[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 71 (Wednesday, May 2, 2007)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E916-E917]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




          THE FEDERAL RAILROAD SAFETY IMPROVEMENT ACT OF 2007

                                 ______
                                 

                         HON. JAMES L. OBERSTAR

                              of minnesota

                    in the house of representatives

                          Tuesday, May 1, 2007

  Mr. OBERSTAR. Madam Speaker, today I have introduced a bill to 
reauthorize the Federal Railroad Administration, FRA, and improve the 
safety of our Nation's railroads.
  Congress last reauthorized the FRA in 1994; that authorization 
expired in 1998. Since that time, the Committee on Transportation and 
Infrastructure has held 13 hearings on rail safety. In the first four 
months of the 110th Congress alone, we have held 4 hearings on rail 
safety, including 1 field hearing in San Antonio, Texas. At these 
hearings, we received testimony from the Federal Administration, FRA, 
the National Transportation Safety Board, NTSB, the Department of 
Transportation's Inspector General, the Government Accountability 
Office, GAO, Members of Congress and other elected officials, the 
railroads, rail labor, and numerous safety organizations and experts. 
This bill is the product of what we have learned through these 
hearings.
  According to the FRA, the total number of train accidents, including 
collisions and derailments, increased from 2,504 in 1994 to 3,325 in 
2005. In 2006, the number of train accidents decreased to 2,835.
  Although I am encouraged by improvements in the 2006 rail safety 
statistics, I believe we still have a long way to go. Serious accidents 
resulting in fatalities, injuries, and environmental damages continue 
to occur. The Department of Transportation predicts that rail traffic 
will more than double over the next 20 years. That increase, coupled 
with the fact that there are far fewer workers having to meet more 
demands on the railways than ever before, will only exacerbate the 
situation.
  In 1980, 459,000 rail workers were responsible for moving 919 billion 
railroad ton-miles of freight, or 2,002,787 ton-miles per employee. By 
2005, 182,000 workers moved 1,760 billion ton-miles of freight, or 
9,670,329 ton-miles per employee. Over the last 25 years, overall rail 
productivity has risen 168 percent while the workforce has decreased by 
40 percent. That has a significant impact on safety, in particular 
worker fatigue.
  According to the FRA, about 40 percent of all train accidents are the 
result of human factors; 1 in 4 of those accidents result from fatigue. 
The FRA has launched a number of initiatives focused on reducing 
accidents caused by fatigue and other human factors. I appreciate the 
FRA's hard work in this area, but the FRA can only do so much when it 
comes to fatigue. The FRA is the only agency within the Department of 
Transportation, DOT, that does not have the regulatory authority to 
address hours-of-service. Hours-of-service for railroad employees is 
set forth in statute.
  According to the National Transportation Safety Board, ``the current 
railroad hours-of-service laws permit, and many railroad carriers 
require, the most burdensome fatigue-inducing work schedule of any 
Federally-regulated transportation mode in this country.'' A comparison 
of the modes is revealing. A commercial airline pilot can work up to 
100 hours per month; shipboard personnel, at sea, can work up to 240 
hours per month; a truck driver can be on duty up to 260 hours per 
month; and train crews can operate a train up to 432 hours per month. 
That equates to more than 14 hours a day for each of those 30 days.

  Despite widespread agreement that the hours-of-service law is 
antiquated and in need of updating, it has been almost 40 years since 
substantial changes to the law have been made. In previous Congresses, 
I introduced legislation to strengthen hours-of-service. The railroads 
fought against it, stating that hours of service should be dealt with 
at the collective bargaining table because I believe that the safety of 
railroad workers and the safety of the general public, which all too 
often are the victims in these train accidents, should not be relegated 
to a negotiation between management and labor. I am again introducing 
legislation that strengthens hours-of-service and reduces rail worker 
fatigue.
  My bill will: provide all train crews and signal personnel with a 
minimum of 10 hours of rest a day and at least 24 consecutive hours off 
duty in a seven consecutive day work period; prevent the railroads from 
disturbing their workers during rest time, keeping them from obtaining 
their full 10 hours of rest; limit the number of days signal personnel 
can exceed their hours-of-service during emergencies, consistent with 
dispatcher limits of not more than three days in a seven consecutive 
day work period; ensure that signal personnel cannot be forced to 
exceed their hours-of-service to conduct routine inspections, repairs, 
and maintenance of signal systems; eliminate so called ``limbo time.'' 
Limbo time is a term used to describe the period of time when a train 
operating crew's hours-of-service have expired, but the crew is 
awaiting transportation back to their point of final release; meaning, 
the off

[[Page E917]]

duty location or terminal point where they can go home or obtain food 
and lodging at an away from home terminal. During limbo time, 
crewmembers are required to stay awake, alert, and able to respond to 
any situation. Limbo time can and has kept railroad operating crews 
effectively on-duty for well over 12 hours, and in the case of the 
Union Pacific engineer involved in the 2004 Macdona, Texas accident, 22 
hours (12 hours on-duty and 10 hours in limbo); require railroads to 
submit fatigue management plans to the Secretary for review and 
approval, and; provide the Secretary with the regulatory authority to 
reduce the maximum number of hours an employee can remain or go on duty 
and increase the minimum number of hours of rest.
  This Act also addresses a number of long-standing open NTSB 
recommendations that will help prevent accidents caused by human 
factors, such as fatigue. Specifically, the Act requires all Class I 
railroads to develop and submit to the Secretary for review and 
approval a plan for implementing a positive train control system by 
December 31, 2014. Implementation of positive train control has been on 
the NTSB's list of most wanted safety improvements since its inception 
in 1990. Since that time, the Board has issued numerous recommendations 
to the FRA to implement positive train control after several high-
profile accidents, including a 2004 accident in Macdona, Texas, and a 
2005 accident in Graniteville, South Carolina accident; yet the FRA has 
thus far failed to do so.
  The Act also requires railroads to install automatically activated 
devices, independent of the switch banner, along main lines in 
nonsignaled territory to enable train crews to determine the position 
of a switch far enough in advance to stop a train if they discover that 
it is in the wrong position. In the absence of such switch position 
indicators, the Act requires railroads to operate trains in nonsignaled 
territory at speeds that will allow them to be safely stopped in 
advance of misaligned switches. According to the FRA, misaligned 
switches are the number one cause of human factors accidents.
  In 2006, track-related accidents surpassed human factors-related 
accidents as the leading category of rail accidents. Recent accidents 
in Oneida, New York, Pico Rivera, California, Home Valley, Washington, 
Minot, North Dakota, and Nodaway, Iowa, raise serious concerns about 
the condition and safety of track on our Nation's railways. On April 
18, as a result of the accident in Oneida, the FRA conducted an audit 
of CSX tracks in upstate New York and found 78 track defects and 1 
serious violation. To help address these concerns and additional 
concerns raised by the NTSB, this Act provides funding for the 
Secretary to purchase 6 Gage Restraint Measurement System vehicles and 
5 track geometry vehicles. This will enable to the Secretary to deploy 
one Gage Restraint Measurement System vehicle and 1 track geometry 
vehicle to each of the 8 FRA regions. The Act also directs the 
Secretary to issue regulations within 1 year after enactment that 
requires railroads to manage their tracks to minimize accidents due to 
internal rail flaws. At a minimum, the regulations must require the 
railroads to conduct ultrasonic or other appropriate inspections to 
ensure that rail used to replace defective segments of existing rail is 
free from internal defects, as recommended by the NTSB; require 
railroads to perform integrity inspections to manage a service failure 
rate of less than 0.1 per track mile; and encourage railroad use of 
advanced rail defect inspection equipment and similar technologies as 
part of a comprehensive rail inspection program. New safety regulations 
are also required for all classes of track for concrete ties, as 
recommended by the NTSB.

  In addition, the Act strengthens safety on our Nation's grade 
crossings by requiring railroads to establish, maintain, and post a 
toll-free number at all grade crossings to receive calls reporting 
malfunctions of signals, crossing gates, and other devices, or disabled 
vehicles blocking such crossings, and to clear vegetation that may 
obstruct the ability of pedestrians or motor vehicle operators to see 
oncoming trains at grade crossings. The Act also requires regular 
reporting of current information on grade crossings to the FRA to 
enable States to determine where to best dedicate their resources for 
grade crossing improvements.
  The Act also addresses some concerns highlighted in a recent audit of 
the Department of Transportation's Inspector General, which I requested 
after a series of New York Times articles alleged problems with 
railroad accident reporting and investigations at grade crossings. The 
Inspector General found that railroads failed to report 21 percent of 
reportable crossing collisions to the National Response Center, NRC. 
Railroads are required to report crossing collisions involving 
fatalities and/or multiple injuries to passengers or train crewmembers, 
and fatalities to motorists or pedestrian involved in grade crossing 
collisions to the NRC within 2 hours of the accident, according to FRA 
and NTSB regulations. Immediate reporting allows the Federal Government 
to decide whether or not to conduct an investigation shortly after a 
crossing collision has occurred. The DOT Inspector General's analysis 
showed that 115, or 21 percent, of 543 reportable grade crossing 
collisions that occurred between May 1, 2003 and December 31, 2004 were 
not reported to the NRC. Although the 115 unreported crossing 
collisions, which resulted in 116 fatalities, were reported to the FRA 
within 30 to 60 days after the collision, as required, that was too 
late to allow Federal authorities to promptly decide whether or not to 
conduct an investigation. This Act requires the FRA to conduct an audit 
of all Class I railroads at least once every 2 years and all non-Class 
I railroads at least once every 5 years to ensure that all grade 
crossing accidents and incidents are reported to the national accident 
database.
  The Inspector General's audit also found that the Federal Government 
investigates only a small number of grade crossing collisions. From 
2000 through 2004, FRA investigated 47 of 376, or 13 percent, of the 
most serious crossing collisions that occurred--those resulting in 3 or 
more fatalities and/or severe injuries. No Federal investigations were 
conducted for the remaining 329 crossing collisions. The GAO seems to 
agree with the Inspector General's findings. According to the GAO, the 
FRA is able to inspect only \2/10\ of 1 percent of all railroad 
operations each year. Compare this to the Federal Aviation 
Administration (FAA): In 2004, the FAA conducted on-site investigations 
of 1,392, or 93 percent, of the 1,484 general aviation accidents that 
the FAA had responsibility for investigating in 2004. Unlike the FRA, 
however, the FAA has an Office of Accident Investigations staffed with 
8 full-time investigators whose mission is to detect unsafe conditions 
and trends and to coordinate the process for corrective actions. In 
addition, the FAA uses personnel from other disciplines to conduct 
investigations, including 2,989 inspectors from its Office of Aviation 
Safety.

  Currently, the FRA relies on just 421 Federal safety inspectors and 
160 State safety inspectors to monitor the railroad's compliance with 
federally mandated safety standards. This Act will increase the number 
of Federal safety inspectors to at least 800 by fiscal year 2011. The 
Act makes additional improvements to the FRA, modeled after similar 
legislation passed by the Committee on Transportation and 
Infrastructure and subsequently enacted into law that created the 
Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration and the Pipeline and 
Hazardous Materials Safety Administration.
  Specifically, the Act: reorganizes the FRA as the Federal Railroad 
Safety Administration; requires it to consider the assignment and 
maintenance of safety as the highest priority; creates a new position 
(or a Chief Safety Officer; requires the Secretary to develop a long-
term strategy for improving railroad safety, which must include annual 
plans and schedules for reducing the number and rates of accidents, 
injuries, and fatalities involving railroads; improving the consistency 
and effectiveness of enforcement and compliance programs; identifying 
and targeting enforcement at, and safety improvements to, high-risk 
grade crossings; and improving research efforts to enhance and promote 
railroad safety and performance; requires regular reporting of 
statutory mandates that have not been implemented and open safety 
recommendations made by the NTSB or the Inspector General regarding 
railroad safety; and strengthens transparency in the FRA's enforcement 
process.
  I invite my colleagues to join me and Congresswoman Brown, Chair of 
the Subcommittee on Railroads, Pipelines, and Hazardous Materials, in 
our efforts to improve rail safety by cosponsor this important 
legislation and working together to ensure its swift passage.

                          ____________________