Dear Editor,
I have worked in the rail industry for 26 years, 13 of those years mostly performing track maintenance, as well as large capital work projects. While I was not regularly assigned as a track inspector, I worked alongside them regularly, and I saw what they saw that machines never could. The maintenance crews I worked on were dispatched on many instances to make immediate repairs to the found defects to ensure the safe passage of trains.
The industry seeks to reduce the visual human track inspections by up to 75% and replace Automated Track Inspection (ATI) which is touted as a replacement for the human eye and human aspect of the inspection of track for the safe passage of trains.
Those pushing automated track inspections in railroads’ C-suites and board rooms, as well as their lobby (Association of American Railroads, aka AAR) in Washington, D.C., don’t seem to understand the full picture and have perhaps been blinded in their quest for what they mask as “progress” and/or “efficiency” for corporate greed. The fact remains that track inspectors are out there in the worst weather, climbing over switches, walking ballast, finding cracked welds, broken joint bars, or erosion under the track bed, among many others that cannot be detected with a railcar full of sensors flying by at up to 80 miles an hour.
What is more concerning is the newly proposed rulemaking that the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) is considering, might allow a track safety defect to go unrepaired for up to 72 hours. That is three (3) days of multi-thousand-ton trains (carrying passengers or freight with known hazardous material) running over known hazards. If something goes wrong, it will not just be equipment that gets damaged; it will be railroad workers or the public that pay the price.
We were all recently reminded of the catastrophic fallout from a major train derailment on Feb. 3, 2023 when a hazardous freight train derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, a life-changing event for those residents who are still reeling. In its aftermath, the industry was saying the right things; however, it has not delivered. They committed to supporting a Federal Rail Safety Bill; however, the AAR has opposed many of the common-sense proposals in the bill that would improve rail safety. The railroads’ reasoning for opposing parts of the legislation is based on what they concluded was a negative “cost analysis” and unproven assertions that it would compromise their ability to compete with other forms of transportation. These statements are made against the backdrop of an industry that is buying back billions of dollars of its own stock, driving shareholder value. A clear message from the industry is that employee and community safety is only important depending on the price tag for achieving it.
Now, over two years following the East Palestine tragedy, the railroads are seeking the FRA to ease regulations on visual human track inspections to replace them with technology that can only detect six of the 23 reportable defects (26%) under FRA Track Safety Standards and longer periods to make repairs while they run trains over the compromised area.
This issue poses a grave danger to communities where the railroads operate; to do nothing or not call this out is not an option. As workers, we have always supported the use of this technology as a tool for assistance and take pride in ensuring that the tracks are safe in our communities. We do not oppose the use of this technology as a tool, as introduced and intended. However, it cannot replace valuable visual safety inspections. Taking humans out of the process and calling it progress is just asking for trouble.
If you share these concerns, please reach out to your Congressional leadership, asking them to encourage the FRA to reconsider what would be an allowance to the railroads, whose safety performance has been anything but remarkable, to get a pass on their safety and regulatory requirements. The allowance of the railroads to replace human safety inspections only poses what is an otherwise unnecessary risk to the safety of your community and begs the question: where will the next East Palestine be? Will it be here in our town?
Sincerely,
Dale Bogart
Railroad Worker, Owego
Meaningful message here. Thanks.