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The Surface Transportation Board conditionally approved a merger between Canadian Pacific Railway and Kansas City Southern on March 15. The first major rail merger in 25 years, it will create the only railroad linking Canada, the United States, and Mexico. Conditions include a seven-year period of oversight and extensive data reporting requirements.
On March 9, President Biden unveiled the highlights of his FY 2024 Budget. The White House will release detailed appendix and agency justifications on March 15 that will include more official information. Some highlights of President Biden’s FY 2024 budget request include:
- $4.8 billion for the Federal Railroad Administration
- $3.1 billion for Amtrak, which when combined with $4.4 billion in Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) advance appropriations, will support Amtrak’s continued operations across the Northeast Corridor and National Network at a total of over $7.5 billion
- $1.5 billion for rail infrastructure and safety improvements,
- Including: $850 million to improve grade crossings and $560 million for intercity passenger rail grants
- $1.2 billion for the National Infrastructure Project Assistance (Mega) discretionary grant program, which supports large, complex projects that are difficult to fund by other means and presents a unique opportunity for DOT to invest in the Nation’s surface transportation infrastructure.
On March 9, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Hearing titled “Protecting Public Health and the Environment in the Wake of the Norfolk Southern Train Derailment and Chemical Release in East Palestine, Ohio.” Norfolk Southern CEO Alan Shaw was a key witness on the panel. Shaw begin his testimony by apologizing and reiterating that NS will make this situation right and are committed to being on the ground and involved as long as it takes. The hearing at times was contentions and partisan, as Democrats tried to pin Shaw down on specific commitments to rail safety measures and making the impacted communities whole, while Republicans continued to attack the Biden administration’s and EPA’s response to the accident. Shaw is also likely to be a witness at an upcoming March 22 Senate Commerce Committee hearing.
On March 1, Senators JD Vance (R-OH), and Sherrod Brown (D-OH), along with Marco Rubio (R-FL), Josh Hawley (R-MO), Bob Casey (D-PA), and Jon Fetterman (D-PA) introduced legislation, The Railway Safety Act of 2023. The bill will take a number of key steps to improve rail safety protocols, such as enhancing safety procedures for trains carrying hazardous materials, establishing requirements for wayside defect detectors, creating a permanent requirement for railroads to operate with at least two-person crews, increasing fines for wrongdoing committed by rail carriers, and more. To read the full bill, please click here. The bill has picked up support from President Biden, and Secretary Buttigieg. The bill will next head to a markup, potentially sometime in April.
Additionally, on March 2, the AAR announced that all seven major North American freight railroads have agreed to join FRA’s whistleblower systems, following a request from DOT Secretary Pete Buttigieg to do so. This follows the February 23, National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) Chair Jennifer Homendy hearing on the board's preliminary report of it's investigation into the February 3 train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio. "We call these things accidents, but there is no accident," she said. "Every single event that we investigate is preventable," she continued. The NTSB's goals for this hearing, and future ones, are to inform the public, collect factual information from witnesses, discuss possible solutions, and build consensus for change, Homendy added. The NTSB's preliminary report on the derailment can be read here.
On February 28, FRA issued a non-binding safety advisory to railroads, asking them to examine how they use and maintain detectors along tracks that can alert train crew of an overheating wheel bearing. Specifically, FRA is recommending that railroads evaluate the thresholds for inspections based on hot bearing detector data and improve employee training on the "calibration, inspection, and maintenance" of those detectors, among other tasks. The safety advisory comes on top of several other demands DOT has made of the railroads in recent days, none of which are binding.
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