Even as other modes of transportation gain prominence, railroads maintain their role as an essential means of transporting energy products. Railroads transport 75% of coal and 60% to 70% of ethanol shipments.
With cost and fuel efficiency, railroads leverage massive scale to mitigate the price volatility of shipping by truck or plane, accounting for 40% of long-distance U.S. freight ton-miles, greater than any other mode of transportation.
Crucially, railroads achieve this success with an impeccable safety record that’s only getting better thanks to continuous innovation. Since 2005, overall train accident rates have declined 40%, and 2025 saw historic lows in derailments, equipment-caused accidents, track-caused accidents, and Class I employee injury rates. Over 99.9% of hazardous materials, such as crude oil, reach their destination safely.
PUBLIC SAFETY NEEDS FOLLOW-THROUGH, NOT SYMBOLISM
Unfortunately, the 2026 Railway Safety Act threatens to replace this tradition of bottom-up safety and efficiency achievements with federal requirements. The act would burden railroads with new standards not linked to improved safety outcomes, and the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee is expected to include the Railway Safety Act in the Surface Transportation Reauthorization markup next week.
As a 24-organization coalition letter to President Donald Trump led by the American Energy Alliance explains, “The Act’s two-person crew mandate, for example, ignores extensive data showing no connection between crew size and accident rates. Railroads safely reduced crews from three or more members through the 1990s as technology advanced, and overall accident rates improved. Federal reviews in 2016, 2019, and the Federal Railroad Administration’s own 2024 rulemaking suggested there is no causal evidence justifying the mandate.”
Additionally, “The Act would also mandate fixed spacing for wayside hot-box detectors, roughly every 15 miles, rather than the current average of 25 miles, and rigid stop rules. This would cost the rail industry $1.1 to 2.2 billion, nearly double the number of detectors, and raise installation, maintenance, and false-positive expenses.”
Furthermore, the downsides of over-zealous safety regulations on rail and how they hinder American competitiveness: “These provisions risk raising freight costs, slowing the movement of energy commodities, and discouraging the very innovation needed for safer, more efficient rail operations—directly undermining your goals of energy security, domestic manufacturing revival, and supply chain resilience.”
The rail industry exemplifies the value of establishing industry-wide technical standards that mesh with the mutually reinforcing goals of profits and safety. The Federal Railroad Administration, the agency responsible for railway safety, can reference these industry standards when implementing and updating its regulations, but it will always be a step behind due to bureaucratic inertia and special interests. “To incorporate a new standard in regulation or update a regulation to reflect a revised standard, agencies must follow specific procedures that necessarily make this a time- and resource-intensive endeavor,” explains Marc Scribner, senior transportation policy analyst at the Reason Foundation.
Clearly, the Railway Safety Act won’t have any appreciable effect on railway safety, but that doesn’t matter to its proponents. For special interests, the bill will serve as a make-work program, putting high costs on U.S. consumers for the sake of a relatively minimal number of jobs. Insulating railways from creative destruction will help some workers in the short term, but it will hurt the industry as a whole because the additional compliance costs give its competitors an advantage. Therefore, by seeking to protect current jobs, special interests are putting future rail jobs in jeopardy.
THE LITTLE LABOR NEGOTIATION THAT COULD KEEP RAILS MOVING
From Day 1, Trump has made his position on energy clear, putting common sense above “green” goals and setting the stage for a future of abundance. However, because energy is ubiquitous in our economy, regulations and barriers in other sectors can indirectly prevent us from achieving the president’s worthwhile goals. When these sectors get caught up with political efforts to appease interest groups, it makes us all less secure and poorer.
The Trump administration and congressional Republicans have taken over 300 actions to chart the United States on a path of energy abundance. With its strict requirements that bear no relation to safety, the Railway Safety Act would be a step backward. Energy needs to be transported at multiple levels of the production chain, giving railways an instrumental role in achieving this future. We can’t let progress slip for the sake of gaining political points.
Tom Pyle is the president of the Institute for Energy Research.