Federal Ruling Mandates 2-Person Crews for Railroads
Class I railroad operators will have to maintain two-person crews on most train routes under a new mandate by the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) finalized Tuesday.
The final ruling codifies train crew staffing rules at a federal level, with the intent to ensure that freight and passenger rail operations are governed by consistent safety rules in all states. The rule is essentially the status quo for most of the country’s largest freight railroads like CSX, BNSF and Union Pacific, which already typically staff their trains with two workers—an engineer and a conductor.
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The requirement was part of a larger bipartisan safety bill introduced by U.S. lawmakers last March, called The Railway Safety Act of 2023, but that legislation has toiled in the Senate ever since.
On a state level, 11 states now have two-person crew mandates: Arizona, California, Colorado, Kansas, Minnesota, Nevada, New York, Ohio, Washington, West Virginia and Wisconsin. Illinois also passed a law, but a federal judge ruled that it was preempted by federal law.
“Common sense tells us that large freight trains, some of which can be over three miles long, should have at least two crew members on board—and now there’s a federal regulation in place to ensure trains are safely staffed,” said U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, in a statement. “This rule requiring safe train crew sizes is long overdue, and we are proud to deliver this change that will make workers, passengers and communities safer.”
The FRA reviewed and considered 13,500 written comments received during a 146-day “comment” period—in addition to the testimony from a one-day public hearing—to finalize the rule.
One-person crews haven’t been wiped out entirely with the mandate. Those seeking approval for one-person operations must submit an annual report to the FRA summarizing the safety of the operation.
The Association of American Railroads (AAR) is not thrilled with the ruling, citing a “lack of evidence” connecting crew size to rail safety. The association observed that FRA abandoned a similar rule in 2019, with the federal agency determining that there was not enough data to support the need for more than one person in the cab of a train.
“FRA is doubling down on an unfounded and unnecessary regulation that has no proven connection to rail safety,” said AAR president and CEO Ian Jefferies in a statement. “Instead of prioritizing data-backed solutions to build a safer future for rail, FRA is looking to the past and upending the collective bargaining process.”
The FRA argues that a second crew member performs important safety functions that could be lost when reducing crew size to a single person. Without the final rule in place, the FRA says railroads could initiate single-crew operations without performing a rigorous risk assessment, mitigating known risks, or even notifying the agency.
Unions like the International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail, and Transportation Workers-Transportation Division (SMART-TD), the Teamsters, the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen and the Transportation Trades Department (TTD) of the AFL-CIO all applauded the decision.
Support for a two-person crew goes hand in hand with concerns about employment within the rail transportation sector. According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 153,000 people were employed by the sector in January 2024, up 6.7 percent from the 143,400 two years prior. But total employment is still down at a 26.4 percent clip from the 208,000 working in the field in January 2015.
The move comes as beleaguered Class I railroad Norfolk Southern is under fire from an activist investor, Ancora Holdings, which wants to overhaul the company’s board and replace CEO Alan Shaw.
As part of its shakeup proposal, Ancora says every train operating on a mainline would have a two-person crew, calling it “one of the very best ways to enhance operational safety and empower operators to identify, assess and resolve problems.”
Like the AAR, Shaw has been opposed to the two-person crew mandate. The East Palestine, Ohio train derailment that set off the rail safety conversation last year had three crew members on board—an engineer, a conductor and a trainee—suggesting that the number of crew members didn’t prevent the accident from happening.
Instead, the AAR is vouching for extensive employee training and private investments in technology and infrastructure to improve rail safety. The lobbying group highlighted how these decisions have already driven “tangible” results, noting that the casualty rate for Class I railroad employees has dropped by 63 percent since 2000, reaching an all-time low in 2023.
Additionally, the association said the overall train accident rate is down 27 percent since 2000 and 6 percent since 2022.
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