(The following story by Stacie Hamel appeared on the Omaha World-Herald website on January 30.)
OMAHA, Neb. — Union Pacific Railroad has withdrawn a request to run trains from inside Mexico up to 1,500 miles into the United States without stopping for a mechanical inspection.
The Omaha-based railroad withdrew its request in a phone call to the Federal Railroad Administration late last week because the issue had drawn negative public reaction, a spokesman said.
“It has become a bad climate to pursue this, so we’re just not going to pursue it,” said spokesman Joe Arbona, who is based in Spring, Texas.
The Federal Railroad Administration has canceled a public hearing that had been scheduled for Feb. 7 in Laredo, Texas. The railroad might someday resubmit the request, Arbona said.
The FRA first rejected the request in 2004.
For now at least, U.P. trains will continue to be inspected both in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, and across the border in Laredo, where Arbona said trains often are slowed by congestion and road crossings. With the Laredo inspections, trains can be forced to stop for up to seven hours, he said.
Arbona gave no estimate of the cost impact of the Laredo inspections.
“Cost was not an issue here at all,” he said. “You’ve got a congestion problem that the folks in Laredo have had to deal with and we’ve had to deal with. You’ve got a redundant test, and we believed the waiver could have helped relieve the congestion.”
Relieving congestion wasn’t enough of an advantage to outweigh what the United Transportation Union perceived as safety risks associated with the proposal, spokesman Frank Wilner said.
“It had to do entirely with public safety and national security,” Wilner said. “Nuevo Laredo is a lawless town . . . with no assurances that whatever was done in Mexico would adhere with FRA regulations. It’s a town beset by drug violence in a country where it’s said with enough money you can buy anything or corrupt anyone.”
The union provided comment to the FRA opposing the plan, along with about three dozen other individuals and organizations. Among them were U.S. Reps. Ed Pastor, D-Ariz., and Charles A. Gonzalez, D-Texas; state lawmakers from Texas, Ohio, Arkansas, Colorado, Missouri and Oklahoma; a Mexican organization named Here We Are; locally elected officials from several states; and a Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen official.
Letters of support came from U.P.’s partner railroad in Mexico, Kansas City Southern de Mexico, and a California-based intermodal company.
Arbona said the Mexican inspections would have been done according to FRA standards, adding that he thought the criticism was directed at Mexican workers.
“The implication that Mexican workers are in any way lesser than workers who do these inspections in the U.S. and Canada is not fair,” he said. “I’ve met with them, and they are hard-working people who try to achieve high standards. The attacks are not fair.”
Wilner said railroad inspectors in the United States are more familiar with federal safety requirements.
“Trained inspectors on U.S. railroads are as familiar with railroad equipment as the back of their hands, and they serve as a first line of defense,” he said. “The inspections would have been done in Mexico and then, other than Customs and Immigration looking at the train at the border, there would not be a mechanical and safety inspection of all the components of that train for another 1,500 miles.”
Arbona said U.P.’s request was to waive inspections for a single intermodal train per day carrying auto parts. Eventually, the railroad would have asked the FRA to expand the waiver to more of the 24 north- and southbound trains that move through the Laredo gateway, interchanging with Kansas City Southern de Mexico.
None of the trains would have carried hazardous materials, Arbona said.
Some of the comments filed with the FRA opposing U.P.’s plan mentioned concerns about national security. However, the FRA said in 2004, when it rejected U.P.’s first request, that it found no merit in the suggestion that the waiver would compromise national security.