(Source: MIRS.news, Published 04/02/2024) The U.S. Department of Transportation announced Tuesday it will be enforcing a two-person crew mandate for railroad operations. Michigan's lawmakers have attempted to establish a similar requirement within the state, but legislation has sat dormant for a year.
Tuesday's announcement was made by U.S. Department of Transportation Director Pete Buttigieg. He said tens of thousands of comments were submitted supporting the formation of a national two-person crew rule, originating from rail workers and families residing near train lines. Specifically, the Associated Press noted that out of 13,000-plus comments turned in on the subject, about 60 opposed a two-person crew mandate.
"These railroad corporations have in some cases begun using trains that are a multiple of the length that they used to be. Some of these trains running through communities are about three miles long. For perspective, if you put the Empire State Building on its side, and then added 11 more Empire State Buildings, that's about how big some of these trains would be," Buttigieg said. "They want to operate that with one person…certainly can't imagine operating one Empire State Building with one person, and it doesn't move."
In March 2016, with a stance different from Tuesday's announcement, the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) published a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM). It initially provided that regulating train crew staffing was not necessary or appropriate for railroad operations to be conducted.
The FRA withdrew the notice in May 2019, ordering that its actions prevented all states from overseeing their own requirements regarding train crew staffing.
Nearly two years later, a federal three-judge panel in San Francisco ruled that the FRA failed to deliver the minimum notice-and-comment provisions. The panel also homed in on how the Trump-era agency's sentiment that "two-member crews were less safe than one-person crews," as well as that "indirect safety connections might be achieved with fewer than two crew members," was incapable of withstanding scrutiny and lacking.
Following the ruling, the FRA began working on a crew size rule for two years.
One of the organizations involved in the lawsuit resulting in the federal judges' 2021 ruling was the Transportation Division of the International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers (SMART).
The Michigan director of SMART's transportation division, Donald ROACH, described Tuesday's announcement as "a huge relief" to MIRS.
"What I'm going to get from this is just that extra feeling of security…I'm looking back four years ago when I was operating a train, having that redundancy in the cab of the locomotive because a one-person operation can easily miss a safety, critical-type operation," Roach said. "I think that having that second set of eyes has saved lives. I know it has – I (witnessed it) firsthand…that's the main goal, it's for the safety of the workforce, the safety of the train and the safety of the community that these trains operate through."
Calls for two-person crew regulations were amplified in the aftermath of the February 2023 train derailment in Ohio, within the 4,761-person community of East Palestine. The derailment featured 38 freight cars, with 20 of them containing hazardous materials like vinyl chlorine, which can be linked to permanent liver injury and liver cancer if individuals are chronically exposed to it.
Five tank cars of vinyl chlorine were intentionally blown open as part of a controlled burn to prevent a larger explosion, reports from NPR and CBS News illustrate.
In April 2023, Michigan's Senate Transportation and Infrastructure Committee sat through two official meetings full of testimony on SB 100 , prohibiting trains or locomotive engines from operating in Michigan if they contained less than a two-member crew. SB 100 by committee chair Sen. Erika Geiss (D-Taylor) was a reintroduction of legislation introduced in the 2021-22 legislative term.
Although at least 11 states have initiated active two-person crew statutes, like Ohio and New York, Geiss' effort encountered lengthy opposition.
For example, President Chuck Baker of the American Short Line and Regional Railroad Association submitted a letter detailing how a mandate to add additional crew members would "inevitably result in a modal shift of freight traffic from rail to its competing mode of truck transportation."
Baker said while a study of FRA safety data found that train accidents per million train-miles have fallen by 33 percent since 2000, and 5 percent since 2022, the total number of estimated fatalities associated with crashes involving at least one large truck increased by 13 percent from 2020 to 2021.
Moreover, the Consolidated Rail Corporation (Conrail) – a switching rail carrier operating primarily within the city of Detroit, providing "first-mile and last-mile" services – shared in a letter that SB 100 would greatly impact yard crew operations, when a conductor is on the ground or hanging onto the last car and calling signals to an engineer located inside the locomotive's cab.
"The engineer then uses those signals to recognize obstacles and safely move locomotives within the yard. Mandating that two employees remain in the cab of the locomotive would prevent the conductor from fulfilling their duties and would actually require a three-person crew," said General Counsel Jocelyn Gabrynowicz HILL of Conrail.
Roach, on the other hand, said he was disappointed that SB 100 stalled. However, one could say that Tuesday's announcement by the U.S. Department of Transportation could alleviate some legislators' concerns about interfering with interstate commerce if they approved a state-specific mandate over railroad operations.
Michigan is technically one of the states listed in the federal Regional Rail Reorganization Act of 1973, barring certain states from regulating the number of employees a corporation can employ. Although some of the 11 known states that have enacted two-person crew mandates are recognized in the federal act, its language warns of interferences with “the needs of commerce, the national defense, the environment and the service requirements of passengers, United States mail, shippers, States and their political subdivisions, and consumers.”
The rule announced Tuesday does provide exemptions for one-person train crew operations that do not pose significant safety risks. Those seeking an exemption must provide the FRA with a yearly report summarizing the safety of their functions.
Roach said that states like Michigan showing interest in rail safety did "put a lot of pressure on the Department of Transportation to really look at this from all different angles, and make sure that they can do what they can do to protect the public and the workers."
"This is definitely a breath of fresh air, and we're not done yet. We're still working to try to get legislation passed in Congress," Roach said, referencing the proposed Railway Safety Act of 2023 that would solidify the two-person crew mandate for particular freight trains. "That's our next battle, I guess, is to make sure we can get that codified into statute…regulations are easily removed by administrations. They can dismantle them like they did in the past. So we really would like to see it in statute as well."
