PPI - Radically Pragmatic
  • Donate
Skip to content
  • Home
  • About
    • About Us
    • Locations
    • Careers
  • People
  • Projects
  • Our Work
  • Events
  • Donate

Our Work

Long for Medium: “Under Legislation, Policymakers Would Micromanage Freight Rail Employment”

  • May 6, 2019
  • Elliott Long

Republicans despise federal micromanagement, but that hasn’t kept Rep. Don Young of Alaska from hopping aboard the Washington-Knows-Best Express. He recently introduced a bill mandating that freight trains have a minimum of two crew members on board trains at all times.

While Young justifies his bill on safety grounds, the bill also appears to reflect pressure from rail workers’ unions fearful that automation is putting their members out of jobs.

Here’s the backstory: Following the fatal 2008 Chatsworth train collision in Los Angeles, President Bush signed the Rail Safety Improvement Act into law. The law required freight railroads, by the end of 2020, to integrate Positive Train Control (PTC) — a nationwide system of technologies that constantly process thousands of data points to stop a train before human error-caused accidents occur. One of the benefits of PTC was that it was a win-win for consumers and the railroads, enhancing safety and allowing railroads to boost productivity by moving to one-person crews somewhere down the road.

 

Read the full piece on Medium by clicking here. 

Related Work

In the News  |  June 13, 2025

Ainsley on ABC Radio National: Lessons for Global Centre-Left Parties from Labor’s Win

  • Claire Ainsley
Op-Ed  |  June 13, 2025

Marshall for The Hill: Factory Jobs Aren’t the Future Working Americans Want

  • Will Marshall
In the News  |  June 12, 2025

Marshall in Politico: ‘It’s a winner for him’: Dems work to turn LA debate from immigration to Trump’s executive powers

  • Will Marshall
Press Release  |  June 12, 2025

New PPI Report Proposes Apprenticeship Degrees as Path to Upward Mobility Without Debt

  • Deanna Ross Bruno Manno
In the News  |  June 12, 2025

Ainsley on The Spectator’s Coffee House Shots Podcast: Is Rachel Reeves’s Headroom Shrinking?

  • Claire Ainsley
Press Release  |  June 10, 2025

New PPI Report Finds Tech and E-Commerce Sectors Are a Powerful Engine for Local Resilience

  • Michael Mandel
  • Never miss an update:

  • Subscribe to our newsletter
PPI Logo
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Facebook
  • Donate
  • Careers
  • © 2025 Progressive Policy Institute. All Rights Reserved.
  • |
  • Privacy Policy
  • |
  • Privacy Settings