Steph Chambers/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette via AP
Emergency personnel work the scene of a freight train derailment in Pittsburgh, August 5, 2018.
In railroading, danger is omnipresent. Freight train crews, typically consisting of a conductor and an engineer, bear the awesome responsibility of keeping a critical piece of the supply chain moving. They regularly handle the complex decision-making required to transport goods across some of the most unforgiving regions in the U.S. Help is seldom close by, and disaster can strike at a moment’s notice. Even the slowest freight trains hauling several thousand tons of cargo can take up to a mile to stop. A mechanical failure, track obstruction, or medical emergency can quickly devolve into a broad catastrophe without swift, corrective action.
Maintenance-of-way workers who build and maintain essential rail infrastructure face similar challenges: exposure to hazardous materials, extreme weather conditions, locomotive noise on par with levels produced by aircraft during takeoff and landing, hot metal surfaces, and electrical hazards.
Rail carriers have long claimed to prioritize safety above all else, but their actions tell a different story. Inspired by Wall Street demands for cost-cutting, the widespread adoption of precision scheduled railroading, or PSR, has led North American railroads to pursue drastic workforce reductions, run longer trains with smaller crews, and inadvertently shift costs onto shippers in a bid to maximize shareholder value.
“That reduction has been extremely hard on the workers. Physically hard, mentally hard,” Tony Cardwell, president of the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employes Division (BMWED), a member of the Teamsters Rail Conference, told the Prospect.
Now the railroad industry, which in recent years has spent more on stock buybacks than rail and equipment maintenance, has an even greater opportunity to implement PSR’s extreme cost-cutting measures, helped along by the Trump administration’s deregulatory agenda. Rail industry lobbyists and their allies are pushing to reduce the already threadbare crews with remotely operated or entirely autonomous trains, despite the need for split-second decisions to adapt to changing circumstances. Ultimately, the desire is to take human beings out of the process entirely and rely on ghost trains, despite the potential risks to the countryside and nearby residents.
THE SUPPOSED GOAL OF PSR is to improve efficiency by lowering operating expenses as a percentage of revenue. In practice, however, PSR has been the opposite of efficient. Rail workers of all stripes have been forced to do more with less, as many have seen their share of the workload increase by way of mandatory overtime. Furthermore, railroaders and shippers alike have laid the blame for service disruptions on tighter schedules and longer trains, both by-products of PSR.
The prospect of automation fits neatly into the PSR framework; why stop at one crew member when you can have zero? Autonomous trains took a big step forward earlier this year when the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA), the agency responsible for rail safety regulation in the U.S., granted Georgia Central Railway permission to conduct a trial run of its autonomous train pilot project with Parallel Systems. (Georgia Central workers just voted to join the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen union in advance of the project.)
It certainly will be a trial. Even if artificial intelligence can match human situational awareness in real time—a questionable assumption—ghost trains have not proven any ability to successfully traverse aging rail infrastructure. Large-scale deployment of autonomous train tech will likely need to be accompanied by substantial up-front costs and maintenance, further refining and testing for Positive Train Control (the current remote system that monitors tracks for safety), and protections against cybersecurity threats. But given that automating everything from track inspections to locomotives would significantly lower operating ratios in the long term, it should come as no surprise that business interest groups are pushing for the broader implementation of autonomous technology, even before these up-front investments are made.
Rail carriers have long claimed to prioritize safety above all else, but their actions tell a different story.
One such group, the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), a libertarian think tank, has called on the FRA to rescind a Biden-era rule requiring a second crew member on all Class I freight (which refers to railroads generating $1.05 billion or more in annual revenues) and passenger trains. The renewed opposition came after the FRA issued a request for information in early April, soliciting public comment on “existing regulations, guidance, paperwork requirements, and other regulatory obligations that can be modified or repealed” to align with the Trump administration’s deregulatory agenda.
In its comment letter, CEI dismissed the rule as a union concession crafted to “block further automation of railways” and “protect the jobs of the workers represented by the rail industry unions.”
In an interview with the Prospect, Greg Regan, president of the Transportation Trades Department, AFL-CIO (TTD), the largest transportation labor federation in the U.S., said he was not shocked by CEI’s letter: “It makes me roll my eyes.”
The position of TTD and other unions representing rail workers is simple: Automation should augment the essential work railroaders do, not replace them. CEI’s claim that there is “no practical reason why these trains could not operate with just one-person crews or be operated entirely remotely” falls flat when confronted with the grim realities of railroading today, and the importance of safeguarding the public.
According to the FRA, there were over 200 mainline derailments involving Class I freight trains last year. Derailments are typically caused by worn-down switch points and damaged wheel treads. Washouts, which occur when floodwaters, heavy rain, or snow erode the terrain under a track, can also cause a train to derail.
Fatigue is one of the many challenges train crews face on a regular basis. Not only are the hours long and the perils multifaceted, but the uncertainty around when shifts will begin can be especially burdensome on rail workers. Remaining vigilant is what allows crew members to respond quickly to potentially life-threatening situations.
Failure to engage in proper fatigue management can be fatal, but having at least two crew members aboard does much to prevent this. When the FRA fielded public comment on train crew size in July 2022, the volume of responses in support of them “raised legitimate safety concerns that railroads, on their own, have not been able to adequately address,” said Amitabha Bose, the agency’s former administrator. According to one railroader, two crew members “act as a safety check and balance on one another,” ensuring that one person or the other does not fall asleep, and providing companionship during downtime.
“One person working alone in the cab is forced suicide,” said another.
CEI IS NOT ALONE in neglecting the testimonies of rail workers. In May, the Association of American Railroads (AAR), which represents the largest rail carriers in North America, also proposed that FRA rescind the two-person train crew rule, limit the “ability for employees to abuse” fatigue risk management programs (FRMPs), and separately asked the U.S. Department of Transportation to reduce FRA’s reliance on periodic visual track inspections in favor of technology-based inspections with self-diagnostic signal equipment, and extend inspection intervals for railcars using electronic air brake slip systems, among other recommendations.
“For too long, outdated, arbitrary regulations have stood in the way of implementing data-backed solutions that can further strengthen railroads’ already remarkable safety record,” said Ian Jefferies, president and CEO of AAR.
The industry’s fascination with Automated Track Inspection (ATI) machines typically neglects the inherent limits of the technology. Railroads began augmenting visual track inspections with ATIs in the 1970s. Cardwell told the Prospect that the technology has hardly advanced since the 1990s and cannot detect the vast majority of defects otherwise visible to the human eye. “It’s basically a glorified tape measure,” he said.
On April 24, AAR also filed a safety waiver petition with FRA to further scale back visual track inspections. FRA currently requires railroads to conduct visual track inspections either once or twice per week. AAR’s proposal would widen this interval, reducing the frequency of such inspections by up to 75 percent. “Each main track and siding will be traversed by vehicle or inspected on foot at least once every month and each main track and siding will be visually inspected at least twice per month,” per the petition.
AAR also went a step further, requesting permission to circumvent the 24-hour window rail carriers have to submit defect reports and address disaster-prone irregularities on routes or territories where Automated Track Inspection is used. According to the petition, “AAR proposes handling single-class defects within 72 hours … and multi-class defects within 48 hours.”
“It’s extremely dangerous, what they’re doing,” Cardwell told the Prospect. “I can’t blow the whistle loud enough on this.”
TRUMP’S PICK TO RUN THE FRA signals good fortune for the rail industry. David Fink Jr., a former railway executive, vowed to partner with the industry if confirmed as the agency’s administrator during his Senate confirmation hearing on May 13. He emphasized the “need to refresh government regulations,” do away with “burdensome and outdated roadblocks,” and improve safety through technological innovation.
During his tenure as president of Pan Am, a New England–based Class II rail carrier acquired by Class I CSX Transportation in June 2022, Fink claimed that he met with organized labor more than a dozen times per year, and spearheaded efforts to cultivate a safety culture at the company. But under his leadership, critics argue, the only culture fostered at the company was one of retaliation.
In 2014, Pan Am appealed a $50,000 fine from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration for retaliating against a conductor who reported a safety hazard to their manager. When Pan Am appealed the decision again in 2017, a federal appeals court determined that the company had “a corporate culture more focused on retaliation than on safety,” and referred to a previous ruling by an administrative law judge, which found that 99 percent of “injuries at Pan Am reportable to the FRA triggered formal charges against the injured employee.”
Unions representing railroaders have pledged to continue fighting to prevent ghost trains.
Democratic senators grilled Fink about his company’s safety record. When Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI) questioned him about a 2022 FRA audit that criticized Pan Am’s leadership for failing to “develop a positive safety culture throughout the organization,” Fink disputed the findings, prompting a sharp response from Sen. Peters: “We cannot have that when it comes to safety.”
Republican senators cast a party-line vote to report Fink favorably, landing his final confirmation a spot on the Senate calendar. Although he committed to upholding the two-person train crew rule at the recent hearing, rail unions have doubted his willingness to improve rail safety.
Ron Kaminkow, a trustee at Railroad Workers United (RWU) and former brakeman, conductor, and engineer, compared Fink to Ronald Batory, the FRA administrator who served under President Trump between 2018 and 2021. Batory faced backlash from organized labor during the COVID-19 pandemic for granting safety waiver petitions to rail carriers, allowing them to temporarily circumvent numerous federally mandated regulations. At the time, railroads cited the potential for staffing shortages, a self-inflicted wound the pandemic ultimately rubbed salt into.
When asked about Fink, Kaminkow told the Prospect: “There’s no reason to believe this guy is cut from a different cloth.”
A STICKING POINT of the recent confirmation hearing was the Railway Safety Act of 2025, a bipartisan bill introduced by Reps. Chris Deluzio (D-PA), Nick LaLota (R-NY), Michael Rulli (R-OH), and John Garamendi (D-CA) earlier this year. In an interview with the Prospect, Rep. Deluzio remarked how past legislative efforts to enhance rail safety have been advanced by bipartisan coalitions. “I mean, for crying out loud, J.D. Vance was one of my Senate leads,” Deluzio said.
The legislative effort is a direct response to the Norfolk Southern train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, on February 3, 2023. In the years leading up to that derailment of 38 rail cars, AAR and Norfolk Southern—a member of the association—pressured the FRA to eliminate regulations requiring electronically controlled pneumatic (ECP) brakes capable of stopping a train at a faster rate than traditional braking systems. The resistance came after rail carriers’ initial fervor for the technology died off when they realized regulation requiring such brakes would eat into their bottom line.
As The Lever reported, the Norfolk Southern train that derailed was not equipped with ECP brakes. President Trump rescinded the rule requiring ECP brakes during his first term in 2017. Trackside detectors also failed to accurately measure the overheated wheel bearing that caused the derailment in time for the crew members to take corrective action.
“It gets to the problem of how our campaign finance system works, and the ability of big money to drown out the voices of workers and people and small-business owners and so many others,” Rep. Deluzio told the Prospect. “I always think it’s useful to remind people that the distorting power of money and corporate money that flows through our elections has real consequences on Capitol Hill and the kind of laws that our Congress passes.”
Nearly half of those living in Pennsylvania’s 17th Congressional District reside within a mile of the tracks, according to Deluzio; another 95 percent live less than five miles away. The current iteration of the Railway Safety Act aims to protect the people of western Pennsylvania and beyond. It seeks to fortify the ability of trackside detectors to identify defects, raise penalties on unscrupulous rail carriers, fortify safety procedures for trains carrying hazardous materials, and permanently require railroads to operate with at least two crew members, among other measures.
But the bill has stalled.
“I heard a lot from Donald Trump and J.D. Vance about not leaving behind East Palestine and the people of western Pennsylvania; now’s the time to put up,” he told the Prospect. “Republican leadership—they are the folks to be asked why that hasn’t happened yet.”
A closer look at the Railway Safety Act of 2025 reveals that railroad carriers would be permitted to seek a waiver to bypass the train crew staffing requirement. Even the Biden-era rule allows the FRA to grant waivers in special circumstances; Kaminkow described the existing loophole as a “dog and pony show.” Although AAR has characterized the process of obtaining one of these waivers as having “an impossible-to-satisfy ‘risk matrix,’” the extent to which they are granted heavily depends on who ends up at the helm of the FRA.
And right now, it appears that person will be David Fink Jr.
In the interim, unions representing railroaders have pledged to continue fighting to prevent ghost trains, instead of holding out for some legislative miracle.
“The thing that’s going to save us is workers saying ‘no,’” Kaminkow remarked.
