WASHINGTON – The Federal Railroad Administration today proposed more stringent requirements that railroads must meet in order to obtain safety rule waivers that allow experimentation with track and equipment inspection technology.
The proposed rule would give rail labor and lineside communities more of a say in how automated track and train inspection systems are deployed. The proposal also seeks to preserve union jobs: It says the FRA will take a dim view of safety waiver requests that seek to reduce employment levels or the number of inspections performed by track and car inspectors.
Railroads are currently free to develop and use automated track and freight car inspection systems. But they cannot reduce the frequency of mandated visual inspections without requesting and receiving a waiver from FRA safety regulations.
Class I railroads have said that the high-tech systems can turn track and car inspectors from finders into fixers, and that the automated systems detect so many more defects that they provide additional work for employees.
In nearly all cases the unions have disagreed, arguing that reducing the frequency of required visual inspections would erode safety.
The FRA’s notice of proposed rulemaking aims to define two key elements that have underpinned the safety waiver review process: What’s in “the public interest” and what’s “consistent with rail safety.”
“FRA’s waiver procedures are designed to ensure that regulatory relief is granted in limited and specific circumstances that create benefits for railroads and the public — such as by advancing innovation, supporting workers, or strengthening infrastructure — while improving safety,” FRA Administrator Amit Bose said in a statement. “This proposed rule will help ensure that petitions for regulatory relief meet FRA’s safety standards and align with the agency’s policy priorities to advance the development of a safe, efficient, and resilient American rail network.”
Any request for a safety waiver or an extension of an existing waiver should take into account public interest factors such as “creating high-quality jobs,” supporting workers, and allowing employees to shape innovation, the FRA says.
“To show that a proposal is ‘in the public interest,’ FRA proposes that a petitioner could provide evidence that the regulatory relief requested would not eliminate jobs or eliminate required visual inspections, but would add additional positions, or improve the existing positions,” the proposal says.
“Further, if the request for regulatory relief would reduce the number of inspections being performed, the petition may not meet the ‘in the public interest’ definition proposed here. In many cases, technology can be layered on top of the existing regulatory framework without necessitating a reduction in human inspections currently being performed or relief from Federal regulations,” the proposal says.
Last year Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg called on the railroad industry to deploy new inspection technology without seeking to reduce the level of inspections performed by humans. “We need both to keep our nation’s railroads safe,” he said.
Some critics have said that’s the equivalent of adopting automated toll systems on highways while keeping toll-booth workers on the payroll.
Data from Class I railroad pilot programs involving track and train inspection technology — which relied on safety waivers — has revealed two significant trends.
First, the automated systems were far better at spotting defects. In fact, nearly all track geometry defects were found by automated systems, not by track inspectors. Second, when their hi-rail inspection duties were scaled back in conjunction with increased automated inspections, workers were able to uncover and repair more defects in switches, diamonds, and rail joints. The railroads say this combination has dramatically reduced track-caused derailments in territory where they received safety waivers.
The FRA rulemaking also seeks to streamline the waiver review process.
“FRA has found that incoming petitions frequently do not address the potential impacts of the request on stakeholders other than the petitioner. This too often leads to extensive efforts on the part of both FRA and individual petitioners to work with these stakeholders to understand and address their concerns,” FRA says.
To head off problems, FRA aims to require railroads to “meaningfully consult with potentially impacted employees” as well as local and national labor leaders, before submitting a waiver petition.
“FRA expects that consultation will be substantive, and not simply serve to check a box that stakeholders were informed of a proposal, as that would not constitute meaningful consultation,” the proposal says.
FRA is soliciting public comments on the rulemaking for 60 days. Comments may be submitted via www.regulations.gov (Docket No. FRA-2024-0033) and by following the online instructions.
The rule, as submitted to the Federal Register, can be viewed here.
The Transportation Trades Department of the AFL-CIO welcomed the proposed rule changes.
“This proposal is a huge win for public safety and the rail workforce. For years, rail labor has fought to end the rubber stamping of waivers requests from the rail industry,” TTD President Greg Regan says. “This rulemaking addresses our concerns about the current status quo process by establishing stronger definitions and standards to determine if these requests are truly consistent with safety and in the public interest. The proposed changes would also improve consultation with workers and unions, among other stakeholders, and hopefully improve safety overall.”
The Association of American Railroads was unable to provide comment on the proposal on Monday.
Note: Story updated at 8:26 a.m. Central on Oct. 29 with statement from TTD.
Given that the railroad’s haul lethal chemicals and other dangerous products, redundancy means safety. Redundancy, redundancy means prevention which means 99.999 per cent safety.
Relative to ton miles, do you think North American railroads are more safe, or less safe today? Do you think they meet the three “nines” as you state?
It seems odd that the Unions wouldn’t take the angle of allowing for longer periods of combined scheduled rest for the visual inspectors with the automation doing the grunt work so long as an inspector from an adjacent territory could be on-call to investigate a flagged area. It would be the same number of people, but vastly better quality of life. Beyond that, if one is focused on quality of life, some of the common events, like repairing crossing gates hit by vehicles, could be rolled into one job class that could be more locally based along the line, instead of separate job classes spread further out along the line.
I don’t know why the Biden administration is trying so hard to protect union jobs. The majority of union members I know are voting for Trump.
The FRA is saying, in other words, you can’t automate unless you can guarantee no one will lose a job (even if other jobs would be created in the process).
Then almost everyone will want to be a “visual inspector” because the law says they can’t be replaced.
There is some benefits to visual inspections, but the issue is they can’t be everywhere at the same time. To do so would be prohibitively expensive per track mile.
If automation can detect a high priority defect, then by all means send a crew out for a visual confirmation. If there are defect types that are immune to automation, then absolutely, send a crew to check for them.
But to blanket regulate the jobs involved is weird. It will force the railroads to shift the inspector titles to the IT or technology teams that actually support the automation work. Not the actual inspections.