Posted on 06/13/2023 3:06:08 PM PDT by nickcarraway
In 2019, the Trump administration blocked a costly and ineffective mandate for two-man railroad crews long sought by unions. Now, the former president wholeheartedly supports it.
Under the watch of then–President Donald Trump in May 2019, the Department of Transportation withdrew a proposed regulation that would have required all freight trains in the United States to operate with two-person crews.
That rule, which the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) had been contemplating since the waning days of the Obama administration, was backed by labor unions as a way to protect railroading jobs from automation that allows trains to operate safely with only a single person in control. After three years of investigating the issue, the FRA reported that accident data did not show two-person crews to be any safer than one-person crews. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) agreed, telling the FRA that "There is insufficient data to demonstrate that accidents are avoided by having a second qualified person in the cab."
Then, in February, a train derailed in East Palestine, Ohio. It spilled vinyl chloride, a chemical long used to make PVC plastics, into a trackside ditch, and a controlled burn used to clean up the mess launched towering plumes of black smoke over the town.
In the media and political frenzy that followed, there has been little opportunity for a sober discussion about railroad safety. Instead, a bipartisan group including Ohio Sens. Sherrod Brown, a Democrat, and J.D. Vance, a Republican, have rushed forward with the Railway Safety Act, a bill that would impose the two-person crew requirement that the FRA considered and rejected in 2019.
The rule still has nothing to do with safety. Indeed, the train that derailed in East Palestine had a crew of three aboard.
Rather than being focused on policies that will actually improve the safety of American railroads, the bill—which could get a final vote this week—is all about politics. As such, it is a useful illustration of how right-wing populists like Vance are actually advancing long-running goals of the political left in their muddled pursuit of reorienting the Republican Party.
That includes Trump, of course. Even though it was his administration that killed the two-man-crew mandate in 2019, the former president is now a strong supporter of the bill that would impose the same mandate in 2023.
"JD Vance has been working hard in the Senate to make sure nothing like this EVER happens again, and that's why it's so important for Congress to pass his Railway Safety Act," Trump posted on Truth Social last month. "JD's terrific bill has my Complete and Total Endorsement."
Trump has never been one to think deeply about policy—or to let hypocrisy get in the way of political opportunism. Still, the fact that Trump, Vance, and seven other Republican senators have jumped to endorse a bill full of labor policies unrelated to railroad safety is telling. It's perhaps the clearest legislative signal yet of a political trend identified by Reason's Stephanie Slade, which she calls right-progressivism.
It's not the first time this has happened. Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson heaped praise on Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.) in 2019 for a list of economic policies that Carlson said "sound like Donald Trump at his best." Sens. Marco Rubio (R–Fla.) and Josh Hawley (R–Mo.) sided with unionized rail workers during a recent labor spat with the Biden administration. Much of Trump's protectionist trade agenda might as well have been pulled directly from the progressive playbook.
As Slade notes, those on the political right who are advocating for a larger, more powerful federal government are often "unapologetic proponents of actual left-wing policies, such as tariffs, industrial subsidies, and aggressive antitrust action."
Add costly and unnecessary regulations to the pile.
The two-man-crew mandate is just the start. The Railway Safety Act also grants broad new powers to Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who would be responsible for creating a new regulatory regime to govern trackside sensors and the power to write new regulations for railcars and their routine inspections. Regulations that make it more difficult or expensive to ship goods by rail will actually undercut safety by pushing more hazardous materials onto roadways, warns Philip Rossetti, a senior fellow at the R Street Institute.
Rail accidents have been steadily declining for years, notes Michael Gorman, a business and logistics professor at Dayton University, in a recently published paper. Meanwhile, trucking accidents are on the rise, and trucking accidents involving hazardous materials have caused more property damage and loss of life than train derailments in recent decades. Legislation that exclusively piles new regulations onto rail will trigger "higher rail shipping costs and more goods traveling by truck, which would be a decidedly inferior outcome for society," Gorman concludes.
In supporting the Railway Safety Act, Vance and Trump are signaling support for a litany of left-wing goals: growing the regulatory state, giving bureaucrats more power over American businesses, and protectionism for union jobs. They're also falling into the same trap as many progressives: ignoring trade-offs and obvious unintended consequences.
If the so-called New Right is reorienting the conservative movement to help accomplish the goals of the progressive left, one might wonder why America has a conservative movement at all.
Your… that sounds serious. Lol
General election - looking for “moderate” votes, like from union members unhappy with Biden (some are, some are not).
Modern commercial aircraft (airliners) can operate safely with a single person in the cockpit.
But it would be a really, really dumb idea.
If you are going to pathologize anybody that seeks to use authority and force to impose a moral vision, then you will effectively check yourself out of history.
Either we rule, or we will be ruled. The left will never leave us alone.
“Modern commercial aircraft (airliners) can operate safely with a single person in the cockpit.
But it would be a really, really dumb idea.”
Agreed.
Just in case . . .
Railroads are making oodles of money, share the wealth with the workers.
“ Railroads are making oodles of money, share the wealth with the workers”
Yes.
Railroad accidents are very rare, and yet the Federal Railroad Administration will be tasked with enforcing this two-man crew requirement.
Meanwhile … Motor vehicle accidents occur with boring regularity, and yet the Federal Highway Administration is overseeing testing and establishing regulations for driverless trucks.
Sometimes it’s obvious that Washington DC is an insane asylum.
I have to weigh in on the side of a 2-man crew. There are so many things that can happen on and outside of a train, that there is no way a single person, even with a computer, can pay enough attention to details.
Just think of it as having “two sets of eyes and hands”.
Remember that trains used to have cabooses, both as sleep areas and to have another set of eyes on the back of the train. It is still debatable whether it was wise to discontinue their use.
It would be better if the Fed Gov didn’t subsidize the RR.
Exactly!
Let's just triple the price of food and fuel.
If the peasants can't pay, screw 'em. Just keep Fed hands off my Medicare!
What's left wing about that?
Reason is an embarrassing, corporate sellout hiding under the libertarian label.
We’ve got ridiculously long trains of God-knows-what coursing through our heartland with barely a single employee riding along.
Tariffs have long been considered left wing, and in recent times were a policy of Bush and Obama.
And I though most conservatives didn't like Pete Buttigieg?
I think the Trump admin was probably wrong and this would be a corrective. As a rule unions push for jobs over what is required and a broken Pete B. is only rarely right.
My own leaning would be to require cargo trains not to run over a mile long and to clearly mark all of their loads. But at least unless and until that is changed, yes, we probably need more than one guy to be present for emergency stops and the like.
Serving the people of the nation before aliens is not left wing - it’s just not “libertarian”.
Look, I get it. I paid LP dues for twelve years and I voted for Ed Clark in 1980.
But then I realized that the libertarian dream not only is not self-enforcing on its own terms, but I looked around at the havoc libertarian governance (such as it is) had laid waste to white working class communities from sea to shining sea, and I changed my mind.
Right-libertarianism is simply a pretty story to allow oligarchs to rape our people. Left-libertarianism (immorality) is simply top cover for drug dealers, perverts, and pedophiles.
When we get a new government, all of that has to go.
This law would not have prevented the train crash. Why don’t we pass laws that actually make people safer, instead of laws that make people less safe, lead to more spending, and more authoritarian control.
I have never been a Libertarian, but I also don’t believe big government is the solution to every problem. It only makes things less safe.
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