By Brock Hrehor, More Perfect Union

Big rail is gunning to go automated—but critics worry it could have lasting consequences on safety and spark an uptick in accidents.

The Association of American Railroads, the lobbying arm of industry behemoths like Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern, has petitioned the Federal Rail Administration for a waiver allowing the companies it represents to reduce their required amount of visual inspections by 75 percent.

If granted, critics warn, the waiver could result in an increase in derailments (it’s estimated that there are currently around three per day) and have lasting impacts on rail safety—or result in another incident like the East Palestine derailment.

The deregulatory push is premised on an assumption that the automated inspection systems can identify defects in railways as thoroughly and accurately as human inspectors. Railway safety experts and union officials, however, argue that this is untrue and that the crusade for automation raises serious safety concerns.

“A lot of people are under the idea that [automated systems] can look for all the defects and it will find all the defects and that’s because [the rail companies] use this creative language of ‘automated track inspection,’” Roy Morrison, director of safety at the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees, told More Perfect Union. “That’s not what’s happening.”

The technology in question is called “track geometry measurement,” which some railroads already use to help inspectors check a track’s gauge, alignment, and curvature. Though rail unions and inspectors are generally in favor of the technology, they caution that it’s unable to pick up all of the defects human inspectors can.

Morrison told More Perfect Union that of the 23 defects regulatorily required for visual track inspection, track geometry only is equipped to look for six.

“Track geometry measurement is really nothing more than a really fancy tape measure. And it does a really good job of that, which is why we support bringing on the technology,” said Morrison. “It’s a great technology for what it does, but it’s not an inspection.”

The waiver also includes a request to allow railroads up to 72 hours to address any problems after they’ve been identified. Current regulations require human inspectors to address any potential defects immediately. This could result in scenarios where trains transporting hazardous materials and toxic chemicals would continue moving over defected tracks for days after the problem has been identified.

“I don’t think anyone living around a railroad track or within a mile or two of a railroad track wants to have chemicals running over defects, or wants to have passenger trains running over defects in their area,” BMWED President Tony Cardwell told More Perfect Union. “It will cause derailments, and it will cause death and it will cause harm and it will destroy the environment. And that’s our warning to people.”

For a full look at the shady scheme to undermine rail safety, the likelihood of the waiver’s adoption, and the unionists trying to block it, watch the full report below.

Reporting by Ian McKenna. See below for a full transcript of the video.

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VOICEOVER: Keeping railroad tracks safe is supposed to be their job.

TYLER PAVICH, Railroader: Like our rulebook, they say it was written in blood, because every rule in there is because someone was injured.

VO: But the biggest railroads want them to do it less.

REP. DINA TITUS: Class 1 railroads have requested a safety waiver to reduce visual track inspections from twice a week to twice a month.

TONY CARDWELL, BMWED: Nobody in the rail industry on the executive side can explain why that’s rational.

VO: Big Rail, it seems, wants to go automated.

ROY MORRISON, BMWED: They use this creative language of automated track inspections.

SEAN DUFFY, Sec. of Transportation: Automated track inspections.

CSX CORPORATE MATERIALS: Autonomous track testing vehicles.

AAR MATERIAL: Automated track inspection systems.

ROY: A lot of people are under the idea that this can look for all the defects and it will find all the defects. But that’s not what’s happening.

VO: This is the story about the fight over rail safety in America today.

ROY, at meeting: We’re averaging three reportable derailments a day in this country. Every single day, we have the opportunity for an East Palestine three times. And for some reason, the rail industry is okay with that.

VO: The rail titans trying to call the shots.

TONY: They’re all billion-dollar-a-quarter type revenue. They’re giant corporations.

VO: And the technology they’re trying to push in the name of safety.

TYLER: I would not think minimizing us out there in replacement for a geometry car would be a good idea at all.

VO: Because for big business, safety costs money.

TONY: The idea that this vulture capitalism is okay. That this greed before everything else in safety is nuts.

VO: But the question is, could deregulation cost us even more?

ROY: If track inspectors are not allowed to do their job, we’re going to have more derailments. No ifs, ands, or buts about that.

TYLER: You do realize when people new come into town, they’re like, oh wow, there’s a train. How close is it? And I’m like, we’re kind of surrounded.

VO: Tyler Pavich is a railroad worker in Nebraska.

TYLER: A track inspector gets a territory, and that’s their responsibility. You are in charge of inspecting all of it and making sure that train traffic can move safely.

VO: Track inspectors work for the railroad companies, visually inspecting track for defects and unsafe conditions. Conditions that could cause train derailments.

TYLER: There’s something about having a small territory where you can become familiar with it. And you can start noticing subtle things that are hints to something major. That’s where you almost want inspectors out there more. To get more familiar, not less.

VO: But less visual inspections is exactly what Big Rail has been pushing for.

TONY: Track inspectors are required on the highest classes in the United States of rail. They’re required to do two inspections per week.

VO: Tony Cardwell is the president of the union that represents these rail workers, the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way employees division of the Teamsters.

TONY: The carriers are asking for those inspections to be reduced to twice a month. 75% reduction in the required inspections.

VO: In April, some of the biggest rail companies in the country submitted a safety waiver petition to the Federal Railroad Administration through an industry group known as the…

TONY: Association of American Railroads. And the AAR is oftentimes the group that’s doing most or all of the lobbying for the railroads. So they represent Union Pacific Railroad. They represent North Fork Southern Railroad, Canadian Pacific Railroad, Canadian National Railroad, CSX Railroad. So all the major railroads. The untold secret is that, you know, velocity is everything in their world.

ROY: The reason the AAR wants the waiver is because the number one thing slowing down trains is having your people out on the track in front of them.

VO: Roy Morrison is the safety director for the BMWED.

ROY: If they can take the track inspectors and remove them from the track, they can run more trains. It’s really just to try and make money for the railroads.

VO: The rail carriers want instead to rely more on what they’re calling automated track inspection technology.

ROY: The railroad started pushing to try and get what they call automated track inspection cleared back in 2018. And what it actually is, is track geometry measurement.

VO: Track geometry makes up just one part of the FRA’s track safety standards.

ROY: Geometry is exactly what it sounds like, is the measurements of where the track is. So it’s measuring the distance between this rail and this rail. That’s the gauge. It’s checking the degree of a curve and it’s checking the elevation of that curve. And then it’s checking the alignment. So it’s making sure that this piece of tangent track is straight and not curvy or wavy. This track geometry measurement is really nothing more than a really fancy tape measure. And it does a really good job at that, which is why we actually support bringing on the technology. We just don’t think that it can safely replace a human track inspection at this point.

VO: That’s because train derailments are not just caused by defects in track geometry.

TYLER: This is my compliance manual, my engineering manual for how I inspect tracks, the standard that they need to be maintained to. And this much is what that geometry car can find.

VO: That means track inspectors are responsible for identifying all the other potential defects. The ones that these track geometry measurement systems are unable to identify.

ROY: It’s not looking at anything in this turnout or this switch. It’s not looking at the vegetation around it. It’s not looking at any drainage. These ties, the fasteners that are holding them, these two joint bars right here in this curve, the machine can’t look for those things.

VO: The National Transportation Safety Board has said that track geometry measurement systems are only intended to supplement, not replace, inspectors physically examining a track.

ROY: They’re looking for just six defects out of 23 total, regulatorily required, and then there’s plenty of other things that aren’t required by regulation that track inspectors look for.

VO: More advanced forms of automated track inspection do exist, types that go beyond track geometry, that could help inspectors keep rail safe.

VO: There’s LIDAR, there’s high-speed cameras, AI looking over the high-speed camera data. But that’s not what AAR is asking for. And they did that on purpose. They want the bar as low as possible.

VO: A BMWED analysis of 10 years of FRA derailment data shows why relying solely on track geometry measurement systems could lead to disaster. So total we had 1,284 derailments in those 10 years on mainline tracks. Tried to put it in two buckets, what could be identified by track geometry measurement and what couldn’t be. So these are ones that ATI could not find, 725. And these 559 are the ones that it can find. They’re also detectable by a human in their visual inspection. So this is where 56.5% of the actual derailments we had, the machine didn’t even have the ability to look for.

VO: Under the waiver request, these rail carriers might only have to run the track geometry measurement systems once a month.

ROY: The track structure itself is a living, breathing entity. It’s constantly in a state of flux. And that’s part of the reason we need to keep the frequency of a track inspector where it’s at currently.

VO: There is another concerning aspect of the waiver request.

TONY, in meeting: The same waiver would allow railroads up to 72 hours to address a defect after it is identified.

TONY: For years it’s required that defect to be remedied. Now, when I find a defect as a track inspector, my job is to go and remedy that defect. Instead, you’re going to be running trains at full speed, 65, 70 miles an hour over that defect while it’s still in the track for up to three days. I don’t think anyone living around a railroad track or within a mile or two of the railroad track wants to have chemicals running over defects or wants to have passenger trains running over defects in their area. It’s dangerous. It will cause derailments, and it will cause death, and it will cause harm, and it will destroy the environment. And that’s our warning to people.

TYLER: Half my family lives in this town where if something happened and the right or the wrong train derails and explodes, that just affected my whole life. And I wouldn’t want that on anybody. In every community that we work on, we know people from every town and care about all of them. We care about everybody, and that should be everyone’s outlook. As railroaders, it’s an unforgiving job. Everything’s heavy. Everything’s big. Everything’s very powerful. So safety’s very important.

VO: The BMWED has been trying to warn the public about the potential consequences of granting the safety waiver for months.

UNION REP: We are in Columbiana in eastern Ohio, and we are here to talk about rail safety.

VO: Columbiana is just a few miles down the road from East Palestine, Ohio.

TONY, at meeting: Because if there’s anything we want out of the devastation that happened in East Palestine, it’s to ensure that there’s change in the industry.

VO: A defective wheel bearing caused the derailment in East Palestine, according to the NTSB.

TONY: Guess how many rules and laws that they’ve held past to solve some of these problems? A big, gigantic goose egg, right? None. They’ve done nothing.

VO: In fact, Big Rail lobbied heavily against the Railroad Safety Act, the bill crafted in the wake of the East Palestine disaster.

TONY: So we’ve got to keep reminding them of what happened. We’ve got to keep reminding them of their promises and obligations. The railroads aren’t going to grow a conscience. So our job is to remind the people that can control these issues, that can pass laws, and say, look, this has to be done.

TONY: I think the most disgraceful thing that could happen to the folks in East Palestine is if they suffered through all this, and then it happens again in another community. That would be the most, that’d be spitting in their face, right?

VO: The waiver request is being considered by the Department of Transportation’s Federal Railroad Administration. The decision could come to Trump’s nominee to run the FRA, David Fink, a former railroad executive.

SEN. BEN RAY LUJÁN: How can we trust you to hold this position and hold companies accountable to areas that were not met while you were there?

VO: Fink is the former president of Pan Am Railways, where safety issues were not receiving the serious and thoughtful consideration that Pan Am’s employees and the public deserve, according to an FRA audit.

TONY: I hope that he understands that the role that he serves in now isn’t to make the railroads more profitable. The whole point of the FRA is to make sure that rail passage to this country is safe. And so are we asking that Fink not grant the waiver? And if he does, then there will be blood on their hands.

ANDREW RIVERA, MPU: Thank you so much for watching our video. If you’d like to see more stories like this one, be sure to like and subscribe to the channel to get more More Perfect Union in your feed. And if you have any ideas for stories that you would like for us to investigate, just drop them in the comments below.