SMART-TD's Jared Cassity on Rail Safety Legislation

Jared Cassity, national safety and legislative director for the International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers Transportation Division (SMART-TD), joined the America's Work Force Union Podcast to deliver some important rail safety news. The U.S. House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee has adopted an amendment to include the Rail Safety Act in the Build America 250 Act, mandating two-person freight train crews, new hazardous materials requirements and improved defect detector standards.

Cassity traced the path of this action from the East Palestine derailment in February 2023 to this legislative breakthrough. He explained in detail how silenced wayside defect detectors contributed directly to the Ohio disaster and laid out what still needs to happen before any of this becomes law. He also provided a review of the industry's safety record: roughly 1,000 major derailments every year, and a catastrophe comparable to East Palestine that was averted not by the railroads' safety systems, but by luck.

• The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee adopted an amendment incorporating the Rail Safety Act into the Build America 250 Act, a surface transportation reauthorization bill. The key provisions in the Rail Safety Act include a two-person crew mandate for freight trains, a new “key train” designation for trains carrying significant quantities of hazardous materials that subjects them to speed restrictions and additional requirements, improved transparency around hazmat content and location for emergency responders and new mileage requirements for wayside defect detectors.
• East Palestine resulted directly from a chain of failures that the legislation addresses. First, a faulty wheel bearing went undetected because the railroad had silenced its wayside defect detectors. Second, routing temperature alerts went to a remote manager via email rather than directly to the train crew. The train passed three detectors with escalating heat readings before the crew received any notification. By then, the derailment was already underway. Cassity said East Palestine was not a technological failure, but a deliberate operational choice the railroads made to keep trains moving at all costs.
• The rail industry averages approximately three major derailments per day, totaling more than 1,000 annually. Cassity compared that number to the aviation industry, where a single accident triggers an industry-wide response. The result is that the freight rail industry has successfully normalized its derailment rate as an acceptable standard of safety, even though each derailment carries the potential for an East Palestine-level event depending solely on which hazardous materials happen to be present.

Three Years After East Palestine, Something Finally Moved

Jared Cassity has been working toward meaningful rail safety legislation for more than 20 years. The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee's decision to adopt the Rail Safety Act as an amendment to the Build America 250 Act is, he said, the biggest step forward in his career. It took the East Palestine derailment, the political trajectory of the legislation's original sponsor and the alignment of bipartisan support and White House pressure to get this far.

Vice President JD Vance introduced the Rail Safety Act as an Ohio senator in direct response to East Palestine. As his path to the White House accelerated, so did the prospects for the legislation. When the surface transportation reauthorization package came together, and the White House weighed in, the pieces aligned in a way Cassity had not seen before. The committee vote happened. The amendment passed. And while a long road remains before any of this becomes federal law, the foundation is now in place.

What the Legislation Actually Does

The bill mandates two-person crews in the cab of every freight locomotive — a provision the railroad industry has loudly claimed will increase costs, and one Cassity described as costing precisely nothing, since two people are already in the cab of every major freight locomotive in the country. It establishes a new “key train” designation for trains carrying significant quantities of hazardous materials. This will subject these trains to speed restrictions and heightened operational requirements. The bill also improves transparency requirements so that emergency responders know what hazardous materials are on a train, where those materials are located and how to respond. This information took hours to reach East Palestine's first responders.

On the inspection side, the legislation provides inspectors with adequate time to conduct thorough inspections rather than the 30-second windows railroad managers have been imposing. It also strengthens language around who is qualified to conduct those inspections. On defect detection, new mileage requirements establish how far apart wayside detectors can be spaced along the rail corridor.

Cassity was careful to note that the bill is not everything the union wanted. The temperature threshold at which a defect detector should trigger a mandatory stop is not yet defined. Staffing levels for Carmen, the qualified mechanical inspectors who have been systematically reduced or eliminated at terminals across the country, are not mandated. But he described the legislation as quite good and a genuine improvement over the status quo.

How East Palestine Actually Happened

Cassity walked through the technical sequence of the East Palestine derailment, making clear it was an avoidable accident. It was a preventable failure that a properly functioning safety system would have caught, he said.

A wheel bearing on one axle began overheating. The train passed over a wayside defect detector — technology that has existed for decades, designed specifically to sense elevated temperatures and alert the crew to stop. The alert did not go to the crew, however. It went to a manager in a remote location via email. The train passed a second detector. The temperature had increased. The alert went to the remote manager again. The train passed a third detector. The bearing was at critical temperature. Only then did a notification reach the crew in the locomotive, and by that point, the train was already coming apart behind them.

The reason those detectors were silent to the crew was not a malfunction. It was a policy decision. Cassity said the railroads invented the concept of a “false positive” to justify rerouting defect alerts away from train crews. This kept trains moving rather than stopping for an inspection. The irony of that logic, he said, is that there is no such thing as a false positive in practical terms. If a crew stops a train and a conductor walks back to inspect a flagged bearing, the time it takes to walk to the bearing and back allows the metal to cool. If a temperature stick melts on contact, the bearing is bad, and the car gets set out. If it does not melt, the train moves on. If the next detector flags the same axle again, the car gets set out regardless. When allowed to function, the system catches the problem every time, Cassity said. East Palestine's detectors were not allowed to function.

Cassity also addressed the broader inspection crisis. Precision scheduled railroading — the operational philosophy that has dominated the major Class I railroads for roughly a decade — has resulted in Carmen, the qualified mechanical inspectors, being either eliminated from terminals or given 30 seconds per car to inspect equipment, with more than 100 inspection points. Managers have stood with stopwatches, timing the inspectors. The predictable result is missed defects, missed bearings and missed opportunities to prevent the next East Palestine before it happens.

What Comes Next?

The legislation now needs to move through the Rules Committee before it can reach the full House floor for a vote. Cassity said he is confident the votes exist in the House for passage, and support from the White House remains a meaningful factor. His preferred timeline is a July markup. The surface transportation authorization expires Sept. 30, creating a hard deadline — miss it and the legislation risks being punted into next year.

After the House, the bill moves to the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee before going to the Senate floor. Cassity said the pressure of the expiration deadline and the White House's involvement give him genuine optimism, while acknowledging that timing is now the single most critical variable.

Three derailments per day. More than 1,000 per year. Each one carries the potential to become East Palestine, depending solely on what is on board. The people of East Palestine, Cassity said, deserve better than luck as the primary line of defense.

More information on the SMART Transportation Division's legislative work is available at smart-union.org.

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