Train safety regulation repealed during Trump administration

On Feb. 3, almost 50 practice vehicles, together with some carrying hazardous supplies, derailed in a fiery crash in East Palestine, Ohio. Following the crash, officers performed a managed burn of among the practice vehicles to forestall a possible explosion of a poisonous chemical known as vinyl chloride that was onboard. 

Thousands of residents needed to quickly evacuate due to well being considerations associated to the fumes. The reason behind the derailment has not but been decided, and an investigation is ongoing.

Over per week after the crash, U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg posted a Twitter thread on the work the Department of Transportation is presently doing to make trains safer. In one of many tweets, Buttigieg claimed one rail safety regulation involving brakes was withdrawn by the Trump administration in 2018 due to a legislation handed by Congress in 2015. Several others on Twitter shared similar claims.

VERIFY viewer Martha not too long ago emailed our staff to ask if these claims are true.

Did the Department of Transportation repeal a practice safety rule in 2018?

Yes, the Department of Transportation repealed a practice safety rule in 2018.

The Department of Transportation (DOT) repealed a practice safety rule in 2018 that required putting in electronically controlled pneumatic (ECP) brakes on trains that carried extremely flammable hazardous supplies, together with crude oil.

Most of the world’s trains are outfitted with air-braking systems that use compressed air to cease every practice automotive individually. ECP brakes, which use digital indicators to concurrently apply and launch brakes all through the size of a practice, have been launched to beat the drawbacks of the air-brake system on lengthy freight trains.

“Trains stop shorter with ECP brakes and everything is simultaneous. You don’t get the big run-ins that you get with conventional air brakes,” Steven Ditmeyer, former director of analysis and improvement on the Federal Railroad Administration, advised VERIFY accomplice station WFMY.

John Risch, the nationwide legislative director for the Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers (SMART) Union, wrote that “ECP brakes are the greatest safety advancement I have seen in my 40 years in the railroad industry.”

“ECP brakes slow and stop trains up to 70% faster than conventional brakes and are the safest, most advanced train braking system in the world,” Risch mentioned.

In December 2015, President Barack Obama signed the Fixing America’s Surface Transportation (FAST) Act into legislation following various high-profile practice derailments within the U.S. and Canada.

The FAST Act included a provision that ordered the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and different researchers to evaluate the ECP brake rule following complaints from railroad corporations and lobbyists, together with the Association of American Railroads.

The GAO report found flaws within the DOT’s estimates of potential enterprise advantages of the ECP brakes, together with diminished gasoline consumption, diminished put on on wheels, and improved operational efficiencies. After the GAO launched its findings, the DOT carried out a revised cost-benefit analysis, which decided the advantages of ECP brakes didn’t outweigh the price of implementing them. On Sept. 25, 2018, the DOT issued a final rule to take away the ECP brake rule from the FAST Act. 

A couple of months after the repeal, the Associated Press released a study that discovered that the DOT’s evaluation omitted as much as $117 million in estimated future damages from practice derailments that may very well be prevented through the use of digital brakes.

As a results of the AP research, the DOT issued a technical correction in January 2019 however maintained the prices exceeded the advantages of the ECP brake rule, in accordance with the Harvard University Environmental & Energy Law Program.

The Biden administration has not reinstated the ECP brake rule. In Buttigieg’s current Twitter thread, he implied the DOT is constrained by legislation from reissuing the mandate.

“I’m always ready to work with Congress on furthering (or in some cases, restoring) our capacity to address rail safety issues,” Buttigieg tweeted.

In a Feb. 14 press release, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), the lead investigative company into the Ohio practice derailment, mentioned investigators had examined the rail automotive that initiated the crash on Feb. 3.

“Surveillance video from a residence showed what appears to be a wheel bearing in the final stage of overheat failure moments before the derailment,” the NTSB mentioned. The wheelset and overheated wheel bearing are presently being examined by NTSB engineers.  

In an e-mail, an NTSB spokesperson advised VERIFY the practice concerned within the Ohio derailment was not outfitted with ECP brakes. On Feb. 16, NTSB chair Jennifer Homendy addressed misinformation spreading in regards to the derailment on Twitter.

Homendy directly acknowledged that the ECP brake rule wouldn’t have prevented the crash if carried out as a result of the practice that derailed in East Palestine was a blended freight practice that contained solely three placarded Class 3 flammable liquids vehicles. Homendy mentioned the ECP braking rule would have utilized solely to high-hazard flammable trains.

“This means even if the rule had gone into effect, this train wouldn’t have had ECP brakes,” Homendy said.

The Federal Railroad Administration says it’s persevering with to guage the potential for utilization of ECP brake tools to enhance railroad safety and braking efficiency, comparable to researching the potential improvement of different enabling applied sciences to assist adoption.

“Pending the results of the NTSB investigation, FRA is prepared to use our full authority to ensure accountability and advance safety,” a Federal Railroad Administration spokesperson advised VERIFY.