Gene J. Puskar/AP Photo
A view of the Norfolk Southern freight train that derailed on February 3 in East Palestine, Ohio
The Republican Party is attempting to claim the Norfolk Southern train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, as a pet issue. Fox News has been giving it almost nonstop coverage, and Donald Trump visited the town this week, where he delivered one of his trademark rambling speeches and then bought McDonald’s for locals.
As the Prospect’s Jarod Facundo notes, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg has been doing damage control in the media, and belatedly visited East Palestine on Thursday.
It beggars belief that Donald Trump, appointer of industry stooges who all but climbed out of a vinyl chloride tank to run the EPA, whose administration rolled back several rail safety regulations, and whose party has long been one of the most gleefully hostile to environmental protection in the world, would attempt to target Biden as the cause of this toxic disaster. But the GOP might just be able to do it, if Democrats don’t get their act together.
Let me first cover some details. The proximate reason for the derailment is still being investigated, but according to a preliminary National Transportation Safety Board report released Thursday, it was likely caused by an overheating wheel bearing. Rail companies install sensors along their tracks to discover problems, and they detected a steadily hotter bearing as train 32N progressed toward East Palestine. When one read a temperature of 253 degrees above the ambient temperature, an alarm sounded and the crew applied the brakes, but by then it was too late.
The root reason the axle failed, however, is that the rail companies intentionally run their networks ragged. For years, the industry has practiced something they call “precision scheduled railroading” (PSR). As Matthew Jinoo Buck reported for the Prospect, PSR is neither precision, nor scheduled, nor in many cases even railroading. (I’m not a train expert, but my understanding is that they are typically supposed to remain on the tracks.)
Under the banner of PSR, rail executives have cut back on maintenance of both trains and tracks, run much longer trains, and slashed staffing. One result is that tracks are frequently clogged and freight deliveries delayed because the trains are too long for the “sidings” where they can pass one another. Another is that they crash a lot—over a thousand derailments a year. (That number is way down since the 1970s, but of course the trains are much larger so each accident has more impact. Rail cars carrying hazardous materials have derailed at a higher rate over the past two decades.)
PSR has been a bonanza for rail company executives and shareholders, who got to direct a geyser of precisely scheduled profits into their pockets. Workers, shippers, and entire communities have paid the price.
The root reason the axle failed is that the rail companies intentionally run their networks ragged.
It is actually not that difficult to prevent trains from running off the tracks. The rail worker unions know how to do it: Rigorously maintain and inspect the tracks and the trains, keep the lengths down, add more staff, and keep up with the best automatic safety mechanisms. In other words, just do the opposite of PSR. The European Union rail network, for instance, has plenty of problems, but a recent study found that fatal rail accidents there (both passenger and freight rail) declined by about 40 percent between 2009 and 2019, thanks to some modest reforms. In the United States, by contrast, accidents on Class I railroads are up by about 15 percent since 2013, per an ABC News analysis of government data.
That brings me back to the politics. Republicans, of course, have no serious proposals about how to prevent train derailments. That would involve complicated policy details and reducing the profits of oligarchs, perhaps their two least favorite things on Earth. But they don’t need to be honest or consistent to whip up a frenzy about East Palestine. In the more insane corners of the internet, we can already see some narratives taking shape: Democrats are in the pockets of Big Railroad, or affirmative action hire Pete Buttigieg is too gay to understand freight shipping, or Joe Biden was bribed by George Soros into sending tanks of vinyl chloride to poison the white children of Ohio so they can be replaced with transgender immigrants.
Unfortunately for them, Democrats need to actually have a substantive response. In the first place, Biden is president and it is his responsibility to protect the American people from dangerous chemical spills. Second, they actually do bear some responsibility for this disaster. Much of the monopolization and deregulation of freight rail happened under Democratic presidencies, and the party didn’t fix it when it had full control of government in 2009-2010 or in 2021-2022, no doubt in part because of extensive campaign contributions the industry gives to both parties.
Yes, Trump’s rail regulators rolled back rules on train braking systems and disclosure of locomotives with high-hazard flammable materials on board. But Biden’s regulators haven’t yet reversed those policies, and they could, without any additional authorization from Congress.
To be fair to Secretary Pete, the agency that oversees the railroads, the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA), is notoriously weak, underfunded, and influenced by industry. But that suggests a sketch of a reform package: more power for the FRA to regulate private railroads—particularly to impose length limits—plus more money so it can actually carry out regular inspections across the entire rail network. It should also finish rolling out its two-person crew requirement, which has been in the works for a long time already. (The EPA’s ruling that Norfolk Southern will have to pay for the cleanup itself was also a good move.)
More broadly, Democrats need to stay ahead of the issue in terms of messaging. It was inexcusable for Buttigieg to not so much as publicly mention the derailment for ten days, and it’s inexcusable for his crowd to be complaining to the media about taking the brunt of the criticism. He’s a nakedly ambitious guy, and if he wants to get any further in politics he should do a good job.
Moreover, Democrats might not be able to pass anything through the Republican-controlled House (though they might as well try), but if they keep up the pressure and attention, the railroads might do what they want anyway. Norfolk Southern clearly thought that this derailment would blow over relatively quickly, given their pitiful initial offers of compensation. Now they are scrambling to limit the damage, offering more cleanup services and sick days to their workers. If Democrats raise enough of a fuss, the company, and the entire rail industry, might just start operating their business responsibly.
