Reported by Thomas Black for Bloomberg
The US railroad industry trade group pushed back against comments made about rail safety in an unusually forceful letter to Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who spoke with the media and participated in a press conference last week ahead of the one-year anniversary of the derailment in East Palestine, Ohio.
Greg Regan, president of the Transportation Trades Department of the AFL-CIO, said the railroads have pushed back on almost all new safety proposals since the accident a year ago and the AAR has lobbied against a rail-safety bill in the Senate. In addition, the railroads have opposed mandates of two-person crews and continue to build longer and longer trains that the union says create safety problems and are more difficult to inspect, he said.
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