Serving the High Plains
Serving the High Plains
A strike that would have recently broken the supply chain, shaken an already shaky economy at a cost of nearly $2 billion a day, and damaged the rail industry was fortunately avoided. But the track ahead is far from clear for the railroads. The Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) is considering a rule change that could make the industry less competitive.
And, as was the case with the labor unrest, unions are again in the middle of it all.
In July, the FRA proposed a rule requiring at least two crewmembers to be in the train’s cab for most “over-the-road railroad operations.” The justification is the safety of both passengers and workers, which sounds reasonable. However, it is worth noting that under the Obama and Trump administrations, the FRA conceded no compelling data was justifying these safety concerns.
In fact, a recent analysis from the Alliance for Innovation and Infrastructure finds “there is insufficient data to justify a crew size regulation, and … the rule is unwarranted.” A second crewmember in the cab will become unnecessary thanks to technological advances. Positive Train Control (PTC) systems — designed to prevent train-to-train collisions, derailments caused by going too fast, work-zone incursions, and the “movements of trains through switches left in the wrong position” — have been in operation for almost two years over all of the nearly 60,000 miles of freight and passenger rail routes in this country. John Hyatt, a former railroad engineer, says PTC is “an angel on our shoulders out there on the track, and it’s our backup and our safety net.”
Yet the same government that is so sure PTC works that it mandated its implementation also seems to believe this safety measure isn’t adequate. The system has likely already saved lives. While testifying four years ago before a House subcommittee, National Transportation Safety Board Chairman Robert S. Sumwalt “rattled off a list of fatal train wrecks that would not have happened had a device known as positive train control been put in place by the railroads,” the Washington Post reported.
“Let me spell it out,” Sumwalt said, “for each day we go without PTC, we are at risk for another Chatsworth, another Bronx, another Amtrak in Philadelphia, another DuPont or another Cayce, S.C.,” referring to train wrecks that killed 42 and injured hundreds. Unlike with PTC, there are no guarantees that multiple crewmembers increase safety.
For instance, there were three crewmembers on the freight train in the 2008 Chatsworth, Calif., wreck — an engineer, a conductor and a brakeman — and at least two crewmembers — an engineer and a conductor — on the Metrolink passenger train involved in the collision.
The 2013 Bronx derailment of a commuter train that killed four occurred even though an engineer and three conductors were aboard. There were multiple crewmembers in each of the other three deadly crashes mentioned by Sumwalt. Rather than the exception, single-person crews are the dominant practice in Europe and Australia, and the data show they are as safe as multiple-person crews operating in the United States, provided there is a safety system in place.
By dictating staffing, the FRA would limit railroads’ freedom to use their personnel in ways that would maximize efficiency and safety, and exacerbate the current crew shortages. The railroads’ payroll burden would also diminish their capacity to invest in new technologies, making it more difficult to respond to customers’ needs.
Unions, as is their habit, resist innovations in all industries that jeopardize their membership dues, often with government regulators leading their fight. It’s a self-defeating position that delivers short-term benefits for a few while producing negative consequences for many over the long haul due to the harms caused to unionized industries. We’ll see it happen in the rail industry should an unjustified-by-the-facts gift to labor become federal policy.
— Kerry Jackson
InsideSources.com
