Unsafe Workplaces On Wheels

A Wall Street-pleasing rail management doctrine that calls for longer trains and smaller crews is a likely cause of the toxic freight derailment in East Palestine, Ohio.

Norfolk Southern’s stock is down 7 percent since one of its trains derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, on February 3, spewing vinyl chloride and other toxic chemicals in all directions. But over the long term, the stock will likely bounce back, reports Barron’s, which quotes analyst Jason Seidl advising this could be a “buying opportunity.” Whether East Palestine (pop. 4,800) will bounce back is another matter. The New Republic’s Prem Thakker reports that residents, who were told February 8 that it was safe to return, are experiencing migraines, rashes, burning and itching eyes, etc. A cat named Leo developed congestive heart failure and had to be put down.

My latest looks at the derailment from the point of view of rail workers, who have complained for some time that the modish management gospel of Precision Scheduled Railroading (PSR), which turned the big freight-railroad companies, improbably, into Wall Street darlings, compromises safety. The basic idea behind PSR is: Fewer trains, longer trains, smaller crews. What could possibly go wrong? Over the past 10 years accidents per track mile for the big freight carriers have increased about 10 percent. For Norfolk Southern, which adopted PSR in 2015, they’ve increased about 80 percent. Just since 2015 the company has shed one-third of its workforce.

Which may be neither here nor there. But the train that derailed, which carried 141 freight cars, had a crew of two rail workers and one trainee. A video camera showed an axel on one of the freight cars was on fire 20 miles short of the derailment site, but it isn’t clear anybody was monitoring the video or, if they were, that they had the ability to notify the crew quickly. Perhaps most striking is that trains this long run by crews this small are not at all unusual. Some rail officials have signaled they’d like to run freight trains with a crew of one, and, believe it or not, there isn’t anything to prevent them from doing so (though a regulation proposed by the Biden administration last summer would require two). As my friend and former editor Michael Kinsley famously observed several decades back, “The scandal isn’t what’s illegal, the scandal is what’s legal.”

Anyway, you can read my piece here.