WASHINGTON — The Railroads, Pipelines, and Hazardous Materials Subcommittee of the House Committee on Transportation & Infrastructure has released the list of witnesses scheduled to appear in its Tuesday hearing on railroad safety — and no one representing a railroad or rail-industry group is among the seven people on the agenda.
The hearing, “Examining the State of Rail Safety in the Aftermath of the Derailment in East Palestine, Ohio,” is set for 2 p.m. ET in room 2167 of the Rayburn House Office Building. The committee says it will “review and discuss actions taken in response to the Norfolk Southern derailment … by the federal government and the freight railroad industry.” Live video of the hearing is slated to be available here.
Scheduled witnesses are U.S. Rep. Michael Rulli (R-Ohio), whose district includes East Palestine; Tristan Brown, deputy administrator of the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration; Jennifer Homendy, chair of the National Transportation Safety Board; Federal Railroad Administration Administrator Amit Bose; Gregory Hines, national legislative director of the International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail, and Transportation Workers (SMART); David Arouca, national legislative director of the Transportation Communications Union; and Jeff Sloane, senior director for regulatory and scientific affairs of the American Chemistry Council.
Agree with Roger. Missing is an important witness: the actual operator of the railroad. Administrators only run the personnel and execute policy, but have no direct experience with the events, equipment and operations. They can only testify what they have been told and we is widely known already. So why have a hearing? They want to be perceived well but not get to any solutions.
With that list, sounds like they already have planned the results for this hearing to be pretty much anti-railroad.