A Republican Pennsylvania lawmaker is urging colleagues to cosponsor state-level legislation to limit a freight train’s length to no greater than 8,500 feet.
State Representative Louis Schmitt, Jr. (R-Altoona) reasoned in a memorandum describing his proposal that the February 3 derailment in East Palestine, less than half a mile from Pennsylvania’s western border, shows current rail-safety requirements are inadequate.
The 9,300-foot-long Norfolk Southern train carried 11 cars containing hazardous substances. The rail company subsequently vented and burned five of those cars containing vinyl chloride, a move causing massive discharge of phosgene gas into the atmosphere and allegedly causing a host of detrimental health and environmental effects. (Governor Josh Shapiro initially lauded Norfolk Southern for its release-and-burn response but reversed himself later, alleging that the corporation failed to indicate that it planned to incinerate five cars and not just one.)
“As we have repeatedly seen over the past few months, there is a glaring need for stricter freight rail safety standards…,” Schmitt wrote. “Limiting train length will not only increase safety but will also help alleviate traffic jams at grade crossings….”
The representative acknowledged that freight-train wrecks have caused no fatalities since Positive Train Control technology was implemented in 2020 to prevent accidents. But he partly attributed what he considers excessive train length to a lack of “any meaningful reduction in derailments.”
Schmitt observed that the federal government has principal authority to regulate cargo rail but averred he still believes the state can limit the stretch of a train that travels through it. His bill would allow the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission to impose civil penalties on rail operators that fail to comply with his requirement.
While he works on changing state law, the representative is also corralling support for a resolution asking the federal government to adopt its own train-length policy. Freight-rail vehicles face no current limit in this regard.
“The safety of our Commonwealth is of utmost importance,” Schmitt stated. “It is time for the federal government to act. It is time to better regulate freight rail operations to ensure the health and wellbeing of Pennsylvanians and all Americans.”
A third piece of legislation the lawmaker is drafting would call on Congress, the U.S. Department of Transportation (DoT) and the Federal Railroad Administration to mandate that a crew of at least two people occupies each freight train as it travels.
“As trains have gotten longer and riskier to operate, railroads have attempted to make crews smaller, leaving some trains with just one crew member,” he wrote. “This cost-reduction approach eliminates necessary safety margins and redundancies, off-loading risk onto local communities, with potentially tragic results. Therefore, there is a need for a permanent requirement for railroads to operate with at least two-person crews, ensuring that sufficient, well-trained railroad staff are available for safe operation and response in the aftermath of any derailment.”
While Schmitt’s proposed length limit would have apparently affected the train that derailed in East Palestine, a two-person crew policy would not have as it was staffed by two full-fledged employees plus one trainee.
The representative’s proposals come after other Keystone State legislators announced legislation this week to affect other facets of rail safety including maintenance standards for wayside hotbox detectors and mechanisms for reporting violations. This bill, which Representatives Jim Marshall (R-Beaver Falls) and Rob Matzie (D-Ambridge) are drafting, also is expected to contain rules for crew size and train length.
U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) has meanwhile introduced the Railway Safety Act of 2023, a measure cosponsored by Senators J.D. Vance (R-OH), Bob Casey (D-PA), John Fetterman (D-PA), Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Josh Hawley (R-MO). Controversial parts of the bill include deeming all trains with at least one carful of hazardous materials as “hazmat trains,” mandating new inspection time requirements and requiring at least two crew members per train.
A coalition of free-market advocacy groups including FreedomWorks, the Competitive Enterprise Institute and Americans for Limited Government cowrote a letter to federal legislators urging them to oppose the act. Signers noted that the hazmat-train designation provision would “capture nearly all freight rail traffic,” vastly broadening the regulatory authority of DoT. They also opined that the time-requirement component takes the focus off of inspection quality and suggested that the crew-size policy merely caters to unions’ desire to increase staff.
“…We ask that lawmakers consider potential unintended consequences of the Railway Safety Act of 2023 and understand that despite the preventable accident in Ohio, U.S. railroads are safe overall,” the missive stated. “Rail companies would be forced to divert resources away from critical research and development, which could have otherwise been used to advance new technologies and improve efficiency. Rather than advance this misguided bill, Congress should instead focus on the facts to best protect businesses, consumers, and taxpayers.”
Many regulation experts have also noted that derailments, including those causing the release of hazmats, have dropped dramatically over the last half-century. In 1978, the Cato Institute pointed out in a recent analysis, derailments of full freight trains peaked at 36,786; that number declined to 3,037 last year. Also, according to Cato, the number of wrecked train cars discharging toxic substances declined from 205 to 15 over the same period.
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Bradley Vasoli is managing editor of The Pennsylvania Daily Star. Follow Brad on Twitter at @BVasoli. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Louis Schmitt” by Louis Schmitt. Background Photo “Norfolk Southern Train” by Emmett Tullos. CC BY 2.0.
