East Palestine anniversary calls for careful attention, not rushed legislation

One year ago today, a tragic train accident in East Palestine, Ohio shocked the nation. Thousands of gallons of hazardous materials were dumped into the environment and subjected to controlled combustion at the direction of the EPA.

Surprisingly, there were no human casualties as a result of the accident itself. At least so far, there have been no deaths. The National Transportation Safety Board continues its careful investigation, and we await its conclusions. Unfortunately, the lack of critical information about the causes of the accident does not stop special interest groups from pushing for reform before we find out.

Ohio U.S. Sens. Sherrod Brown (D) and J.D. Vance (R) are proposing a bill called the Railroad Safety Act that would, among other things, require all trains to have two crew members and certain trackside detectors. I moved quickly for this purpose.

But the bill would jump on the NTSB’s findings. This embodies the wrong approach to rail regulation.

One of the first conclusions of NTSB investigators after the accident was that the three crew members (two full-time employees and one trainee) had done nothing wrong. Therefore, the mandate to have her two crew members clearly would have done nothing to prevent this accident. The government’s new crew obligations would be a misplaced quid pro quo for railway unions, which have lobbied for the changes for years. Unfortunately for the union, the majority of studies on the effect of crew size on safety have found that just one crew member is sufficient.

Regarding the issue of trackside detectors, each railway company is installing them voluntarily (some are already installed at the relevant railways). Perhaps as development progresses, communication from the detectors will improve, resulting in better and more secure technology. To put it mildly, an accident of this magnitude does not contribute to the success of a railroad’s business, so companies already have an incentive to avoid it happening again. According to some reports, the East Palestine accident has already cost the railroad more than $1 billion.

On the other hand, prescriptive mandates like the one Ohio lawmakers have in mind risk creating a problem known as technology lock-in. This means that when a better solution emerges, the currently prescribed technology will be the only acceptable technology. Rather than trying to prevent previous accidents, a better way to approach this problem would be to set safety goals and allow railroads to develop the best ways to achieve them. For example, if one of the goals is, “There is no wheel bearing whose temperature exceeds It should be like this.

As a coalition of states and national groups wrote in a letter to Congress last year, the bill “contains too many prescriptive policies that unfairly favor organized labor and undermine elected officials.” It would give unwarranted authority to bureaucrats who are not properly trained.”

Additionally, the bill departs from the generally accepted way regulation has been conducted for the past half-century or so by exempting regulators from the requirement to conduct a cost-benefit analysis of the rules they establish under the law. Therefore, regulations do not have to justify the costs they impose on railroads, and those costs are reflected in the prices shippers have to pay, the prices we all pay for the goods made from the materials shipped. It turns out. It is simple and good practice for regulators to be aware of the costs they are imposing and to ensure that everyone knows there is a net benefit as a result of the rules.

All of this suggests we should wait to see what the NTSB says in its final report on the accident. We should not let the anniversary dictate our conclusions about their bill.

At the same time, railway companies should already be taking proactive steps to improve their operations. Recall that the infamous Exxon Valdez disaster of 1989 tarnished the reputation of all oil transporters, even though it was a one-off disaster involving one company’s mistake . Even if other railroad companies believe that what happened in East Palestine cannot happen to them, they should review their engineering and operations for potential vulnerabilities. Safety is important to all of us. It should be important to our elected representatives that we get it right.

Ian Murray is a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a free market public policy organization based in Washington, DC.