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derailment
The Case for Public Ownership of US Railways
The toxic rail derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, was a symptom of a privatized rail system that prioritizes profit over public safety.
Aug 04, 2024
The National Transportation Safety Board announced in June that the infamous East Palestine, Ohio, freight train derailment was caused by a defective wheel bearing.
But that technical issue does not tell the whole story.
Federal investigators found that the railway company Norfolk Southern failed to communicate information to emergency responders in a timely manner, which contributed to the exposure of responders and the public to post-derailment hazards.
According to the June 2024 NTSB report abstract on the derailment and hazardous materials release, Norfolk Southern’s delayed transmission of consist information “also delayed the Ohio State Patrol’s recommendation to the incident commander that the shelter-in-place order be replaced by an evacuation.”
Norfolk Southern officials and contractors also provided misleading and incomplete information while advocating for an unnecessary vent and burn of tank cars carrying vinyl chloride. A vent-and-burn action is, according to the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA), a response of last resort.
A public rail system would directly benefit workers, trackside communities, small shippers, farmers, passengers, and the environment.
Norfolk Southern began planning the vent and burn shortly after the derailment, rejecting three other removal methods that could have been far less dangerous to responders and the people of East Palestine.
While there may be some temptation to view the catastrophic derailment in East Palestine as an unfortunate fluke, the truth is that disastrous events are predictable features of the American rail system.
Under the private ownership of the Class I railroads, we have seen time and again the callous prioritization of profit over people. For the sake of short-term profit, inspections are cut short, tracks and equipment are not maintained, and the rail workforce is gutted — features of an industrial system that calculates derailments as part of the cost of doing business.
The Class I railroads’ — the largest domestic rail carriers — pursuit of short-term profit has led to critical understaffing, longer trains, diminished maintenance of tracks and equipment, inadequate inspections, and other underinvestments that leave rail workers and trackside communities vulnerable to derailments and disasters.
The Class I railroad robber barons are perfectly willing to risk the lives of workers and people living in trackside communities so long as it means more money for them and their shareholders. This is not hyperbole.
Between 2013 and 2022, the rate of rail accidents rose 28 percent as a result of the implementation of Precision Scheduled Railroading (PSR). In short, the philosophy of PSR can be summed up as “speed over safety.” Since 2015, over 50,000 railroad workers — nearly 30 percent of the rail workforce — have been laid off. The workers who remain on the railroads experience chronic fatigue as a result of unpredictable schedules and critical understaffing.
Last spring, it was reported that Union Pacific, one of the six Class I rail carriers, undermined government safety assessments and retaliated against workers who reported rail car flaws. In 2023, the FRA found that 73% of Union Pacific locomotives have federal defects.
According to the NTSB, Norfolk Southern interfered with the East Palestine investigation and abused its status as a party to the probe. NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy revealed that she was threatened by Norfolk Southern during a private exchange with a senior company executive two weeks prior to the NTSB East Palestine board meeting.
These are but a few examples of the criminality and nefariousness that characterize the privately owned rail system. What’s more, even if one puts aside moral questions regarding the behavior of the Class I railroads, one finds an industry being strangled to death by a get-rich-quick scheme that victimizes workers and trackside communities, cheats small shippers, and — because the rail robber barons are completely allergic to capital expenditure —dooms the US rail system to degradation and ossification.
Another concern is how the American rail system is regulated. While the FRA is ostensibly tasked with overseeing and regulating US railroads, this arrangement becomes murky when one considers the significant degree of industry influence.
The Association of American Railroads (AAR), the industry group representing the interests of North America’s major rail corporations, sets its own safety standards and works closely with the FRA, effectively as an independent regulatory body. AAR even manages the FRA’s Transportation Technology Center through its wholly-owned subsidiary, Transportation Technology Center, Inc.
In the NTSB investigation of the East Palestine derailment, AAR’s standards for hot bearing alerts and alarms came under scrutiny, as they served as the guide for Norfolk Southern’s own criteria that contributed to the disaster. It is worth noting that under the Trump presidency, railroad industry executive Ronald Batory was made FRA administrator, further blurring the line between government regulator and regulated industry.
With the foxes running the henhouse, simple demands for more and better regulation of the railroad industry are inadequate. The real solution, advocated by Railroad Workers United (RWU) and allied organizations across the country, is public ownership of the railroads.
Last spring, RWU launched the Public Rail Ownership (PRO) campaign, building a diverse coalition including rank-and-file unionists, environmentalists, progressives, community activists, and others calling for a rail system that operates in the public interest.
The campaign has hosted webinars, published scholarly works such as Maddock Thomas’s “Putting America Back on Track: The Case for a 21st Century Public Rail System,” and attended union conferences to make its case.
What a publicly owned and operated rail system in the United States will look like has yet to be determined, but there are models that can serve as guides.
The task at hand is massive, and the road ahead is fraught with challenges. However, there is little hope for any improvement of the US rail system so long as it remains in the hands of the irresponsible and unaccountable Class I robber barons.
The rail system in the US is, compared to other countries, an anomaly in that it is predominantly owned by private companies. This was not always the case, and there’s inspiration to be found in US history for the development of a 21st century public rail system.
During World War I, the US rail system was nationalized amid a consensus that the private rail system was unable to serve the needs of the country during wartime. Under the control of the US Railroad Administration (USRA), the railroads operated far more efficiently and effectively than they had under private ownership.
Working conditions and service improved drastically, winning the support of workers, shippers, and much of the public. The nationalized rail system was so popular among rail workers that in a 1918 American Federation of Labor-sponsored referendum, the vote to keep the nation’s railroads in public hands was overwhelmingly in favor: 306,720 to 1,466.
A public rail system would directly benefit workers, trackside communities, small shippers, farmers, passengers, and the environment. The Class I carriers have made it clear that they have no intent to expand rail, or take the crucial step towards full catenary electrification.
Under public ownership, the fetters of the short-term profit motive would be cast off the rail system, opening the door to large-scale infrastructure modernization and expansion projects, creating jobs in construction and spurring economic development in neglected areas of the country. A publicly owned and operated rail system would also create thousands of railroad jobs, as the stripped-to-the-bone PSR model advocated by the Class I carriers would be destined for the dustbin.
The task at hand is massive, and the road ahead is fraught with challenges. However, there is little hope for any improvement of the US rail system so long as it remains in the hands of the irresponsible and unaccountable Class I robber barons. RWU and its allies invite all organizations and individuals to get involved in the Public Rail Ownership campaign, and help make public rail a reality. For more information, please visit publicrailnow.org.
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The Hidden Connection Between the Ohio Derailment, Environmental Injustice, and Mass Incarceration
Apr 16, 2023
Attorney General Dave Yost is now suing the Norfolk Southern rail company on behalf of Ohio for the reckless endangerment of residents' health. The recent train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio required locals to evacuate their homes, adding to the ongoing list of recent environmental disasters in the US. Since then, the crisis has garnered much-deserved attention, including a federal attempt to utilize multiple agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Department of Transportation to support the community following the event.
What most people don’t know is that less than 15 miles from East Palestine, there are two federal prisons housing thousands of incarcerated individuals and employing a large correctional staff to support its operations—a population unable to quickly escape such a disaster.
Unfortunately, it is nothing new that those who live and work within correctional facilities are exposed to environmental hazards. In fact, 134 federal and state prisons are located within a mile of a Superfund cleanup site, which are known to release toxins that are harmful to human health. Documenting this risk, recent research shows that correctional facilities in the Southwest are nearly six times more likely to have excess arsenic in their water systems than surrounding communities.
These environmental hazards aren’t without health impacts, which could be one reason why both those impacted by incarceration and those who work in correctional facilities have shorter life expectancies than the general public. One such study provides evidence for this connection by showing that 13% of deaths in Texas prisons were related to excessive heat in facilities without air conditioning.
Environmental injustice examines how environmental hazards, such as air pollution and waste contamination, disproportionately impact racial/ethnic minority and poor communities as a result of intentional policies and lack of regulations. For example, researchers from the EPA have documented that Black individuals are at higher risk of being exposed to air pollution, confirming environmental injustice as a form of structural racism.
Further, while attention has been given to social phenomena such as redlining and zoning codes as key tenets of environmental injustice, the carceral state has not received as much attention in its role in exposing minority populations to environmental hazards. This is surprising given that correctional facilities are located in places that are unhealthy for humans and also that incarceration disproportionately impacted communities of color. Nearly 1 in 3 Black men will be incarcerated during their lives, and Black and Latinx are disproportionately represented in the corrections occupation. Thus, addressing environmental injustice requires attention towards abolishing mass incarceration.
Advocacy around these issues is being led by those most impacted, including JustLeadershipUSA—a national advocacy organization led by those who have been involved in the criminal legal system. I support the organization’s call for the passage of the Correctional Facility Disaster Preparedness Act, a bill introduced by Senator Duckworth which would require the Bureau of Prisons to generate annual reports of disaster damage to Congress.
Further, the Biden-Harris administration has a unique opportunity to prioritize those within the carceral system in its environmental regulations and preparedness planning. A national gathering of those formerly and currently incarcerated as well as correctional staff and unions should be convened to discuss how to systematically include and prioritize them across parts of the administration focused on occupational and environmental health hazards, such as the EPA.
Last, in the case of East Palestine, Ohio, those who live and work in the nearby prisons must not be excluded in any legal actions taken moving ahead. A decade ago, a coal industry watchdog filed a lawsuit suing a company for dumping coal ash which was impacting nearby communities in rural Pennsylvania. The lawsuit included the 50 families in the town but failed to include the incarcerated individuals in the men’s prison nearby. Under no circumstances should this be the case for lawsuits regarding the environmental health negligence in Ohio.
Mass incarceration has been woven into the fabric of American society, especially for Black, Brown, and poor communities. With our current climate crisis, another environmental disaster will probably happen sooner than any of us would like. Achieving environmental justice requires prioritizing and including those who live and work in correctional facilities as a high-risk population for environmental hazards - and it has to start now because answering the calls for justice is long overdue.
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As Rail Industry Lobbies Against Safety Bill, Two Trains Derail in Arizona and Washington
"The longer we wait to act on rail safety, the deeper the railroad industry can dig in their claws and lobby against progress," warned Rep. Chris Deluzio.
Mar 17, 2023
Two trains operated by BNSF derailed in Washington state and Arizona on Thursday as the rail industry and its Republican allies in Congress fight bipartisan safety legislation introduced in the wake of the toxic crash in East Palestine, Ohio.
The Associated Pressreported that the Washington derailment spilled 5,000 gallons of diesel fuel on tribal lands along Padilla Bay. State authorities said the fuel spill does not appear to have flowed toward the water—though such an assurance is cold comfort amid the disaster in eastern Ohio, where residents' concerns about the long-term impacts of the wreck on local water, soil, and air quality remain high more than a month after the crash.
In Arizona, eight BNSF train cars derailed Thursday near the state's border with California and Nevada, though it's unclear whether any spills occurred. The crash reportedly involved a train carrying corn syrup.
More than 1,000 trains derail in the United States each year, but the Norfolk Southern disaster in East Palestine has brought greater scrutiny to the industry's dangerous cost-cutting and lax safety practices—turning wrecks that would typically be consigned to local news coverage into national headlines.
With each derailment since early February, calls for substantive action in Congress to rein in the powerful industry have grown louder.
Under pressure from rail workers and others, a bipartisan group of lawmakers introduced legislation earlier this month that would impose stronger regulations on trains carrying hazardous materials—an effort that rail industry lobbying has defeated in the past.
While rail unions welcomed some provisions of the bill as decent starting points, they warned the measure has major loopholes and exceptions that rail giants wouldn't hesitate to exploit.
"If the language is not precise, the Class 1 railroads will avoid the scope of the law without violating the law, yet again putting the safety of our members and American communities into harm's way," said Eddie Hall, national president of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen. "You can run a freight train through the loopholes."
Predictably, the rail industry is working to further water down the legislation or kill it entirely, pumping donations to Republican allies and running ads in major media outlets touting its supposedly ironclad commitment to safety.
Sludge's David Moore reported earlier this week that the PAC for Union Pacific—one of the largest Class 1 railroads in the U.S.—"made $15,000 in contributions last month, all to Republicans in the House and Senate, given less than two weeks after the Ohio derailment."
"Several House Republicans on committees that oversee transportation have sought to delay the bipartisan legislation to boost rail safety rules," Moore noted, "saying more information is needed after a potentially-lengthy study."
Rep. Troy Nehls (R-Texas), chair of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Subcommittee on Railroads, Pipelines, and Hazardous Materials, parroted industry talking points earlier this month when making the case against regulatory action, saying U.S. railroads have a "very high success rate of moving hazardous material—to the point of 99-percent-plus."
Days before Nehls' comment, the Association of American Railroads (AAR) declared in an ad appearing in a Politico newsletter that "while 99.9 percent of all hazmat shipments that move by rail reach their destination safely, we know a single incident can have significant impacts."
The AAR has dismissed demands for comprehensive rail safety reforms as "political."
In the Senate, meanwhile, John Thune (R-S.D.)—a former registered rail lobbyist—has emerged as a potentially key opponent of rail safety legislation, tellingThe Hill earlier this month that "we'll take a look at what's being proposed, but an immediate quick response heavy on regulation needs to be thoughtful and targeted."
During congressional testimony last week, Norfolk Southern CEO Alan Shaw refused to endorse the bipartisan Railway Safety Act, another indication that rail giants will continue their longstanding opposition to popular regulatory changes.
Over the past two decades, according to a recent OpenSecrets analysis, the rail industry has spent more than $650 million on federal lobbying.
"The longer we wait to act on rail safety, the deeper the railroad industry can dig in their claws and lobby against progress," Rep. Chris Deluzio (D-Pa.), a lead sponsor of separate rail safety legislation, warned Thursday.
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