Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal on Tuesday announced sweeping legislation to beef up rail safety following a year of deadly Metro-North Railroad mishaps.
Blumenthal blasted current safety standards on the nation’s tracks and said much tougher oversight was needed.
“Cascading catastrophic crashes, devastating derailments, serious delays and service disruptions clearly show that our rail-safety protocols, standards and management are woefully insufficient,” he said.
A Metro-North derailment in The Bronx killed four people last December when engineer William Rockefeller zoned out and went 82 mph around a sharp curve.
The safety bill includes:
- Mandatory new technology like alerters, which hit a trains’ brakes if an engineer doesn’t respond quickly enough in an emergency.
- Steeper fines for railroads that commit safety violations.
- Stronger standards for oil tankers that move petroleum.
- Mandatory quarterly congressional updates from the Federal Railroad Administration to ensure they are following National Transportation Safety Board recommendations.
- A plan to help workers manage fatigue.
- Requirement of systems for workers to anonymously report major violations and close calls.
Blumenthal has repeatedly criticized the puny fines that Metro-North has received for safety violations over the past decade. The railroad received only a $5,000 penalty when foreman Robert Luden was killed in May 2013 on Connecticut tracks by a train that was not properly controlled.
“In many cases, these fines were inadequate slaps on the wrist,” Blumenthal said after learning this. “A worker was killed needlessly and the penalty was a shameful pittance.”
Metro-North commuter advocate Jim Cameron cheered the safety bill.
“Just because we haven’t had an accident since Spuyten Duyvil doesn’t mean the railroad is safe,” Cameron said.
“We were told it was safe after the Bridgeport derailment, and then there was a track worker killed, the Bronx accident that killed four, and more.”
Since the Bronx crash, Metro-North has boosted many safety procedures — including audits of engineers for speeding using radar guns, lowering the speed limit on bridges and curves, and buying inward- and outward-facing cameras to help investigators.
An MTA spokesman said the agency hadn’t seen the legislation and couldn’t comment, but “we look forward to working with Sen. Blumenthal to improve rail safety.”