(The following article by Patrick Driscoll was posted on the San Antonio Express-News website on March 16. Terry Briggs is the Chairman of the BLET Texas State Legislative Board.)
SAN ANTONIO, Texas — The number of train wrecks nationwide suggests mixed results so far for a safety initiative launched last year by the Federal Railroad Association, but Union Pacific’s safety record is improving in Bexar County.
The National Rail Safety Action Plan started last May, four months after workers left a track switch in the wrong position in Graniteville, S.C., causing a train to crash, leak chlorine gas and kill nine people.
Federal officials recommended new safety rules and started focusing inspections on problem areas. They also began testing technologies to monitor rail switches remotely, spot cracks in rails and improve the strength of tank cars.
“Real and substantial progress has been made during the past nine months,” FRA Administrator Joseph Boardman said in a recent statement.
While train accidents dropped 12 percent in the first seven months of the initiative, compared to the same period the year before, more people died and more rail cars released hazardous materials.
Twelve people were killed in eight crashes from June to December, up from nine people in seven incidents the year before, according to FRA data.
Also, 35 cars leaked dangerous materials in the last seven months of 2005 compared with 23 the year before, though less than half as many people were evacuated last year.
But FRA officials say they’ve just begun the safety initiatives, and that more will come this year.
“This is a long-term program,” said spokesman Steve Kulm. “We’ve got a lot of pieces moving on different aspects of rail safety.”
The plan includes a report due by August on fatigue research, proposing regulations by September to enforce common worker errors and purchasing two more track inspection vehicles by the end of the year to triple the mileage inspected.
Terry Briggs, legislative chairman in Texas for the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen, said he doesn’t see how another study of fatigue will help.
“We’ve studied fatigue for 20 years,” he said. “We know what causes fatigue and we know how to avoid fatigue but we can’t get those things put into place.”
Irregular work schedules and counting travel time to and from stations as part of mandatory rest periods are the main culprits, Briggs said.
Kulm said only Congress can change hours of service laws.
Briggs also doubts that FRA’s proposed safety regulations would help, because train companies already have the rules in place. The rules, however, are often broken because of lack of training and fatigue, he said.
Kulm said federal enforcement can only help.
“There is something about federal authority that encourages people to follow the rules a little better,” he said.
Human error was cited in two fatal train crashes that killed five people in Bexar County in 2004, including one that spewed a deadly cloud of chlorine.
Community outrage and a federal investigation followed, and in November 2004 Union Pacific signed a one-year pact with the FRA that called for more training and field-testing of crews.
A year later, the city appears safer. There were 18 train accidents in 2005 compared with 25 the year before, and there were no fatal crashes and no releases of hazardous materials last year.
“Intense scrutiny, I think, has got them on the right track,” said County Judge Nelson Wolff, who led the charge for changes.