US rail safety legislation stalled one year after East Palestine Ohio disaster

https://www.wlbt.com/2024/02/02/rail-safety-legislation-still-stalled-one-year-after-east-palestine-disaster/

by PaulHoule • 2 years ago

176 101 2 years ago

Spivak2• 2 years ago

Members of Congress blast industry for putting profits over safety

Headlines like this make me laugh because it sounds like something is getting done when it's just congresspeople with no actual power making grand speeches that amount to nothing. They really gave those profiteers a real Congressional finger wag!

unethical_ban• 2 years ago

It seems odd to criticize an elected representative who comments on the irresponsible behavior of corporations.

Spivak2• 2 years ago

Because they can't actually do anything. They don't charge people with negligence or levy fines. The opinion of a congressman on this issue is only slightly more valuable than mine. The regulations they're proposing won't be punitive in any way and won't dare actually disrupt the flow of profits.

And that's fine, that's the point of congress. Now if the DoJ had words to this effect then it might come to something.

JoshTko• 2 years ago

The attitude probably reflects decades of effective messaging by big corporations to paint gov as inefficient and corporations as the only solution to problems.

ejb999• 2 years ago

Doesn't seem odd to me - if all someone (an elected person) does is get in front of the camera and make speeches about something a corporation is doing wrong - but never writes/sponsors a bill (and more importantly gets the votes to get it written into law) to fix those bad things - then they are doing exactly zero to make things better - they deserve all the criticism they get.

happytiger5• 2 years ago

Did it “stall?”

Did they “blast the industry?”

Because they cashed their checks.

https://www.opensecrets.org/industries//summary?cycle=All&in...

Edit:

They are demanding that they cover the cost:

https://www.wkyc.com/article/news/local/northeast-ohio/ohio-...

While the same quoted congressperson had time to get behind rail initiatives while safety stalled out:

https://kaptur.house.gov/media-center/press-releases/kaptur-...

Oh, and found 10M from the Federal government to quietly pay for the upgrades:

https://kaptur.house.gov/media-center/press-releases/congres...

I am no expert here, but it sure seems like a lot of railroad stuff is happening and money moving around for a “stalled out” safety initiative. Maybe someone else can provide more context?

refulgentis• 2 years ago

Who is they? Legitimately: I can't figure out if I'm accessing the links wrong on mobile, or if they shape shifts across the 3 links

rhcom2• 2 years ago

Members of Congress

tootie• 2 years ago

FTA:

"That sentiment, was echoed by U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, who sponsored the Rail Safety Act in the Senate and held a virtual press conference this week to talk about the stalled legislation. Both Brown and Kaptur said lobbying groups and major rail companies continue to oppose the legislation, with the industry putting profits over public safety."

I mean, you're not exposing some conspiracy. Several Republicans with key committee seats took a ton of money and are now opposing the bill. Voters know who they are and are free to vote them out of office, but they probably won't.

happytiger5• 2 years ago

Disagree. Lobby not party is the driving power here.

You should really dig in to understand who’s sponsoring and what the hard issues are vs the soft issues.

The bill has moved away from automation improvements and the original bearing failures from the out-of-service hot box monitor that caused the accident in the first place (which would have prevented the accident, there were three engineers on the train and plenty of staff to handle — they just didn’t know there was a problem until too late) and towards staffing improvements and handouts to the railroads vs handouts to railroad unions which is why it’s languishing.

It’s very clear that two lobbies are at work here, as the stalemates on the bill have little to do with safety and everything to do with huge costs vs labor wants split right down party lines and exactly aligning to their respective donor interests. When you see the donors interests operate like a zipper on a jacket to split bills, it’s wise to recognize the influence of lobby and not pay too much creed to the color of the jacket, because the jacket pockets full of money are the point.

And then add in the historical contexts of the railroad safety program hills of the pst and you can clearly see the outline of the conflict that’s presented is not what it’s about.

The biggest biggest divide now is not between the Republicans and the Democrats: it's between the insane and the insufferable. Lubricating pockets makes further rail disasters an almost certainty, and those that hide in partisan politics (which is everyone involved in both parties on this one) are to blame.

FemmeAndroid• 2 years ago

When you filter by election cycle it looks like they aren’t making any huge donations compared to their baseline. Maybe the baseline donations stop things like this, but I don’t think I’d jump to that being the clear reason.

happytiger5• 2 years ago

https://www.opensecrets.org/dark-money/basics

I think the Panama papers did that for me. FTX also contributed. And there is plenty more. It’s not like we don’t have enough evidence.

I would strongly suggest following the work of one of the last bastions of real independent journalism the ICIJ:

https://www.icij.org/

They are a gift to society and deserve our deepest support.

hanniabu• 2 years ago

Maybe someone else can provide more context?

Corruption

nitwit005• 2 years ago

Corruption isn't exactly required. Congress essentially isn't passing any legislation of any sort.

happytiger5• 2 years ago

That’s super valid as an argument.

kiba2• 2 years ago

We need investments in rail infrastructure to take trucks off the road and to improve safety and to keep goods moving.

For some reason, our railroad are privately owned rather than owned by the states or the fed.

JumpCrisscross• 2 years ago

For some reason, our railroad are privately owned rather than owned by the states or the fed

Who do you think built them? We have the world’s largest rail network for a reason.

bugglebeetle3• 2 years ago

And yet the Chinese rail network is infinitely more productive, smaller in size, transports millions of people around a comparably sized country, in addition to the inputs and outputs of its massive industrial base, and is largely a state construction. It would seem that extent of rail is not the measure of value here, nor is that correlated with private ownership, but instead we should assess the overall productive capacity of the infrastructure.

kevingadd• 2 years ago

Wasn't much of the US rail network funded by a public-private partnership? Why should the rails be privately owned? Didn't the government provide a lot of the land, too?

CuriousCosmic4• 2 years ago

Who do you think built them? We have the world’s largest rail network for a reason.

I don't know if shear size is a great way to evaluate what method of rail ownership is superior. The US is literally the third largest country on earth so it makes sense that we have a lot of "largests" when it comes to infrastructure networks.

What probably would make more sense would be a rail density metric instead. Something like km of rail per sq km of land would work (but has it's own flaws). But that metric then shows a number of other countries that clearly beat the US despite having nationalised or hybrid rail networks.

A good example would be Japan which has roughly triple as much rail relative to the size of their country and I doubt many people would argue that Japan's rail network is less effective than the US rail network.

tremon• 2 years ago

Who do you think built them?

Slaves?

jMyles• 2 years ago

rather than owned by the states or the fed.

Are those actually the only options for public goods focus though?

I generally lean softly toward anarchic solutions, so of course my mind goes toward some kind of non-profit NGO or DAO rather than the same government structures that lead to war for oil, etc.

or the fed.

Is there another example of a central bank owning a railroad? I don't doubt that it has happened historically, but this is the first time I've even thought of it as a possibility.

zht• 2 years ago

he probably means the federal government lol

pests• 2 years ago

or DAO

Oh, an entity like the original DAO that led to Ethereum selling out?

"The Contract is the Law" until its not.

Very anarchic.

oatmeal13• 2 years ago

For some reason, our railroad are privately owned rather than owned by the states or the fed.

Because we want them to work well? Look at how the government handles the infrastructure it owns.

velcrovan• 2 years ago

Which government? State-owned trains in Europe and Japan are amazing. The US could do fine too if it cared to actually fund infrastructure rather than letting it whither on the vine.

eropple• 2 years ago

So we're talking about transportation, and I guess I have to ask exactly what transportation infrastructure you then mean? Because the only serious, broad, federally-managed transportation infrastructure I can think of are like, military airbases. Which tend to be pretty good!

That's assuming, of course, you mean the US government--which does not own things like highways, for those unclear; it does have a controlling stake in Amtrak, but aside from the NEC (which is great IMO) Amtrak does not own the railways that actually serve as rail infrastructure. Because, of course, country governments elsewhere regularly own or have majority stakes in both railroads and railways, to pretty good success.

Or, on the other other hand, maybe you mean non-transporation infrastructure? 'Cause frankly, the US Postal Service was pretty great 'til "the government doesn't work and we're going to prove it by ripping out big chunks of it" politicians got their hands on it.

fwip• 2 years ago

I'd love if our railroads ran on time anywhere near as often as the postal service does. Or even as often as the city bus does.

njarboe2• 2 years ago

Japan's famously on-time and efficient rail system is made up of many privately owned systems.

bobthepanda2• 2 years ago

Efficient if you look at the big three JRs (Central, East, West).

JR Shikoku, JR Hokkaido, and JR Freight are basket cases.

switch007• 2 years ago

It’s tragic in the UK at the moment. The government has taken over some large rail operators and are busy reducing services and increasing costs. They’re making many other detrimental changes to the railway system too

We can’t believe it but some of us enthusiasts are actually wanting privatisation back

Public can be good. Private can be good. Public can be bad. Private can be bad…

ChrisArchitect• 2 years ago

[dupe] / Related:

Residents' lives still in limbo a year after East Palestine toxic derailment

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39337237

Drunk_Engineer• 2 years ago

This "safety" legislation is mainly about requiring 2-man crews on trains. The unions are of course very much in favor, but it would do nothing to prevent derailments like what happened at E. Palestine.

bluGill• 2 years ago

The problem should be solved with maintenance and automation. But that would hurt the union (though there would be more opportunity in maintenance.

AnthonyMouse3• 2 years ago

The biggest problem unions have seems to be that they've never heard of the Jevons paradox. They try to "create jobs" at the expense of efficiency on the theory they'll get more work, causing everything they do to become prohibitively expensive and then it gets cut or offshored.

kyrra• 2 years ago

As a reminder for those that don't follow this in detail: One of the main pushes of this bill would be requiring at least 2 people on all freight trains to "help improve safety".

Can you guess how many engineers there were on the East Palastine train? 3.

That obvious had no impact on this incident. As others have pointed out, more engineers are a security/safety theaters solution. It also makes unions happy, as it means they need to employ more people.

This is a terrible bill that was reactionary at the time, and does nothing to actually improve safety.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/railroad-crew-size-mandate-dera...

zthrowaway• 2 years ago

Over the past decade the Class 1's have been working towards doing 1 man crew's. But they're still 2 man at minimum. This bill achieves nothing. This is a "hey we did something about it! (please don't read what's in the bill and catch us bullshitting)."

What they should be doing is looking at the absurd increase in length of these trains to increase profits for the sake of safety, and the shortcutting of car maintenance. The latter which would've caught this issue to begin with.

legitster2• 2 years ago

Train derailments are already on a long downward trend since they peaked in 1978: https://data.transportation.gov/dataset/Railroad-Equipment-A...

This legislation was kind of a hot-blooded fast-twitch response to the East Palestine disaster, but it's not exactly clear that it would have done anything other than address some of the superficial concerns at the time.

Since then the DOT has already updated several of their derailment policies, the EPA has updated their procedure for burning off hazardous chemicals.

zamadatix• 2 years ago

Another user responded here asking if this was the result of increased regulation considered burdensome at the time it was introduced and then deleted the question, presumably after reading more about it. The question itself is interesting though: the period after the 1970s saw substantially decreased regulation for railways in general and a loosening in how security regulation was approached for a massive decline in railroad safety issues. I.e. the market was heavily over-regulated at the time and prescriptive regulation had been having the opposite of the intended effect. I'm highlighting this not as one who despises regulation, quite the opposite, but just because it's a good point to highlight reacting to every accident with more regulation is not the right way to approach further regulation.

https://railroads.dot.gov/sites/fra.dot.gov/files/fra_net/16...

flavius296633• 2 years ago

It can make sense. I come from a country(Romania) where fire regulations are insanely strict and complicated. If the fire department comes to inspect, they will 100% find issues and fine you. The result is that the most sane and basic requirements get drowned in a sea of useless regulations, so you end up with escape doors that are locked, missing alerting systems, flammable materials where there shouldn't be etc.

woodruffw2• 2 years ago

Some confounding factors on derailment statistics:

* Individual trains are longer than ever, which means that they carry more than ever. That means bigger derailments in absolute terms with a larger potential variety of components, even if the overall magnitude of derailments has decreased.

* Deferred line maintenance and other cost-cutting measures (like running longer trains with just one or two engineers) means more severe derailments (more cars off the rails, more extensive damage, fewer people available to detect or remediate problems).

Geezus_42• 2 years ago

Sounds like you might be interested, or already a fan.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39352570

rgbrenner• 2 years ago

Saying "Congress" isn't advancing it, lets the people responsible avoid blame. While the bills have bipartisan sponsors, only democrats are willing to vote for the bill on the house/senate floor. In the senate, republicans are threatening to filibuster the bill, so it cant pass without a supermajority. And the gop-led house refuses to bring the house bill to the floor.

2023 was the least productive Congress since the Great Depression. Passing a total of 23 bills last year.

https://www.axios.com/2023/12/19/118-congress-bills-least-un...

BitwiseFool• 2 years ago

Is there some poison pill in the bill? It's a really common tactic for the party in power to put wishlist items in the "Good things for America Act" that they know the opposition cannot support in order to get fodder for making the other side look so unreasonable.

supertimor• 2 years ago

Nah, it’s just an election year. The republicans have been stonewalling everything so they can claim the democrats aren’t getting anything done. They even killed the bipartisan border deal, which they have been asking for for awhile and which initially had Republican support but when their likely nominee told them to drop it, they did.

legitster2• 2 years ago

To just rephrase your point a bit more clearly - there is not even a particular partisan reaction to the bill itself - one of the two parties our government needs to run is currently collapsing in on itself so nothing is getting done.

deprecative• 2 years ago

To rephrase your point a bit more accurately. One of the parties is the party of no. The other is the party of "idk, what do you guys think?"

hayst4ck3• 2 years ago

In a "me vs you" situation in the context of the relationship, whoever cares about the relationship the least has the most power.

The republican party sees power as the most important goal and are willing to sacrifice the union to get it (US Generals including Milley and Mattis have nearly directly said this and did directly say this in the context of the republican party's king).

Democrats on the other hand are like a desperate ex in denial that the relationship has already ended.

Both parties are at fault. Being a victim does not disavow a responsibility to seek a better outcome. Blame is the opposite of responsibility and democrats are not taking responsibility. Instead, they are blaming republicans, voters, or the law. None of those things are stopping republicans from exerting increasingly more power. Republicans (republican leaders anyway) don't complain about lack of voter support. They create Fox News to manufacture support, or directly attempt a coup. Republcian's don't complain about malfunctioning courts, they load them with ideologues. Republicans don't complain about lack of voters, they gerrymander districts and concoct schemes to make it harder for voters they don't like to vote. They don't complain about a gridlocked congress, they push policy with the courts instead.

Republicans are taking responsibility to achieve the outcomes they want. Democrats are busy jerking themselves with useless result-less blame.

So you can blame republicans if you want, but as a fellow liberal leaning person, you should definitely realize that democrats benefit greatly by not having to step up. They don't want to hold corporations feet to the fire any more than republicans do. They can say they do, but franky I do not believe that democrats want to hold corporations to account any more than republicans do. There are a few progressives like AOC and Bernie who do, but the party as a whole is part of the problem, and I think they are a co-equal part.

Nancy Pelosi got in front of a camera and said "I have a right to participate in the free market." That's the closest thing to a leader for the democratic party saying they have a right to conflicts of interest. The most powerful democrat during the previous presidency said they have a right to be corrupt.

Democrats can say they want to stop congresspersons from trading stock, but they can only say that for the same reason that a couple of republicans are allowed to vote outside of party lines when there are already enough votes. This is just another example of the same behavior.

kevincrane• 2 years ago

I’ve read through this twice and I can’t figure what you’re trying to both-sides here.

2OEH8eoCRo0• 2 years ago

How many people were killed or injured? Are we making an assumption about the severity of this disaster?

steviedotboston• 2 years ago

Is "disaster" really the correct term for an incident where zero people where injured or died and everything in the town was back to normal pretty quickly?

pas• 2 years ago

the real issue is that there's no tracking for freight, it took too long to figure out what happened and how severe it was.

the network is lacking basic safety features. (because the network is big, and because checks were mostly done by relatively cheap labor, but both regulation and crew got watered down.)

the worry is that, since these happen quite frequently, eventually it'll happen in some city.

Overtonwindow• 2 years ago

This kind of deadlock should not happen. I think it’s indicative of what has gone wrong with the United States. Congress, nobody is willing to give an inch, and everything is a personal fight to the death.

Geezus-42• 2 years ago

Eas Palestine Derailment - Well There's Your Problem

https://youtu.be/4xprT_3CArE?si=n2nTRBjEK7EOyOSK

US rail safety legislation stalled one year after East Palestine Ohio disaster

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