Deluzio Celebrates Transportation Department Two-Person Minimum Staffing Requirement

CARNEGIE, PA – Today, Congressman Chris Deluzio (PA-17), lead House sponsor of the Railway Safety Act, released the following statement after the Department of Transportation and the Federal Railroad Administration announced its final rule requiring railroad operations to have a minimum of two crewmembers. This rule takes effect 60 days after being entered into the Federal Register and applies to all situations except for certain identified one-person train crew operations that do not pose significant safety risks to railroad employees, the public, or the environment. 

“Two-person minimum staffing is a key tool to better protect our rail workers—and all the communities that run along the tracks—from dangerous accidents and derailments,” said Rep. Deluzio. “This staffing requirement is a key element in my bill, the Railway Safety Act, and is an important part of making freight rail transport safer for everyone. Ninety-five percent of my constituents in Pennsylvania’s 17th Congressional District live within just five miles of freight rail tracks. I am thrilled that the Biden Administration and Secretary Buttigieg are keeping their promise to hold big railroads accountable and always put workers and public safety first with this important two-person minimum staffing rule. Next, we need to pass the Railway Safety Act, because we know that we can’t trust the railroads to regulate themselves.”

Congressman Deluzio’s Railway Safety Act was introduced in March of 2023 as a House companion bill to the Senate measure put forward by Senators Sherrod Brown (D-OH), J.D. Vance (R-OH), Bob Casey (D-PA), and John Fetterman (D-PA). The bill is a comprehensive measure to make rail safer, and is supported by the Biden Administration, former President Trump, several rail worker unions, and has both Democratic and Republican House co-sponsors, including members of the For Country Caucus, Problem Solvers Caucus, Republican Study Committee, Main Street Caucus, Republican Governance Group, Freedom Caucus, New Democrat Coalition, and Congressional Progressive Caucus. President Joe Biden highlighted the importance of this bill as a part of his visit to Ohio and Pennsylvania in February. To mark one year since the derailment, Congressman Deluzio gave a speech on the floor of the House of Representatives and sent a letter to House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) calling on him to take action, reject the powerful rail industry lobby, and make rail safer. Despite the widespread, bipartisan support for Railway Safety Act, the House has not taken any action on the bill, and the Senate version has not yet come up for a vote.

The FRA previously tried to implement this two-person minimum staffing policy through proposed rulemaking, but in 2019 the Trump Administration killed the proposed rule. An FRA-sponsored report concluded that the safety implications of having at least two staff members on a train, compared with one, were significant. Although the freight conductor has a distinct set of formal responsibilities, the conductor and locomotive engineer operate as an integrated team, contributing knowledge and backing each other up as necessary. Other research cites the risk of fatigue as increasing the chance of accidents and derailments. The report finds that railroad workers involved in human factors accidents have a higher exposure to fatigue than any of the railroad worker groups examined. A now retired carman and TWU member who worked at the Norfolk Southern Conway railyard Dennis Sabina shared at Congressman Deluzio’s press conference that during his time on the job he saw at least a fifty-percent decrease of the staff at his workplace, but the remaining employees still had the same amount of work—leading to rushed inspections and a concern about increased risks.

The majority of opposition to two-person minimum staffing exists because of the railroad industry’s efforts to implement Precision Scheduled Railroading (PSR), which included single staffed trains. This framework slashes the rail workforce and increases train lengths, all while increasing corporate profits. The Surface Transportation Board found between 2015-2019 the freight railroad industry slashed the average size of its workforce by over 17% and a U.S. Gov Accountability Office study found that between 2008 and 2017, train length grew by 25% for two Class I railroads. In 2021, years after the advent of PSR, the seven major railways based in the United States and Canada had combined net growth of income of $15 billion from the last decade. The New York Times found that in that time, six of those seven railways that were publicly traded paid out $146 billion in stock buybacks and dividends, which is over $30 billion more than they invested in their businesses. 

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