Railway Track & Structures - September 2007 - (Page 56) CHICAGO PERSPECTIVE New rail safety law hen it comes to grade-crossing safety, I take a back seat to no one. I think virtually every grade-crossing accident is preventable, which means that every injury, especially the fatal ones, is a tragedy because it simply did not have to happen. Not long ago I read a piece in USA Today about a bill introduced by Rep. James Oberstar (DMinn.) that aims to boost safety at railroad crossings. That’s all well and good. Who could be against improving grade-crossing safety? Certainly not yours truly. Actually, the law is the proposed Federal Railroad Safety Improvement Act of 2007, and it covers far more than grade crossings. The story pointed out that there were 368 deaths last year, three percent more than the previous year, but 20 percent fewer than in 1997, according to the Federal Railroad Administration. Overall, there were fewer than 3,000 accidents last year, down from almost 4,000 a decade ago, the FRA reports. The number of deaths and accidents have continued to fall in 2007, dropping 10 percent and four percent, respectively, through April compared with the same period last year. The bill in question has cleared the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee and is expected to be taken up by the full House after Labor Day, Oberstar said. Sixty-three cosponsors, most of them Democrats, have signed onto the bill. “Although I am encouraged by improvements in the 2006 rail-safety statistics, I believe we still have a long way to go,” he said in a May hearing. “Serious accidents resulting in fatalities, injuries and environmental damages continue to occur.” The legislation would: • Require that railroad companies to keep upto-date the FRA’s National Crossing Inventory, a database that tracks the condition of the warning devices and maintenance records at crossings. W • Create a toll-free number to report gradecrossing problems such as damaged lights or gates, overgrown vegetation blocking sight or warning device malfunction. • Establish more uniform regulations for removing brush and other vegetation from obstructing the view of pedestrians and motorists. • Reform the hours that rail employees can work and the hours of rest required between their shifts. I’m in agreement with just about all of these provisions. Some are already in existence and just need a little fine tuning. For example, we already have a grade-crossing inventory, but there seems to be some clerical work needed to clean it up. FRA says some crossings in the inventory have been closed for almost 20 years. And many grade crossings already have a tollfree phone number posted for the public to call to report problems such as damaged crossing warning systems or vegetation obstructing the view. I disagree with government proposals on hours of service, which has nothing to do with gradecrossing safety. Once a motor vehicle gets in front of a train, the crew can’t swerve and, all too often, they can’t stop in time, no matter how alert the person at the locomotive controls is at the time. I know the unions have been working toward reducing the hours a crew can be in service and increasing the time between assignments, of course all with no reduction in pay. That’s their right. However, in my opinion, the unions should have worked this out with management in the give and take of collective bargaining years ago. Why have collective bargaining if the unions are going to agree to a deal, then go to the government to pass laws giving them whatever they didn’t win in collective bargaining? It’s long past time for railroad industry hours of service to be drastically reformed. And there are brains enough in both labor and management to get the job done at the bargaining table, where it should be handled. We don’t need to have the government deal with it. George S. Sokulski Associate Publisher 56 Railway Track & Structures September 2007 www.rtands.com http://www.rtands.com
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