“If the axle breaks, it’s almost certain that the train is going to derail,” said John Risch, a former BNSF engineer and national legislative director for the Sheet Metal, Air, Rail, and Transportation Union. “ECP brakes would help to bring the train to a stop. What they do is activate the brakes on each car at the same time immediately. That’s significant: When you apply the brakes on a conventional train, they brake from the front to the rear. The cars bunch up.”
Risch said that ECP brakes are the “most remarkable advancement” he ever encountered in his 31-year career as a railroad worker, adding: “It needs to be implemented.”
But instead of investing in the safety feature, the seven largest freight railroad companies in the U.S., including Norfolk Southern,
spent $191 billion on stock buybacks and shareholder dividends between 2011 and 2021, far more than the
$138 billion those firms spent on capital investments in the same time period.
The same companies also slashed their workforces
by nearly 30 percent in that timeframe as part of what they called “precision scheduled railroading.” Such staffing cuts are
likely contributing to safety issues in freight railways. In a recent investor
presentation, Norfolk Southern disclosed an increase in train accidents over the past three consecutive years.
“The massive reduction in the workforce, attendance policies that encourage people to come to work when they’re sick or exhausted, lack of access to [paid] leave, the stress that is constantly put on workers because of how lean the workforce has become, it creates a negative culture in terms of safety,” Greg Regan, president of the Transportation Trades Department of the AFL-CIO, told
The Lever.