Sen. Casey calls for funding to hire rail bridge inspectors
U.S. Sen. Bob Casey has called for a funding increase for the agency that oversees national railroad bridge inspections so it can hire additional inspectors.
The Federal Railroad Administration (FRA), which employs eight specialists for the inspection of more than 77,000 rail bridges nationwide — including 919 bridges in Pennsylvania — is understaffed, Casey said.
One federal railroad inspector is responsible for inspecting all of the rail bridges in the state, Casey said.
Nine such bridges exist in Fayette County and 19 in Greene County.
“The frequency with which these trains go through our state, the number of safety specialists is not nearly what it needs to be,” Casey said Thursday in a conference call.
“You don’t have to be an expert in rail safety or engineering to know that eight for 70,000 is not enough,” he added.
Casey said an additional $1 million will enable the agency to hire an additional seven inspectors, nearly doubling its manpower.
The Rail Safety Improvement Act, passed by Congress in 2008, instructed the FRA to manage rail bridge safety. The act required railroads to build bridge management programs and for FRA to audit those programs as well as annual bridge inspections railroads are required to conduct.
“The (FRA) is in the process of re-evaluating its current bridge management program to identity what more, if anything, can be done with our current level of funding and resources, which is limited,” said FRA spokesman Michael Booth.
“We are carrying out those instructions,” said Booth. “With more resources from Congress, FRA could have a more robust program.”
Casey wrote FRA acting administrator Sarah Feinberg last week to express his concern about the number of inspectors tasked with evaluating the nation’s thousands of privately owned railroad bridges, pressing for the swift addition of more inspectors.
Such understaffing could “cause gaps in our rail safety system and creates an environment where hundreds of unsafe bridges could be in daily use without proper federal oversight,” Casey said in his letter.
Many privately owned rail bridges are used predominantly for freight shipping, including the transport of hazardous material and crude oil.
Casey said a number of recent trail derailments prompted the call for additional funding and manpower.
“If you’ve got railroad bridges not far from communities (and) these bridges sometimes sit pretty high up, one of these tanker cars falling off of one of these bridges would be beyond catastrophic,” he said.
Last month, a train derailed in Montana, spilling 35,000 gallons of crude oil.
Casey said the current “blended” system transporting oil via both rail and pipeline will continue for the foreseeable future.
“With the existing rail infrastructure, plus the pipelines that are dispersed throughout the country, we need to make sure both venues are as safe as possible,” he said.
Privately owned railroads are responsible for inspecting their own bridges and submitting an annual bridge maintenance plan to the FRA that states the details of when the bridges were inspected and the condition they are in. FRA bridge safety specialists then audit this data to ensure the bridges were actually inspected and are in suitable condition.
“In an ideal world, we would have thousands of specialists across the country — and it would take thousands — doing this,” Casey said.
He noted that the effort to provide the FRA additional funding to hire more inspectors is part of a larger initiative to enhance safety on the state’s railways.
A proposed bill to improve the transportation of hazardous materials would provide a tax credit for companies that upgrade certain train cars to the new standard and provide $100 million in grants to reroute railroad tracks handling large volumes of flammable liquids.
Casey said that as Congress continues to debate several appropriation bills, he hopes to see some sort of action regarding the FRA funding by the end of September.