Last spring's deaths of eight passengers in an Amtrak derailment in Philadelphia called attention to a glaring hole in the nation's rail safety network: railroads' failure to install an advanced anti-collision technology that Congress had mandated in 2008.
But five months later, lawmakers are preparing to give railroads years past this December's deadline to put the systems in place — heeding the railroads' warnings that they would otherwise have to impose a nationwide freeze on rail traffic that could wreck the economy and threaten national security. More than 100 oil, gas, coal, farming, manufacturing, retail and other business groups are also urging lawmakers to postpone the mandate, as are the U.S. Conference of Mayors, local transit agencies, newspaper editorials, more than 150 House members and nearly half the Senate.
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The railroads' reprieve could arrive in the multi-year highway and transit bill that the House Transportation Committee is due to take up this week, although a draft unveiled Friday contained no details. House lawmakers have spent weeks negotiating specific language with the Senate, which approved a three-year deadline extension over the summer.
Even without Congress' action, the nation's top freight railroads say they need anywhere from two to five more years to install the multibillion-dollar safety technology, known as positive train control, the Government Accountability Office reported last month. A few commuter rail systems told the GAO they have no idea when they could finish the job.
If Congress fails to act, "that will have a ripple effect through the entire economy,” Association of American Railroads CEO Ed Hamberger said.
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But safety advocates oppose a blanket extension, noting that railroads have had seven years to meet the original deadline.
“What is to prevent the railroads from using this bullying tactic when they don’t meet the next deadline?” House Transportation Committee member Janice Hahn (D-Calif.) asked. Her Los Angeles-area district is about 50 miles from the site of the 2008 rail fatality that inspired the safety mandate: a head-on collision between a Metrolink commuter train and a Union Pacific freight train that killed 25 people.
Hahn also questions railroads’ arguments that they could not operate after Dec. 31 without an extension, noting that congressional deadlines are blown all the time. But the nation's four largest railroads — BNSF, CSX, Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern — have said they could face millions of dollars in fines and would risk lawsuits if they continue transporting hazardous cargo without the safety systems in place after the deadline passes.
The railroads say some effects could appear as soon as November, as they begin notifying customers of possible service disruptions and might even halt some shipments to ensure products aren't stranded on the tracks.
Multiple powerful industries are echoing the railroads' warnings about the damage the nation would face.
“It would be utter chaos,” said Andrew Walmsley, director for congressional relations for the American Farm Bureau. Disruptions of chemical shipments to drinking-water plants “could risk a public health disaster for communities across the country," a coalition of water utilities wrote to Congress last month, raising the prospect of “cholera and typhoid outbreaks.” The American Chemistry Council says just a one-month disruption in rail service would wipe out 700,000 jobs and $30 billion in economic activity, and an extended interruption could cause a recession.
Positive train control uses GPS technology, radio waves and other signals to convey information on trains' locations and movements, and it hits the brakes automatically if a locomotive speeds too fast or appears close to colliding with another train. The National Transportation Safety Board says it would have prevented scores of accidents over the past few decades, including May's Amtrak crash, which killed eight people and injured more than 200 others after a speeding passenger train hurtled off the track.
Fingerpointing about the delays in installing the technology abounds, with lawmakers like Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) blaming foot-dragging by the railroads and their lobbyists. Railroads in turn blame a lack of money to meet the systems' billions of dollars in costs — which Congress has largely refused to provide — as well as years of difficulties in getting the Federal Communications Commission to give them access to the wireless airwaves the systems require. As a result, they say, the December 2015 deadline was virtually doomed from the start.
In addition, positive train control wasn’t widely used or developed when Congress mandated its use in 2008, and only a few suppliers exist in the U.S. For years, the rail industry and federal watchdogs have warned that the deadline is unrealistic for the vast majority of railroads and transit agencies.
“We need more time to actually do all of the installation, and then we need more time for testing and validation,” the railroad association's Hamberger said. “But we don’t want to be back before Congress asking for any additional legislation.”
The dire scenarios the railroads and their supporters are offering have helped lawmakers come to broad agreement on the need to extend the deadline, a Senate Commerce Committee spokesman told POLITICO. "Negotiations hammering out language are bicameral and bipartisan — this is getting done because of the recognition that a railroad shutdown would harm the economy,” he said.
Still, even lawmakers who agree on providing more time disagree on the details, such as whether to give railroads a hard deadline of 2018 for implementing the technology or grant them more wiggle room for testing the systems.
Blumenthal, one of the most vocal critics of the extension push, argues that only railroads that have made good-faith efforts to put the technology in place should get more time. He’s pushing a conditional extension of up to three years — but just for railroads that could justify their need.
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California Sen. Barbara Boxer, the top Democrat on the Environment and Public Works Committee, added to the uncertainty this month by vowing to block any attempt to extend the deadline unless it’s part of a long-term transportation bill.
The scope of the rail traffic at stake in the debate is huge. Trains shipped more than 300 million tons of grains, oilseeds and other agricultural commodities last year as well as 80 tons of anhydrous ammonia, a key component of fertilizer. Coal wouldn’t be able to move across the country to states needing it for power production, the railroads and their supporters say. Neither, they contend, would chemicals used for more than 96 percent of manufactured goods.
Commuter rail agencies in places like Chicago and northern Indiana have spread the message as well, telling passengers they will cease operations Jan. 1 if Congress does not extend the deadline.
And Hamberger told Defense Secretary Ash Carter in a letter last month that contractors and military units could see their vital rail shipments "grind to a halt if Congress doesn’t act before the end of October."
"At stake is nothing short of the efficient functioning of the U.S. economy, which is itself a national security issue," he wrote.
Those arguments aren't enough to win over all the skeptics. “In my heart of hearts, I don’t support extending the deadline,” Hahn said, though she acknowledged that the odds of an extension passing are high.
But Hamberger said Congress needs to provide the time to ensure that the work of installing the technology continues.
“You’re building your new house and it’s halfway up,” he added. “You don’t just stop.”
