Washington — Recently introduced bipartisan legislation is aimed at curbing train derailments by requiring railroads to conduct both automated and visual track inspections.
The Secure Tracks Act (S. 3987 and H.R. 7784) was introduced March 4. It’s co-sponsored by Rep. Dina Titus (D-NV) in the House and Sens. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) and Josh Hawley (R-MO) in the Senate. The act would require all main line tracks designated as Class 3 speeds or higher to undergo visual track inspections twice each week.
“I am all for using technology to keep our trains on the tracks and communities safe from derailments, but what we have learned is that technology can’t do it alone,” Baldwin said in a press release. “It misses things that humans see and hear, and if we want to make sure our railroads are safe, we need both technology and real people who have the experience and knowledge.”
The bill also would:
- Prohibit the secretary of transportation from a waiver, exemption or modification of any safety regulation if the proposed alternative inspection, detection or monitoring method fails to identify or detect all defect conditions defined or recognized as unsafe under applicable Federal Railroad Administration regulations.
- Require any defect or unsafe condition identified to be corrected, protected or removed from service immediately.
- Require immediate initiation of remedial action when a qualified inspector finds a deviation while granting the inspector sole authority to authorize any subsequent movements to facilitate repairs on out-of-service tracks.
- Require that a qualifying Track Geometry Measurement System (a type of automated track inspection technology) operates over various track classifications at specified frequencies.
In December, the FRA Safety Board approved a five-year waiver that allows railroads to expand ATI field testing to “collect crucial data and improve safety,” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said. The decision was met with sharp criticism from the International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers, which represents around 230,000 workers. SMART claims railroads “are attempting to use automation not as a safety enhancement, but to reduce manpower” and that automated inspection systems “identify only a fraction of the defect types that trained human inspectors routinely detect in the field.”
SMART, along with six other worker unions, backs the new legislation.
“Rail safety is not a contentious partisan issue,” Tony Cardwell, president of the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees Division, said in the release. “Americans trust the railroads to be safe.”
