By SHERRY ROBINSON
All She Wrote
© 2024 New Mexico News Services
There’s nothing like a road trip to make you appreciate another mode of transportation – trains. They keep motorists company along many a New Mexico highway. Before we left the federal Department of Transportation unveiled a new railroad rule, so I was paying more attention to trains.
On April 2 DOT’s Federal Railroad Administration began requiring trains to have at least two crew members. The feds cited “troubling trends that point toward a need for heightened caution and awareness in railroad safety”.
The number of human-caused accidents has edged up from less than one accident per million train miles in 2013 to 1.34 in 2022, a 41% increase.
Aside from numbers, we’re still troubled by East Palestine, Ohio, where a Norfolk-Southern train carrying toxic chemicals derailed and burned in 2023. Every New Mexico community with railroad tracks – and that’s a great many – wondered if they might be next.
“Common sense tells us that large freight trains, some of which can be over three miles long, should have at least two crew members on board,” U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said.
“A second crewmember performs important safety functions that could be lost when reducing crew size to a single person,” the Railroad Administration explained.
Traveling U.S. 60-84 between Fort Sumner and Clovis, we marveled at the length of trains paralleling the road. Sitting in my living room, I had wondered what a two- or three-mile long train would look like, but on the road, we often couldn’t see the end. I had to admit that the thought of just one engineer overseeing the endless metallic snake made me uneasy.
In New Mexico, five freight railroads carry 5.8 million carloads a year across 1,835 miles, according to the Association of American Railroads. We have accidents regularly, like the derailment in March that dumped tons of corn in Socorro.
More serious incidents included a 2021 train wreck near Laguna Pueblo where smoke forced residents to evacuate. The same year sabotage caused a train to leave the rails near Vado, injuring the engineer and conductor. In 2019 high winds blew a train off a high trestle near Tucumcari. In 2015 a fatigued conductor failed to properly set a switch, leading to a collision of two freight trains near Roswell; an engineer died, and the conductor was seriously injured.
Freight railroads and Amtrak opposed the new rule. The Association of American Railroads insisted that there is no evidence that rail safety is tied to crew size. Collective bargaining has historically managed crew size, the group said, and carriers would rather invest in employee training and new technology.
During the 1980s I covered railroads when they were losing money, and there was some doubt about the industry’s viability. Through deregulation, mergers, increased business and reduced employment, railroads survived. Crews shrank from five or more to one or two. So when the hand of regulation tightened again, they hollered.
However, the Railroad Administration’s action had been building for some time. Rail unions in 2022 demanded two-person crews and were so adamant that Congress had to force an agreement between unions and rail operators. States were moving their own legislation. In Congress, Ohio Sens. Sherrod Brown, a Democrat, and J.D. Vance, a Republican, who agree on little else, co-sponsored rail safety legislation.
Feds received more than 13,500 written comments from railroad workers and their families and the public along with public testimony.
Arguments kept returning to East Palestine. The wreck and its toxic spill were caused by an overheated bearing, and the train had two workers. But environmentalists, unions and Ohio legislators questioned the wisdom of letting railroads determine their own safety measures, according to The Hill.
Railroads want to operate safely, but they must improve their numbers and earn back the public trust.
