The downsides of deregulation illustrated
Heather Cox Richardson on regulations and railroads:
Biden appears to be trying to turn the nation to a modern version of the era before Reagan, when the government provided a basic social safety net, protected civil rights, promoted infrastructure, and regulated business. Since the 1980s, the Republicans have advocated deregulation with the argument that government interference in the way a company does business interrupts the market economy.
But the derailment of fifty Norfolk Southern train cars, eleven of which carried hazardous chemicals, near East Palestine, Ohio, near the northeastern border of the state on February 3 has powerfully illustrated the downsides of deregulation. The accident released highly toxic chemicals into the air, water, and ground, causing a massive fire and forcing about 5,000 nearby residents in Ohio and Pennsylvania to evacuate. On February 6, when it appeared some of the rail cars would explode, officials allowed the company to release and burn the toxic vinyl chloride stored in it. The controlled burn sent highly toxic phosgene, used as a weapon in World War I, into the air.
Republican Ohio governor Mike DeWine has refused federal assistance from President Biden, who, he said, called to offer “anything you need.” DeWine said he had not called back to take him up on the offer. “We will not hesitate to do that if we’re seeing a problem or anything, but I’m not seeing it,” he said.
Of course, he has his eyes closed, and a bandage wrapped around his head for good measure.
Just over the border, Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, said that Norfolk Southern had botched its response to the accident. “Norfolk Southern has repeatedly assured us of the safety of their rail cars—in fact, leading Norfolk Southern personnel described them to me as ‘the Cadillac of rail cars’—yet despite these assertions, these were the same cars that Norfolk Southern personnel rushed to vent and burn without gathering input from state and local leaders. Norfolk Southern’s well known opposition to modern regulations [requires] further scrutiny and investigation to limit the devastating effects of future accidents on people’s lives, property, businesses, and the environment.”
Shapiro was likely referring to the fact that in 2017, after donors from the railroad industry poured more than $6 million into Republican political campaigns, the Trump administration got rid of a rule imposed by the Obama administration that required better braking systems on rail cars that carried hazardous flammable materials.
According to David Sirota, Julia Rock, Rebecca Burns, and Matthew Cunningham-Cook, writing in the investigative journal The Lever, Norfolk Southern supported the repeal, telling regulators new electronically controlled pneumatic brakes on high-hazard flammable trains (HHFT) would “impose tremendous costs without providing offsetting safety benefits.” Railroads also lobbied to limit the definition of HFFT to cover primarily trains that carry oil, not industrial chemicals. The train that derailed in Ohio was not classified as an HHFT.
Let’s have more and bigger releases of hazardous chemicals into the air and ground!
Some more infuriating details:
https://towardfreedom.org/story/archives/americas/u-s-workers-blame-ohio-train-derailment-on-corporate-cost-cutting/
DeWine has this afternoon both requested Federal assistance, and expressed anger that the train load in question was not considered HHFT.
Oh good, he’s showing leadership…
Let’s not forget that before sensible regulation, events like the Cuyahoga river catching on fire were commonplace.
Simon, thank you for posting that link to that article, because it names “Precision Scheduled Railroading” (PSR), which is the name I forgot and was going to look up. From the article you linked:
PSR is a policy at the corporate level to increase shareholder value by cutting costs. As I understand it (from a friend), railroad transportation managers below corporate do not like it, but they must go along with it.
PSR wants to minimize the time and labor (and real estate) of switching cars in switching yards. PSR also assembles trains with Distributed Power Units (DPUs) that are remotely controlled diesel-electric locomotives that can go in the middle (or rear) of a train to make longer trains for a given crew at the front of the train. DPUs are fine by me as a technology, but not when they are part of PSR as a whole (e.g. assembling longer trains without switching cars into appropriate blocks, which the article mentions, although I do not know best practices for switching hazardous cars beyond its mention in the article).
Cutting costs to the point that trains derail and cause toxic spills and/or explosions. Brilliant long-term thinking!
For the companies, it often is, since the government usually picks up a large chunk of the clean up bill, if not all of it. A company can just transfer their assets into another company, declare bankruptcy, and leave the government holding the bill.
Yes, the owners have to drink the water and breathe the air, but they either don’t really care about that as much as money – they can buy clean water and stay inside with air purifiers – or they trust that the government will clean it up and keep it from reaching their high mansions. Or maybe some of both.
So they make profit, create a toxic mess, and leave it to the taxpayers to clean up.