|
 Policymakers are talking tough on
inflation, but the prices of goods are still far too high. Despite a recent
Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco study pointing to government spending as a
key contributor to high inflation, President Joe Biden has pressed forward on an
astounding $5.8 trillion proposed budget for fiscal year 2023. Multiplying,
costly federal rules are yet another source for consumer concern. Households may
face even more pain down the track, thanks to the Biden administration’s
targeting of cost-effective supply chain infrastructure. A push to establish
crew size mandates for railroads will only succeed in increasing prices across
the board while doing little to improve the safety of U.S. infrastructure.
It’s up to President Biden to fix his administration’s tunnel
vision and nix these nonsensical rules.
 Misguided nostalgia from Washington, D.C. bureaucrats isn’t limited to just high
tax rates. Despite a dizzying array of safety improvements and technological
advancement throughout the nation’s rail system, the Biden administration’s view
of rail infrastructure remains tethered to the 1950s. Back in the days when
safety monitoring was in its infancy, multi-crew teams were reasonably seen as a
necessity for rail safety. But thanks to modern technologies (such as Positive
Train Control) train operators can now be warned of serious issues and trains
can be brought to a halt if issues are not resolved.
Safety improvements have led to regulatory systems around the world (including
in the European Union, Australia, and New Zealand) that embrace one-person crews
in freight operations. But progress in modernizing crew sizes may soon be
dramatically reversed in the U.S., thanks to a proposed rule (resurrected from
the Obama era) that would mandate all freight train locomotives are staffed with
a conductor and engineer with no path toward change in the future. Nearly
halfway into his administration, President Biden appears as determined as ever
to fulfill a campaign promise made to railway labor in 2020: “I'm going to keep
fighting for those crews, requiring two-person crews on freight trains,
protecting transit workers from assault, making sure that everyone has what they
need to safely do their job.”
[to top of second column] |
For all the lofty campaign rhetoric, though,
there’s preciously little evidence that rail safety requires at
least two workers on board. In fact, when the Federal Railroad
Administration (FRA) first proposed the rule that would mandate
two-member crews, it admitted it “cannot provide reliable or
conclusive statistical data to suggest whether one-person crew
operations are generally safer or less safe than multiple-person
crew operations.” An inability to modernize train operations will
make rail operations less competitive, likely pushing goods to
other, more congested modes of transportation and driving up costs
across the supply chain.
And, those are just the immediate, visible
implications. Long-term environmental costs will only make things
worse. As Reason Foundation senior transportation policy analyst
Marc Scribner notes, “trucking also emits approximately seven times
as much carbon dioxide per ton-mile as rail. Thus, disadvantaging
rail relative to trucking through a train crew-size mandate would
increase the transportation sector’s emissions intensity.” Biden
should keep in mind these unintended consequences of rail regulation
and back away from rules that would increase carbon emissions.
All regulations ultimately entail real tradeoffs that impact the
lives of millions of Americans. But in the case of proposed rail
rules, bureaucrats would be trading virtually no safety improvements
for higher long-term costs and environmental degradation. President
Biden should quit yanking Americans’ chain about clamping down on
inflation and put regulatory reform back on track.
Ross Marchand is a senior fellow for the Taxpayers
Protection Alliance.
 |
