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More News on the Ohio Wreck and ECP Braking
(Editor's Note: This wreck is a wake-up call to revive the union push for ECP braking on trains. We can act now ... or face an even more deadly derailments with loss of life down the road a few years, months, or weeks from now.)
“There Will Be More Derailments”

Feb 10, 2023 Julia Rock & Rebecca Burns

Pete Buttigieg’s Transportation Department has no plans to revive an Obama-era safety rule that could help prevent future train accidents.
)A Norfolk Southern freight train in flames after a derailment (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar) and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg (AP Photo/Matt Rourke).
In the aftermath of a fiery Ohio train derailment, Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg’s department has no plans to reinstate an Obama-era rail safety rule aimed at expanding the use of better braking technology, even though a former federal safety official recently warned Congress that without the better brakes, “there will be more derailments [and] more releases of hazardous materials.”
Instead, transportation regulators have been considering a rail-industry-backed proposal that could weaken existing brake safety rules.
Most of the nation’s freight trains — including the Norfolk Southern train that derailed in Ohio — continue to rely on a Civil War-era braking system. Norfolk Southern belongs to a lobby group that successfully pressed President Donald Trump to repeal a 2015 rule requiring newer, safer electronic braking systems in some trains transporting hazardous materials, The Lever reported Wednesday.
When asked if the better braking technology would have reduced the severity of the Ohio accident, Steven Ditmeyer, a former senior official at the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA), said, “Yes.”
Though the Obama administration did originally enact a rule requiring those better brakes on some trains, its regulators sided with lobbyists and ignored the National Transportation Safety Board’s (NTSB) request that the safety rules apply to rail cars carrying the kinds of dangerous, flammable chemicals onboard the Ohio train. Under the rules weakened by both the Obama and Trump administration’s decisions, that train was not being regulated as a “high-hazard flammable train.”
Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) told The Lever in a statement that the NTSB "should tell Congress and the Federal Railroad Administration what measures need to be put in place to avert accidents that allow hazardous materials to spill or catch fire in our communities."
Brown added, “Railroads should not use their lobbyists to block or weaken common sense safety measures that protect workers and communities.”
Buttigieg, who heads the Department of Transportation that oversees the railroads, has not said anything yet about the Ohio train derailment.
“It’s Time For ECP Brakes”
In the 1990s, the railroad industry moved to upgrade its century-old braking system with a new technology — Electronically Controlled Pneumatic brakes (ECP) — designed to stop trains more quickly and safely. While the existing air brake systems stop rail cars one by one as compressed air is transmitted through a pipe along the train, the newly-developed ECP brakes stop all the cars at once using an electronic signal.


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