On September 29, 2026, a coalition of policy organizations urged the chairmen and ranking members of the Senate Environment and Public Works; Commerce, Science, and Transportation; and Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs committees to reject the administration’s proposal to fold the Railway Safety Act of 2025 (H.R. 928) into the surface transportation reauthorization. The bill would require a conductor and an engineer aboard every freight train.
The letter argues the mandate would add cost, not safety. The 2023 derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, was mainly a mechanical failure on a train that already had a three-person crew, and the National Transportation Safety Board did not cite crew size as a factor; Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) reviews in 2016 and 2019 found no link between crew size and safety. Higher shipping costs would raise prices on nearly every household good. Unlike the FRA’s existing crew-size rule, which can be revisited as technology changes, a statutory mandate, like the bill’s wayside bearing detector requirement, would make better approaches harder to adopt. SPPI joined the coalition, which the Competitive Enterprise Institute led.