Will the "Railway Safety Act" make trains safer or impose more red tape?

0:00Are you looking for a money reset with the New Year upon us? The Jill on Money Podcast is here to help you take control of your financial life. Follow and listen to Jill on Money wherever you get your podcasts. So we all remember the tragic accident on in February of 2023, a Norfolk Southern freight train that actually derailed up in East Palestine, Ohio and we know what happened with hazardous chemicals, there was a big controlled burn, burn, excuse me, and a lot going on the community there in an uproar, looking for answers as to the cause of the accident. And of course, what happens with Congress typically, there's a response and there's a response by a bill being filed in a lot of times. It's not always accomplishing what it says it accomplishes and that very well may be the case with the Railway Safety Act and joining us to talk about it is Sean Higgins, Competitive

1:05Enterprise Institute Research Fellow, Sean, welcome to the show. Thank you, good morning to the big easy. So I'll thank you, sir. So tell us, you know, the Congress, it's always interesting when you see Congress response to certain things. It seems as though we don't always connect the dots and in this case, it's, you lay this argument out where it's evident to me, they're not connecting dots at all. Yeah, I mean, there's plenty of blame to go around with the East Palestine crash and serious things that need to be done, but it's so often the case with this thing, whenever anybody rushes to get a solution, other people come in with their own sort of pet issues and concerns and try and attach it on there and make the urgency of the moment, the advantage for them. And that's unfortunately one of the cases we're seeing with Railway Safety Act. Yeah, so into Safety Act, there is going to mandate that there be at least two crew members

2:05on a freight train as though that equates to more safety and interestingly that freight train in East Palestine had three members on the, on the freight train. And obviously it didn't make a difference as to what ultimately happened, talk to us about that. Yeah, I mean, the obvious sort of intuitive thing a lot of people think is well, the more people there, the safer it's going to be, but that's just really isn't the case in the sort of modern time of the modern technology. I mean, if there's any sort of industry that should be on the cutting edge of automation, it's Railways because they don't use public roads, they don't use the airways, they don't use the waterways. They run on dedicated tracks and the notion that there needs to be a minimum number of people on the trains to prevent accidents just isn't worn out. The Federal Railroad Administration looked into this twice back in 2016 and 2019. And both times they concluded that there's no safety advantage to limiting the crew size of the trains. They can be operated remotely and just to safely.

3:06And that really wasn't the issue, and as you point out, that really wasn't the issue with the East Palestine thing. I mean, they had a higher minimum than this law would require and it still didn't prevent it. So in the case of the East Palestine situation, there are sensors located along the railway that are able to determine a number of potential failures or things that may be going awry on the train. What ultimately they learned in that derailment was that it was a result of bearings that were worn out, right? Yeah. I mean, this was a maintenance issue and certainly in terms of that type of stuff and creating higher safety standards or more frequent checks for that, that's something that's a much more plausible solution. But the crew size minimum is just not a factor. It wasn't a factor in the crash and therefore it need to be a factor in the solution. And you appropriately point out that that can actually serve as a chilling effect on deploying

4:10new technologies, technologies that can detect even more potential failures because it's sucking dollars out of this business model for human capital as opposed for innovation, which we see that's done in other places around the world, right? Yeah. I mean, you remember the supply chain crisis from just a few years ago when, you know, the docs, because it began as a consequence of COVID, the part of the issue was simply that our own supply chain is antiquated and the big part of that is the railway system and the way that cargo is offloaded from, you know, freighters onto the trains. And that can be faster if it's more at automation is used. And one of the reasons why automation has been resisted by the industry is because of union posts, because they don't want to replace the jobs of engineers and connectors. And on one level that's understandable, I mean, the union exists to protect its members,

5:12but at the same time, you know, the industry has to serve the interest of the broader public and, you know, the supply chain crisis, like the one we had in 2021 is good for nobody. And I guess this kind of message gets lost because people kind of look at and say, okay, so, you know, you're arguing over one person, but there are thousands upon thousands of movements a day and that number, you know, grows exponentially, right? Yeah, I mean, it is the amount, the amount of freight that is traveled is, you know, this country is still staggering. And so therefore, this is not a substantial sort of, it may seem outwardly like a minor tweak of the numbers, but it's significant amount of labor and min hours. What's interesting to me about this issue, though, is that there has been study after study, done by competing agencies that come to the same conclusion that more people does not

6:14really equate to more safety. And it's though, you know, members of Congress are staring these studies into face and just ignoring them. Well, the reality is, and I don't mean to be too cynical about this, but a lawmaker is just somebody who's, whose ability over the rest of us is their ability to get elected to Congress. And they're not necessarily a whole lot wiser than the rest of us. And there's a lot of stuff that they just simply don't pay attention to because there's a torrent of, you know, stuff that's coming at them, I mean, it's the drinking from a fire hose situation where if you're trying to write laws about everything under the song, which is what Congress does, oftentimes you're not that well informed about what you're writing the laws about. And that's part of the reason why, you know, situations like us talking about this on your radio show is just to try and sort of get people to understand what's actually going on. Hey there, I'm Kendra Adachi and my show, The Lazy Genius Podcast, helps you be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't and you get to decide what matters.

7:16I'm not here to tell you what to do. I'm here to give you a new way to see episodes of The Lazy Genius Podcast are full of compassionate time management tips and permission slips to do what makes sense for you. New episodes drop every Monday. Follow and listen to The Lazy Genius Podcast on the free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts. Yeah, you know, it's, I say this often times that Congress is actually probably involved in too many things. Yeah, if we had to have a session less often, we might all be better served. One of my favorite quotes by Ronald Reagan is, and what he told the bureaucrats, don't just do something, stand there. Exactly. So what is the likelihood that this makes its way through Congress? I mean, obviously, there's probably some strong lobbying going on in this issue, but it's not really, you know, it's not really, as you read through all of these studies and stuff

8:18and I spent some time last evening doing so, this is not leading to a safer movement afraid across the rails of this country. Yeah, whether this gets through Congress or not, it's a coin flip. It does have bipartisan support. That's a big sort of deal that will help ease its way through the committees and possibly get on the side floor. And it was something that Vice President Jeanne Vance was supportive of when he was still a center and is apparently so supportive of today. So there may actually have some administration buy-in. Who knows this part of a wheeling and dealing with some horse trading on this and horse trading on that, it might get through, stranger things have happened. On the other hand, it's something where some people realize that as you say, it's not actually helping the situation much, and so there's reason for cause and concern. We'll see how it goes. And Sean, this is not like buying the sky technology, right, because we see this in living

9:22color every day when we get into a vehicle that was produced in 2025, I go sit in my automobile and it's amazing the number of sensors that are in there, and it's amazing how many things that could potentially go wrong that it'll give me a warning about. I mean, we're mostly fighting wars via drones now. I mean, look at what's happening in the Russian Ukraine battle. I mean, drones are a heavy factor in that, and that's what's the cutting edge technology that shows us how far it's progressed. It's unfortunate that railways are falling behind as far as that goes. And I guess in the end, it's almost safe to say that this is actually in some respect by design, and it's not necessarily the fault of the railroad company, right? By whose design? I'm not sure. I don't know. I mean, there are influences here, whether it's the union or other folks.

10:29It seems as me that we have a number of competing interests here, and not nearly as many stacking up on the side of rail safety as we otherwise would think so, because we can call this what it is, call it all kinds of different names, but as Shakespeare said, it roses a rose by any other name. If it's not there, it's not there. Yeah. I mean, the issue here is that, you know, there's the rail safety issues, but then there's also the rail companies and their bottom lines. There's the unions and their attempt to sort of protect their workers. However, if in some cases I might be misguided, and then the general public concern of just, well, do something, you know, which is so often we happen. I mean, this is one of the big problems with any sort of legislation that happens, as a consequence of the big sort of crisis or acts, or something like that, like what happened in East Palestine, is that it just creates this energy to do something

11:31to get people to feel, to have the sort of sense or feeling that it was addressed and concerned, and you can get it over with and get it done with, and that sort of energy can create a lot of sort of, don't look too closely at the details situation, and I think that's one of the problems we're facing right now. Yeah, because what was interesting about East Palestine, and I didn't realize this, is that it was a bearing issue. It went by a number of sensors. The sensors sensed that there was a problem, but it fell below the threshold, you know, the create the alert to the engineers that the train should stop, and you would think that maybe the threshold needs to be modified, maybe, you know, some level of technology, we could upgrade to sensors. I mean, one of the things they put in this bill is that they wanted to have more sensors per mile, as opposed to less, I think, from a 25 mile where it is now to 15, if my memory serves me correct,

12:33as I was reading through it, but that doesn't, that really still didn't address the issue in East Palestine. After all of this, you know, machinations of going on here, still that issue is not, is not addressed, right? Yeah, and one of the things that again, it happens is when you do have a situation where something might get done, that creates a rush of all these other people to try and get their thing or their pet issue attached to it. So somebody who might think that that's an important issue will lobby to get that included in the legislation, and then I'll take up time, and I'll distract people from, you know, the other issues and the thing, and that sort of how these things become these kind of stitch together, Frankenstein monsters. Yeah, it's a shame it works this way. I mean, because we've bamboozled ourselves into believing that this creates a more safe environment in order to move freight, and truly that's not the case. As always, we really appreciate the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the research that you guys do and your publications,

13:36always makes for a great reading, and thank you so much for joining us today. Thanks for having me. All right, folks, you can find out more if you go to cei.org, that's a Competitive Enterprise Institute.org, and they post some great stuff there about a whole host of issues, check it out. That was Sean Higgins with the Competitive Enterprise Institute. We'll be right back, folks, 504-260-1870, on the open art jewelers talk, and text line stay with us. It's Draymond Green, kicking off my 14th NBA season, and the new season in my podcast. Trust me, I'm not holding back. Listen to the Draymond Green show, wherever you get your podcast.