Why it Matters

Congress faces mounting pressure to strengthen freight rail safety after a series of troubling trends reversed decades of improvement. The 119th Congress is grappling with a cascade of safety failures: trespassing deaths have nearly doubled on a per-train-mile basis since 2015, grade crossing incident rates have risen, and railroad fatalities hit their second-highest level in at least 20 years in 2024. A Congressional Research Service report published July 24 examines freight rail safety legislation and regulatory issues.

The Big Picture

The FAST Act of 2015 mandated a phaseout of older, less crashworthy tank cars used to transport flammable liquids. Yet approximately 20,000 tank cars in service remain noncompliant with enhanced standards as of 2024. Roughly half of tank cars used to carry flammable liquids other than crude oil and ethanol do not conform to enhanced standards.

Current federal regulations do not require the use of wayside defect detectors or specify temperature thresholds for inspection. Legislative proposals propose requiring wayside defect detectors every 10 to 20 miles on key routes, compared to the industry's voluntary standard of every 40 miles on Key Routes.

Average Class I railroad train length increased more than 13 percent from 2016 to 2025, rising from 71.9 to 83.3 cars. A September 2024 National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine study found evidence of a positive correlation between manifest train length and derailment risk from train makeup and handling issues.

No federal law or regulation specifically bans or penalizes trains that block highway-rail crossings. State and local ordinances establishing time limits for blocked crossings have been repeatedly found preempted by federal law. The U.S. Solicitor General in November 2023 recommended against Supreme Court review of a case involving Ohio's blocked crossing laws, and the Supreme Court denied Ohio's petition in January 2024.

Political Stakes

The FRA issued a final rule in April 2024 requiring a minimum two-person crew on most trains, reversing course after withdrawing a similar proposal in 2019 when it stated that available data "do not establish that one-person operations are less safe than multi-person train crews." The FRA re-proposed the crew size rule in 2022, and the final rule followed.

The FRA employed roughly 370 safety inspectors in FY2026, down from 390 in FY2018–FY2020.

No freight rail safety bills were enacted in the 118th Congress, despite several proposals. H.R. 971, the Reducing Accidents In Locomotives (RAIL) Act of 2025, was introduced in the 119th Congress. Several freight rail safety provisions, including some substantially similar to those in H.R. 928, H.R. 971, and H.R. 2515, were included in H.R. 8870.

The Bottom Line

The data suggest voluntary approaches have failed. In 2024, there were 963 fatalities on America's railroads, the second-highest in at least 20 years, and 6,535 injuries. While the number of injuries was the third-lowest in 20 years, trespassing deaths and grade crossing incidents are rising. No hazmat-by-rail spill has resulted in a fatality in over a decade, but hazmat-by-rail releases tend to result in more damage per incident than highway or pipeline spills.

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