The Federal Railroad Administration is taking its time deciding a potential expansion of automated railroad track inspection technology, which industry insiders say could put them in direct conflict with President Donald Trump’s artificial intelligence and deregulatory agendas.
Furthermore, should the FRA block the waiver, those insiders say that Trump, like former President Joe Biden before him, would be prioritizing political union support over regulatory safety concerns.
The decision itself involves a waiver filed by the American Association of Railroads in the spring that would provide rail companies some exemptions from adhering to 1971’s regulations dictating the method and frequency at which railroads must be visually inspected for defects.
AAR requested the waiver to expand the use of “track geometry measurement system,” which the group claims “will result in earlier detection and remediation of track defects, reduce visual inspections that are a potential source of injury, and improve operational efficiency — in other words a tool to be supplement visual inspections already conducted out by federally-trained inspectors. A significant number of Republican politicians and right-of-center think tanks all weighed in favorably during the public comment period ending in July.
However, Industry insiders told the Washington Examiner that union opposition to the waiver could lead the Trump administration to deny the request for relief, as the Biden administration did before them.
One insider specifically claimed that allies of Vice President JD Vance at the Department of Transportation are “stonewalling” the waiver in hopes of appeasing unions and maintaining Trump’s labor coalition for a potential 2028 White House bid of his own.
Two labor unions associated with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters are actively lobbying against the waiver. Representatives for the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen and the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Ways Employes touted meetings with lawmakers in September, where the automated track inspection technology was specifically discussed. Union members specifically argue that the expansion of the technology would not demonstrably improve rail safety and could potentially jeopardize inspection jobs.
The Teamsters did not endorse Trump during the 2024 cycle. But Teamsters President Sean O’Brien delivered a primetime speech at last year’s Republican National Convention, making him the first Teamsters president to do so, and the union has backed portions of the president’s economic agenda since January.
Democratic lawmakers have similarly come out against AAR’s request. Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA), the ranking member on the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, and 11 other Democrats wrote a letter to deputy FRA administrator Drew Feeley over the summer expressing concerns that AAR’s proposal will make railroads, “over reliant on technology.”
However, Marc Scribner, the Reason Foundation’s senior transportation policy analyst, told the Washington Examiner in an interview that it should be a “no brainer” for the FRA to approve the waiver.
“The idea is, that while the train is in normal operations, this system is constantly scanning the track for defects, so the waiver would allow the use of this technology,” he stated. “The Department of Transportation’s Volpe Center, which is their kind of in-house think tank, has been clamoring for exactly this type of thing for decades, and now the technology has arrived that allows carriers to actually do it.”
Scribner noted that the Biden administration was sued multiple times by rail carriers for, like Trump, slow-walking automated track inspection waivers, claiming that was “a situation where Railway Labor had had really captured a safety regulatory agency, which should be very, very concerning to the American public.”
“I hope that the Trump administration sort of understands its legal obligations a bit more clearly and really takes seriously the fact that safety regulators should be focused on safety, and when presented with evidence that a new technology or practice is safety enhancing, they should be enthusiastic about embracing it,” he added. “This is something everyone should be concerned about. If we’re going to have safety regulators, we should expect them to be focused on safety, not doling out favors to politicians’ friends.”
White House and FRA officials declined to comment.
Nathaniel Sizemore, a spokesperson for the Department of Transportation, told the Washington Examiner that Trump and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy are “committed to deploying new technologies when and where it makes most sense for the American people.”
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“USDOT continues to review feedback from stakeholders to understand the proposed benefits and potential drawbacks of technology,” he wrote in a statement.