Despite no conclusions yet from the investigation into a recent high-profile freight train derailment, a bill has already been proposed in Congress to fix the yet to be determined problem. In lawmakers’ haste to act without knowing what caused the accidents the Railway Safety Act of 2023 proposes many special interest handouts and costly requirements that would raise prices for consumers and lessen investment in freight rail safety.
The first handout is the requirement for two-person crews in freight trains. This has not been shown to increase safety, and in Europe one-person crews operate trains without extra risk. While crew size is not a safety issue, mandating crew size is quite valuable to unions, and it comes at a cost to the consumer.
Specifically, that regulatory requirement would remove the two-person crew issue from the bargaining table when unions and rail companies negotiate terms. While unions may cheer this because it puts pressure on rail companies to give other concessions in negotiations instead, in doing so it drives up the costs of shipping — costs which are passed on to consumers and businesses through higher prices.
Another handout to unions in the Railway Safety Act would require not only more rail car inspections, but that the inspections are performed by hyper-specific union members. Current policy allows cross-pollination of functions.
It is not clear how this would improve safety over having nonunion workers inspect rail cars, but it would again give an advantage to unions when negotiating with rail companies by removing the issue from the bargaining table, just as with the two-person crews. It would also prevent greater adoption of technologically driven inspections, which are of course far more effective than manual inspections alone. Just as before these increased costs don’t increase safety but instead reduce the speed of shipping and in turn increase the cost of shipping, which will ultimately come out of consumers’ pockets.
The proposed bill would also impose restrictions on train length, weight, car type, routes, speed, tracks, and maintenance. As before, the increased cost and lost revenue from these provisions would increase the price of shipping and, ultimately, the price everyone pays for goods.
On top of raising costs, these handouts and restrictions are potentially counterproductive and risk making freight shipping more dangerous. The increased cost of rail shipping from these regulations decreases safety by shifting rail shipments to trucks. Truck-based shipping is a far more dangerous mode of freight transportation than rail shipping resulting in more 16 times more deaths during hazmat transport from 1975 through 2021. It also results in increased pollution and the associated costs we all bear. Consumers are then stuck with higher costs, increased risks, and accidents from shipping by trucks, and increased taxes to pay for the extra wear on the public roads and bridges.
Higher costs of operation will mean less revenue to reinvest in technology and infrastructure. Reinvestment, in fact, has been shown to be the key to improving rail safety. Compounded year after year, increasing costs will reduce cashflow and cut historically strong re-investment, and ultimately result in a system less safe than it otherwise would have been.
Despite recent news stories freight rail in the U.S is the safest it has ever been and continues to improve. Before jumping to conclusions, Congress should wait to get the actual findings of the investigations on the recent accidents, avoid giving handouts to special interests, and avoid costly requirements that will increase prices for everyday goods.
It makes no sense to decrease freight rail investment in the name of “safety.” This is a bad bill for consumers.
Steve Pociask and Justin Leventhal are with the American Consumer Institute, a nonprofit education and research organization. For more information about the Institute, visit www.TheAmericanConsumer.Org or follow us on Twitter @ConsumerPal.