One year after the East Palestine, Ohio train derailment created an environmental disaster, the Biden administration unveiled new regulations intended to shore up freight rail safety.
Making any major updates to rail safety will require congressional funding that the freight industry opposes. Yet the new rule stops short of the kind of rail safety updates that the Biden administration and members of Congress had originally envisioned as a response to the East Palestine disaster.Making any major updates to rail safety will require congressional funding that has not yet been approved.Tuesday, and give the federal government more targeted authority and money to enhance safety procedures for trains carrying hazardous materials. The bipartisan measure is stalled in the Senate.
"This rule is unsupported by data and lacks a safety justification. Look no further than the DOT's own release, which cites 'common sense' as their justification for the rule," said a spokesperson for the AAR.