Rail Safety Policy After East Palestine: The proposed Rail Safety Act would be marginally effective at best and result in more goods traveling by other, more dangerous modes.

• Author: Gorman, Michael F.
• Position: TRANSPORTATION

In early 2023, a Norfolk Southern train carrying the hazardous material vinyl chloride derailed near the town of East Palestine, OH. Five cars carrying the chemical were breached, forcing the evacuation of several hundred homes for nearly a week.

The incident received a great deal of attention and prompted U.S. transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg to pledge that the federal government would consider new regulations to prevent similar incidents in the future. It also prompted the introduction of the Railway Safety Act (RSA) of 2023, with significant bipartisan support, that would impose an array of new requirements on railroads.

However, there is little that either the federal Department of Transportation or Congress has proposed that would improve the safety of transporting hazardous chemicals in a way that would be anything close to cost-effective. The likely outcome of making railroads spend billions of dollars with little purpose would be to expose U.S. residents to a greater risk of being affected by accidents involving the increased transport of hazardous materials by trucks.

WHY NOW?

The East Palestine derailment resulted in 11 of the 20 tanker cars carrying vinyl chloride and other chemicals coming off the track. After the accident, officials chose to breach the five cars to conduct a controlled burn. The burn caused hydrogen chloride and phosgene gases to escape into the air, prompting the evacuation of 2,500 residents.

While the incident upended the lives of the residents and put them into a potentially health-threatening environment, no injuries resulted from the accident, there is no evidence the derailment affected the drinking water of nearby communities, and the ongoing remediation efforts--completely funded by the railroad--should remove the possibility of any long-term risk to the nearby communities from any chemical exposure.

However, such a conspicuous and well-publicized event scared many people--both near East Palestine as well as people elsewhere who live or work close to a rail line--over the safety of rail-based transportation. Several members of Congress responded by introducing the RSA. At the time this article is written, the legislation contains four primary components:

* Enhance safety procedures for trains carrying hazardous materials.

* Prevent wheel bearing failures through more frequent monitoring.

* Make rail carriers pay higher penalties for derailments.

* Require two-person crews.

WILL THE RSA HELP?

Congress rarely creates legislation with the specificity that the RSA contains, and for good reason: lawmakers generally lack the inherent knowledge necessary to author detailed prescriptions for an agency to take. The RSA demonstrates this. None of the four components seem likely to reduce the risk of a serious accident involving the transport of hazardous material and, taken together, they likely will result in an outcome inferior to the status quo.

Hazmat safety procedures / The legislation calls for increased oversight, individualized emergency procedures, and town-bytown notification of the passage of trains carrying hazardous materials (hazmat). Those proposals may sound sensible, but they are not actionable.

Because of the broad categorization of "hazardous" materials, everyday roughly 30 percent of U.S. trains carry materials that fit the definition. There are thousands of freight trains traveling in the United States at any one time, every day of the year, and each one passes through scores of cities and towns. No town can effectively "be on alert"--increasing staffing or awareness--when that many trains carry hazardous...