Review - HR 971 Introduced – RAIL Act

Last month Rep Sykes introduced HR 971, the Reducing Accidents In Locomotives (RAIL) Act. This is another in a series of legislative attempts to address the railroad hazardous material safety concerns that arose after the East Palestine derailment. Addresses a number of different issues and includes additional funding authorization for first responder hazmat training.

The bill is very similar to HR 1633 that was introduced by Rep Johnson (R,OH) in March of 2023, and cosponsored by Sykes. No action was taken on that bill in the 118^th Congress. Section 4 of this bill is an almost complete rewrite of the same section of the earlier bill and a new §9, Freight train crew size safety standards, has been added. The language in this added section is the same as proposed by Sykes in HR 9074, introduced in July 2024. No action was taken on that bill in the 118^th Congress.

The bill addresses the following topics:

• Regulatory response,

• Rail car inspections,

• Defect detectors,

• Increasing civil penalties,

• Safer tank cars,

• First responder hazmat training, and

• Freight train crew size.

Moving Forward

Sykes is a member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee to which this bill was assigned for consideration. This means that there may be sufficient influence to see the bill considered in Committee. Unfortunately the Republican leadership is not going to be too interested in increasing regulatory controls in this session. I do not expect that the bill will be considered in Committee and likely would not be approved if it were.

 

For more details about the provisions of this bill, see my article at CFSN Detailed Analysis - https://patrickcoyle.substack.com/p/hr-971-introduced - subscription required.