When there’s a big train wreck, things are handled differently in Greece. Transport minister Kostas Karamanlis has resigned as a result of this wreck.
It’s different in the US. Here the large railroads have a lot of influence with government regulators. When someone like Pete Buttigieg comes in who is willing to put people and safety first and big rails second, we don’t want him to resign because of the Ohio accident. He’s the one pressuring the investigators to find out the answers.
Another key difference is that in Greece, the accident involved a passenger train and a freight train colliding. Apparently human error is involved. And rail in Greece is government-owned; the Hellenic Railways Organization (denoted OSE because of its Greek language name) owns, maintains, and operates all railway infrastructure in Greece except for Athens’ rapid transit lines.
So it’s not the same at all. Buttigieg, the US Transportation Secretary, does not have anything to do with day to day operation of rail lines. He can at most insure that government regulators and investigators do their research carefully and establish if any rules were violated or need to be changed to prevent this kind of accident.
The short history of the accident compiled by the BBC below details the tragedy.
The big derailment of a train carrying hazardous chemicals in East Palatine, OH has gotten new attention for hotbox detectors (HBDs.) These are electronic boxes placed along a railway that scan the wheels of cars as they go by to see if the wheels are getting too hot. Overheating is a symptom of failing bearings or other maladies in the wheels. At least 5 accidents since 2021 have been related to burnt journal bearings, which the HBD is supposed to detect.
But these detectors have to be maintained. There is always the possibility of a mistaken reading, or of no reading at all. And someone has to check these detectors frequently to ensure they are functioning.
Accidents on rail lines are not common, which speaks to the care being taken. But even one big accident with hazardous waste can destroy a town. So any failure in the maintenance or observation of the hot box monitors is quite serious.
One question unions have raised is whether there are enough qualified workers to inspect the hot box detectors often enough. Perhaps this will come out in the case of Norfolk Southern and this accident. It would be awful if major rail lines were not following through on careful inspection of their monitoring devices.
It’s no wonder that US intermodal traffic is declining. Poor service from the railroads has made using any system that involves a transfer an invitation to delays. And shippers can’t afford delays.
Companies offering intermodal container service don’t have enough pull with the railroads in the US to get highly regular service. And now that container rates are dropping fast, shippers won’t pay an excessive amount for the service. So the large rails don’t feel any obligation to serve them well.
Will the major rail lines make any adjustments? My guess is they will be dragged kicking and screaming to provide more reliable service. The fuss they are making over simply making regular deliveries of feed grains to major customers, and the resistance to reciprocal switching, and the labor difficulties they are experiencing show that they don’t feel that customer service is top of their mind.
Why not? Recently I read a book about Charles Lowell, a young man from Massachusetts who fought in the Civil War. Before the war, and after graduating first in his class from Harvard, he worked as an agent in Iowa for a firm building railways west in that state. Each time they completed 25 miles of railway, the firm got a large new swath of land from the US government. The firm had to survey the land, decide on their route through it, and sell the land they didn’t need to fund the next 25 miles. They sold the land to migrants, from the east or from other countries, who were moving west to obtain cheap land for farms and businesses, their piece of the American Dream. There was a lot of graft in these land dealings. But Lowell insisted that his firm sell at a fair price and not engage in special deals with investors speculating on the land. His reason was interesting and farsighted.
Lowell believed that the railroad needed customers, and that was what he was creating by selling them land.
Today’s railroad executives don’t seem to think they need customers.
There are plenty of reasons to use intermodal for container shipment. It reduces emissions. It could be faster. It could require fewer transloads. (Most US truck traffic from ports is transloaded to 53-foot truck chassis before a cross-country trip). And it could be safer, and cheaper, or at least no higher in price, for the shipper. Rail lines could participate in this effort to reduce pollution while making the business profitable for them by operating their lines efficiently to accommodate it. But it does require them to serve their customers, those who want to ship on intermodal.
Too bad rails can’t seem to focus on the advantages it offers and shape their business around it. It would save the hassle of government regulation forcing them to accommodate it.
Supply Chain and Logistics 