Washington, D.C.—The following are opening remarks, as prepared for delivery, from Ranking Member of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure Rick Larsen (D-WA) and Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on Railroads, Pipelines, and Hazardous Materials Donald M. Payne, Jr. (D-NJ), during today’s Democratic Roundtable, titled, “Listening to Rail Workers and Communities.”
More information on the roundtable can be found here.
Ranking Member Larsen:
Thank you, Ranking Member Payne, Jr. for hosting this roundtable and your continuing work to improve rail safety.
It has been more than 13 months since the Norfolk Southern derailment in East Palestine, Ohio.
In that time, there have been more than 1,500 train accidents.
Some of those 1,500 rail accidents have resulted in the serious injury or death of rail workers.
A number have caused evacuations of entire towns.
In my home state of Washington, in just the last five years, there were 193 train accidents, 71 grade crossing incidents, and 167 fatalities of people on the railroad right-of-way.
The New York Times recently reported that there were more rail accidents in 2023 than in 2022.
Safety in every mode of transportation, including rail, should always be the priority of the Transportation & Infrastructure Committee.
Committee Democrats have been consistently asked for a hearing on rail safety in the wake of the Norfolk Southern derailment in East Palestine.
Last May, every T&I Democrat signed a letter asking for a rail safety hearing to highlight existing rail safety recommendations from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB).
In January, NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy testified that there are over 190 outstanding recommendations on rail safety that remain open from prior accidents and incidents.
Although this Subcommittee held a hearing on grade crossings, there were several voices that were not present at that hearing.
Today’s roundtable is an opportunity to hear from the people directly impacted by freight railroad safety: the women and men who maintain and operate trains; the communities that protect their citizens from derailments and the impacts of long trains; and a small business owner who was directly impacted by that derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, and subsequent clean-up.
While the number of railroad accidents and incidents has been on the decline for the past 40 years, the rate of incidents per train miles traveled is on a troubling upward trend.
I look forward to hearing from our panelists about rail safety and learning what we can do to make freight rail safer.
Ranking Member Payne, Jr.:
Thank you to everyone for attending this roundtable discussion today on rail safety.
Our participants today include.
Mr. Frank Moran, the Mayor of Hiram, Georgia, where three locomotives and eight freight cars derailed in November 2021.
Mr. Clarence Anthony, the Executive Director of the National League of Cities.
Mr. Vince Verna, the Vice President & National Legislative Representative for the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers & Trainmen.
Mr. Peter Kennedy, an International Representative, for the Sheet Metal, Air, Rail, and Transportation (SMART) Workers – Mechanical Division; and Anna Sevi-Doss, a Small Business Owner from East Palestine, Ohio, whose businesses are located just down the tracks from where a Norfolk Southern train derailed last February.
Safety on the rails is something the majority didn’t want to discuss when we had a hearing regarding grade crossings earlier this year.
I look at the stakeholders here today at this event and am reminded of a story I read recently about a court battle with a small town in Texas and one of the Class I railroads.
This small town, Palestine, Texas, served as an important node on Union Pacific’s network.
It was so important that the town was able to secure jobs for the community back in 1872.
But with consolidation in the freight rail industry, Union Pacific has attempted multiple times to get out of this 152-year-old agreement and close a rail car shop located in this town that employs over 100 people.
That’s 100 families, in a town of 18,000, who would no longer have a stable job and would likely be forced to either find something else or move away.
Coincidently, this rail car shop in Palestine is one of two car shops on the Union Pacific Railroad that perform heavy modifications and repairs to freight cars.
The same types of modifications and repairs are needed to ensure freight cars on tracks remain safe.
Simply put. What we are seeing today in the freight rail industry is efforts to take shortcuts on labor, safety, and service, all in pursuit of profits.
While we see bigger profits for the railroads, meaning more dividends for shareholders, we see continued derailments and incidents every day.
I hope our discussion today will show the disastrous consequences of actions taken by these railroads, and the urgent need to ensure that safety, not profits, drive the decisions made by the railroads.
I look forward to hearing from our participants.
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