encouraged by some of its long-overdue provisions. For the first time we would have a law setting limits on freight train length. Trains are too long; some trains exceed three miles in length. If enacted, the legislation also will place restrictions on the weight of trains, set standards for railcar maintenance, track maintenance and wayside defect detectors and raise existing standards for tank cars carrying hazardous materials, among other changes.
It would mandate that “no freight train may be operated without a 2-person crew consisting of at least 1 appropriately qualified and certified conductor and 1 appropriately qualified and certified locomotive engineer.” This requirement is also long overdue. But let’s make sure that the bill’s sponsors are true to their word and that the law is enforceable. Right now, the very next section of the proposed legislation details a long, convoluted list of exceptions that form loopholes big enough for rail companies to run their freight trains through. Exceptions that continue the bad practice of unsafe train travel. Exceptions that would allow remote control trains to still operate outside of railyards in the heart of your own community.
There are on average 1,000 derailments in the U.S. every year, or about three each day. Most don’t result in the kind of mayhem and threat to human safety that we saw in East Palestine, but they all have that potential. Much more needs to be done to make derailments and other hazards less frequent. That includes taking away some of the responsibility for safety from a largely self-regulated industry whose highest priority is profit, not safety.