After freight train derailments in Arizona, Ohio, report lists safety concerns

PHOENIX (AZFamily) — A new report is highlighting the safety issues of long freight trains and urging Congress to take action.

The report, compiled by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, lists employee training and train car stacking as two of the top concerns. Long trains span as far as three miles long and are operated by only one engineer and conductor.

“We just thought that there ought to be some practices put in place to make sure that the railroads were applying the the best practices to make sure those are safe,” said Allan Rutter, who is the freight analysis program manager at the Texas A&M Transportation Institute, and a member of the panel that wrote the report.

Rutter said many long trains are as safe as any freight train on the rails, but he is concerned with so-called “manifest trains.” These trains contain cars with different cargo, including chemicals, autos, appliances and empty cars. They pose challenges because of shifting weights and their length.

“Those become a lot more complicated. It’s not that they can’t be run safely, but it just takes a lot more care,” said Rutter.

Rutter believes Congress should require all freight train workers to undergo training for best practices. He said the trains also need to be stacked to create space between cars with flammable liquid and a balance, with a focus on safety.

“Bad things happen when people aren’t trained in this industry,” Scott Jones, the Arizona state legislative director for the SMART union transportation division, said.

Jones has been arguing for increased training requirements for years and says the report is a positive step. However, he thinks the authors glossed over what he believes is a major safety problem: the decreasing number of train operators required to be onboard these long trains.

“Once upon a time, there were upwards of seven employees on a train. Now that’s a freight train. Not Amtrak, not a passenger train. And we now today run these large trains with two people onboard,” said Jones.

Two freight train derailments in 2023 put an extra lens of scrutiny on long trains. One involved a freight train that was more than one point five miles long. It derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, and caused an environmental and community disaster. The second occurred near Williams, Arizona and involved a train more than two miles long.

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