(The following article by Bob Dart was posted on the Austin American-Statesman website on January 21.)
WASHINGTON — A train safety showdown is coming to the streets of Laredo.
Currently, employees of U.S. railroads inspect air brakes and other mechanisms in that Texas border town after trains cross the border from Mexico. Federal agents examine their records and conduct spot checks.
But Union Pacific Railroad is asking federal regulators to allow the inspections to be made by Mexican employees of Kansas City Southern de Mexico railroad or its contractor in Nuevo Laredo, the much larger city just south of the Rio Grande.
Unionized railroad workers are fighting the proposal, warning that it would allow trains to run from within Mexico to San Antonio, Atlanta, New Orleans, St. Louis and hundreds of other communities without stopping for safety inspections.
“It’s as if 9/11 never occurred and public safety and national security must take a back seat to increased profits and bigger executive bonuses,” said Paul Thompson, president of the United Transportation Union, which represents 125,000 railroad, bus and mass transit workers.
Union Pacific officials counter that the U.S. Customs Service and Border Patrol would still inspect these incoming trains.
“It would not compromise security,” said Joe Arbona, a spokesman for Union Pacific. He said the proposal is not as much a matter of profits as it is a way to reduce the traffic congestion that its idling trains cause by blocking street intersections in Laredo.
The Federal Railroad Administration has scheduled a hearing for Feb. 7 in Laredo on the proposal for inspections in Nuevo Laredo.
Opponents warn that a war among drug gangs is being waged there, and the city of 581,000 residents is so lawless there is no way to ensure that the inspections are being made to U.S. standards.
“Nuevo Laredo is a dangerous place,” said Frank Wilner, a spokesman for the United Transportation Union. “Mexico is a country where, if you have money or political connections, you can make things happen. There is no telling what might come into the United States if we trust Mexicans to perform these inspections.”
The Federal Railroad Administration rejected a similar request from Union Pacific two years ago, saying the railroad had “failed to demonstrate that granting the petition would be consistent with safety at this time.”
However, the railroad agency also said it “found no merit in the suggestion of some commenters that approval of the waiver would compromise security.”
Initially at least, the waiver would apply to only one train per day, Arbona said. This train’s cargo is mostly household goods and auto parts, he said.
Every day, 20 trains travel north to the United States or south to Mexico through Laredo, so the initial effect on snarled auto traffic would not be dramatic, Arbona conceded.
“But it’s a place to start” in cutting back on the trains idling in Laredo, Arbona said. He said conducting the safety tests on both sides of the border is “redundant,” and that any time a train is forced to sit when it could be running is an economic inefficiency.
Rep. Charlie Gonzalez, D-San Antonio, has written to the railroad administration expressing his opposition to allowing the inspections to be done in Mexico.
“This waiver would represent a backward step contrary to recent representations by the railroads that all possible efforts are being made to ensure rail safety,” Gonzalez wrote.
“These trains would be coming from Mexico to my district in Bexar County, approximately 150 miles away, without proper safety inspections on this side of the border,” he said. He noted previous accidents involving Union Pacific trains in Bexar County in which four people were killed and a 17-car derailment destroyed two houses.
Union officials point out that the United States would have no regulatory power over the Mexican inspections and say that Nuevo Laredo is so dangerous that U.S. inspectors would not go there for oversight even if they did have that power.
Thompson, the union president, said the waiver would extend dangers beyond the Union Pacific trains that would be involved initially.
“If Union Pacific succeeds in avoiding safety inspections on U.S. soil, many of those trains will be interchanged, without appropriate U.S. safety inspections, to other railroads, such as CSX and Norfolk Southern, as part of their 1,500-mile trip through dozens of U.S. cities,” Thompson said.
After 1,500 miles, the air brakes would have to be tested again.
Texas had the most train accidents — 178 — of any state during the first six months of 2006, the Federal Railroad Administration reported. Georgia had 30, Ohio had 50, Florida had 24, Colorado had 30 and North Carolina had 16.