Cantwell: “Rail safety shouldn't be a partisan issue”

U.S. Senator Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), Chair of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, spoke to local government leaders from cities and towns across the country regarding priorities for bipartisan rail safety legislation during a Zoom conference hosted by the National League of Cities. Ohio Senators Sherrod Brown and J.D. Vance, who introduced the Railway Safety Act of 2023, also spoke to local officials. Sen. Cantwell hopes to advance legislation through the Committee in the coming weeks.

“[T]here needs to be a strong oversight of the rail industry so that no community experiences the events that happened in Ohio in February,” Sen. Cantwell said. “We need to have communities of all sizes and populations feel like they have the resources to respond to these incidents.”

“Rail safety shouldn't be a partisan issue,” she added.

Sen. Cantwell listed several priorities for the bipartisan legislation, including addressing the length of trains, providing information about transporting hazardous materials, improving the use of hotbox detectors, improving the inspection of railcars and better preparing and equipping communities with response plans.

Senator Cantwell’s remarks as delivered:

Train derailments occur every day, and each time one happens, communities that are represented on this call today are put at risk, not to mention the disruption to shippers and their products….

Last year, Norfolk Southern alone reported 120 derailments, totaling about $30 million in damages, and blocking the main line rail traffic for days. So Union Pacific just had one this weekend in Texas and with people injured.

The Pacific Northwest has also seen our fair share of derailments. In the past decade, derailments in the State of Washington nearly doubled. In 2020, a crude oil train derailed and burst into flames in the city of Custer, causing residents to have to evacuate and an oil spill of 29,000 gallons.

… [L]ess than a month ago, a BNSF Railway train also derailed due to human error in the Swinomish Reservation in Skagit County in my state, spilling 3,500 gallons of diesel near Padilla Bay. And this is a very sensitive aquatic ecosystem. Very beautiful part of our state. You want to see bald eagles, just get on the train and ride it up from Seattle to Vancouver and you'll see lots of bald eagles. So it's such an important area not to have an oil spill.

And in 2016, a Union Pacific train in Oregon derailed and spilled 42,000 gallons into the Columbia River, requiring 28 regional fire departments and hazmat teams from Washington and Oregon to respond.

Many of you know because you represent these cities … the train routes in many parts of our states and cities go through very sensitive areas, or sometimes very hard to reach areas, like in the Columbia River Gorge.

[T]hese derailments are part of a concerning industry trend. Over the past decade, accident rates have increased by 14%. And from 2017 to 2021, railroads cut their workforce by 22% and reduced investment in the network by 25%. So we think this has added to the complexity of what we're dealing with today.

Last month, you know that we had a hearing with the Norfolk Southern CEO to account for East Palestine, Ohio, derailment. And we heard from many residents and individuals about the inspection practices. For instance, I've learned that Norfolk Southern’s employees received only 30 seconds to inspect one side of a railcar. Senator Peters received information that some Norfolk Southern railcars had gone 90,000 miles without a full inspection.

So we know one thing, there needs to be strong oversight of the rail industry so that no community experiences the events that happened in Ohio in February.

It's clear that there were a variety of rail and hazardous materials safety failures that contributed to the derailment, all of which are a focus for potential legislation. And again, I want to thank my colleagues, Senator Vance, who serves on the Commerce Committee, and Senator Brown for their role in trying to promote legislation [to] protect communities, first responders, rail employees [and the] environment.

So the National League of Cities has already been a force to improve this. And I know that you've been helpful. For example, I proposed legislation on blocked railroad crossings because they were a major problem for our communities. And so in [2021], we sponsored legislation, and as part of our infrastructure bill that got $3 billion for a new Railroad Crossing Elimination program to help communities improve safety and mobility.

Now, the great thing about this program is that … cities can apply directly for these funds. They don't go through the State Department of Transportation. What we were trying to do is empower cities, they know their community, they know what problems are being caused. So we want to do the same thing here.

And that's why we're working with my colleagues, as I mentioned, Senators Vance and Brown and also with Ranking Member Cruz to get a consensus from communities across the nation on what we need to do.

I know that my colleague, the Majority Leader Senator Schumer, would like to move this legislation to the floor as quickly as possible, and that we want to set some specific priorities.

One, trains are getting longer and I'm concerned that DOT regulations have not caught up. And that is why we want to make sure that the National Academies study on safety of long trains in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill is part of this equation. I'm fighting to build off of the information that we've already gotten from DOT on recommendations to improve safety, given the length and weight of trains involved in accidents.

Second, local governments and state governments can't be left in the dark about hazardous materials that trains transport through their neighborhoods -- have to have more information and a response plan.

In 2015, I already had addressed this by introducing legislation that said let's give more information of the types of hazardous materials that are being transported. But now, we want the safety and security oversight so that this information is [maintained] for people to really believe that their community has a plan and response for what is being driven through their communities by rail.

I'm also concerned that hotbox detectors are not in line with the best practices of the industry. DOT’s lack of oversight over these hotbox detectors must end. So I hope that legislation will help prevent derailments in the future by saying, at least in the most populated areas, we need to have more hotboxes to be able to know and stop trains in a much quicker fashion.

We also need, as I mentioned earlier, to improve the inspection of railcars for certain deficiencies that might be there and 30 seconds is not enough. When I asked the Norfolk Southern CEO about this, he was unfamiliar with the documents that were provided to us. But clearly, we want to have an oversight of inspections that give people the time that it takes to do the inspection and to make sure that the trains are not showing the kind of fatigue or problems that could arise later.

And fifth, communities across the nation, we believe, need to be better prepared. We want the responders that are conducting planning and drills to have additional resources to make sure that they have the equipment, that they have the plan, that they have the means to respond…

Rail safety shouldn't be a partisan issue.

And I believe that the Committee worked together, when my former colleague Ted Stevens was chairing the Committee, to basically have an oil spill trust liability fund that helped in oil spill responses on our maritime investments. That's because in that case, you didn't even know where the spills were coming from, but you needed to clean them up quickly. Here, we want to have a system that is modernized with the right amount of equipment and people to get the job done.

We need to have communities of all sizes and populations feel like they have the resources to respond to these incidents.

So that's what we're working on. And I thank you for your time today to allow me to share some of those priorities.