Rail unions back federal directive for two-person crews

Railway workers unions back a federal directive that passenger trains should have two crew members in the cab, not just the engineer – and they want that for freight trains, too.

The Federal Railroad Administration’s directive, announced June 9, is the result of the Amtrak train crash in North Philadelphia almost a month before. That train was traveling 106 mph around a curve posted for 50 mph, when it derailed, killing eight people and injuring 200. 

Federal safety investigators, the rail unions and Railway Workers United, an organization of rank-and-file workers, all say that a second crew member in the cab, along with installation of a positive train control system that would have automatically slowed the train, would have prevented the catastrophe.

“Until PTC is in use across the passenger railroad systems in this country, and due to the significant safety concerns presented by the” Amtrak crash and a similar crash in New York last year, “FRA believes all passenger railroads and railroads that host passenger service need to evaluate their systems and take immediate actions to prevent future catastrophic overspeed events from occurring,” the agency’s directive says.

FRA adds that railroads with automatic train control or cab signal systems “to prevent overspeed events” should modify them to slow trains at “critical locations such as curves, bridges, and stations.”

But in all other cases, “FRA encourages railroads to take other operational actions to prevent overspeed events, such as requiring additional qualified employees to occupy the controlling locomotive of a train to identify and communicate the applicable passenger train speed limits and restrictions, or by requiring additional crew communications regarding applicable passenger train speed limits and restrictions,” it adds.

A week before FRA’s directive, Dennis Pierce, president of one of the top two unions representing train crew members, urged lawmakers to write the two-crew-members-in-the-cab rule into law for all railroads, passenger and freight.  Railroads have been pressuring the feds to allow 1-person crews nationwide and one executive even favors crewless freight trains. Veteran Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska, has introduced HR1763, mandating 2-member crews.
 
“PTC is no silver bullet,” said Pierce, who heads the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engin-eers and Trainmen, a Teamsters sector.  “It’s not designed to prevent every accident and any claim that PTC renders the second crew member unnecessary is a just not true,” he testified.

“PTC can’t replace the second crewmember. It doesn’t provide a second set of eyes and ears trained on the road ahead or monitor the ‘left’ side of the train for defects like hot wheels, stuck brakes or shifted lading, or observe the ‘left’ side of highway-rail grade crossings for drivers who fail to stop, or separate stopped trains that block crossings to allow first responders to cross the tracks,” he told the House Transportation Committee on June 2.