KANSAS CITY, Mo. — U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg on Monday pledged to hold American freight railroads to stricter standards in the wake of a train disaster in Ohio last month and Republican criticism of the Biden administration’s response.
Buttigieg, who attended several events around the Kansas City area on Monday, said the Biden White House had already been pushing for tighter regulations before the Feb. 3 derailment of a Norfolk Southern freight train carrying hazardous materials in East Palestine, Ohio.
“There have been a lot of improvements for sure over the years, but the work is not yet done,” Buttigieg told The Star in an interview. “And I’m pressing the freight rail industry to drop their resistance and urging Congress to work with us no matter what the industry says to ensure that we have tougher, tighter, more effective standards, practices and rules so that every community living along a rail line knows that they’re going to be OK.”
Buttigieg’s Department of Transportation oversees the Federal Railroad Administration, the primary safety regulator of the nation’s railroads. He acknowledged the efforts railroads have made to influence all branches of government, including the FRA, and avoid regulatory scrutiny.
“I do think we need to go further,” Buttigieg said. “I think frankly, across all three branches of government, from the lawsuits they bring to the courts, to the influence they wield in Congress to the pressure they bear on the FRA, the freight railroads have just had too much power and we’ve got to push back on that.”
Buttigieg’s comments followed a news conference celebrating the new Panasonic electric vehicle battery plant under construction in De Soto. While in the area, he also attended a ribbon cutting ceremony for the new terminal at Kansas City International Airport and visited the University of Missouri-Kansas City to speak about a grant to help the university create more sustainable and resilient transportation infrastructure.
The transportation secretary has faced partisan attacks over the administration’s handling of the Ohio disaster. Last week, Buttigieg visited East Palestine, where he acknowledged criticism over waiting three weeks to tour the disaster site.
“I felt strongly about this and could have expressed that sooner,” Buttigieg said last week in Ohio. “I was taking pains to respect the role that I have and the role that I don’t have, and that should not have stopped me from weighing in about how I felt about what was happening to this community.”
Of the 38 cars that derailed in East Palestine, 11 were carrying dangerous chemicals like vinyl chloride and butyl acrylate. Despite government assurances that the area is now safe, residents still report chemical residue in the air and an oily sheen in the water as locals suffer from headaches and nausea.
Rep. Jake LaTurner, a Kansas Republican, signed on to a letter last week to Buttigieg from the GOP members of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee demanding information from the cabinet secretary. The Department of Transportation, the representatives wrote, “needs to provide an explanation for its leadership’s apathy in the face of this emergency.”
The derailment has only intensified recent pressures to reexamine the way the nation regulates the seven largest freight railroads. Railroad employees, lawmakers across the country and rail customers have grown disenchanted with the industry in recent years, after railroads slashed crews and routes in efforts to drive up profits.
The National Transportation Safety Board, which investigates major transportation disasters, has said the Ohio train crew received an alert about an overheated wheel bearing only shortly before dozens of the train’s cars left the tracks.
NTSB Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy called the incident “100 percent preventable.”
“We call things accidents,” she said. “There is no accident. Every single event that we investigate is preventable.”
The NTSB is still investigating the June 27 crash of an Amtrak train with a dump truck outside of Mendon, Missouri. That high-speed collision killed four and injured dozens on an unprotected rail crossing that had long been identified as a safety hazard.
In a series that published in December, The Kansas City Star revealed how that Missouri crossing was not unique: in fact, hundreds like it across the country have raised the fears of residents and been put on lists for safety improvements that sometimes come too late.
The series also exposed how states and localities are largely powerless to regulate the rail industry, which has transformed its business model in recent years in efforts to drive up profits and please Wall Street investors. That’s led to longer trains, fewer employees and a cutback in safety training and maintenance, according to interviews with railroad workers from across the country.
“I do have a sense that the railroads just are pushing the envelope much farther than in the long run is in their own self interest,” Martin Oberman, who chairs the Surface Transportation Board, told The Star in December. “This is a bipartisan concern…There is a growing concern in the Congress that things need to shape up.”
Kansas state Sen. Carolyn McGinn, a Sedgwick Republican, has offered legislation that would impose additional regulations on trains in the state, such as requiring parked rail cars to be no closer than 300 feet to a crossing and limiting the length of trains to little more than a mile and a half.
McGinn can recount stories of long trains effectively blocking vehicle traffic through entire small communities — a possible impediment to emergency responders.
“Freight rail is important, no doubt — it is to farmers, to moving all our products and everything like that,” McGinn said. “But it comes down, for me, you got to be a good neighbor.”
Across the country, states have struggled to limit how long trains can block crossings — a dangerous problem that can separate entire neighborhoods from lifesaving first responders. Over the past quarter century, multiple courts have ruled that only the federal government can impose rules affecting railroad operations.
Buttigieg didn’t directly answer a question about what authority — if any — states should have in regulating the industry.
“First responders need to know what is coming into their jurisdictions and that’s one of the things we’re pressing rail companies on right now,” Buttigieg said Monday. “We directly fund a lot of training for first responders and take other steps to make sure that they’re ready. So there’s definitely a state role, a local role and a national role.”
The American Association of Railroads, which represents Amtrak and the seven major freight carriers, has long opposed new regulatory measures. Since the Ohio crash, the organization said its members remain committed to “solutions-oriented steps that directly address the cause of the accident and could prevent a similar accident from occurring elsewhere.”
“All stakeholders — railroads along with federal, state and local officials — must work to restore the public’s trust in the safety and security of our communities,” the association said in a news release. “We can only do that by letting the facts drive the post-accident response.”
Since the Ohio crash, labor unions have renewed their calls for stricter regulation of the industry.
“Rather than properly staffing trains, railroad CEOs have pushed for a transition from two-person crews to one and to even use remotely-operated trains,” the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen said in a statement last week. “This is a mistake. Incidents, like the one we just witnessed in Ohio, would likely have been far worse if there had been only one crew member present.”
In De Soto on Monday, Buttigieg referenced the administration’s ongoing push for more safety audits of railroads and the ongoing battle to require railroads to employ at least two people on most freight trains. Railroads have been resisting the rule as they look to move some conductors out of locomotives.
“We’re not going to rest until we have seen the kinds of results we have been calling for from day one,” Buttigieg said. “And I think now one thing that has changed in the last few weeks is a greater level of awareness and a greater level of momentum to raise the bar and we’re going to keep pushing long after the news crews leave a place like East Palestine, Ohio.”
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