In February 2023, 38 train cars owned by the company Norfolk Southern derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, sparking a fire and leading to the vent and burn of thousands of gallons of the toxic chemical vinyl chloride. Norfolk Southern recently announced a settlement with the town for $22 million.
Since the derailment, rail safety in the United States has taken on a new sense of public urgency. In western Pennsylvania, just over the border from East Palestine, a report on rail bridges aims to raise the alarm about the state of aging infrastructure. An engineering firm inspecting 20 Norfolk Southern and feeder bridges in the Pittsburgh area found 11 in serious or poor condition.
“It is critical for Pittsburgh, for Pennsylvania and for the rest of this country that we have more oversight,” said Glenn Olcerst, founder of Rail Pollution Protection Pittsburgh, a grassroots group that advocates for changes to rail regulation and hired the firm to produce the report. “They’re playing Russian roulette with us. Each time a train passes, especially over these bridges, it’s a spin of the cylinder in a gun.”
In a statement to Inside Climate News, Norfolk Southern said its engineers have deemed all its bridges “structurally safe” and discounted the report’s inspections because they were only based on the appearance of the bridges. “Norfolk Southern is committed to the safety of our operations and our infrastructure, including our bridges,” said the spokesperson, Heather Garcia. Garcia said one of the bridges in the report, located on River Road, is not owned by Norfolk Southern.
The bridges included in the report are part of a heavily trafficked network that is essential to Norfolk Southern’s business. In a 10-year safety report on Norfolk Southern from the Federal Railroad Administration, the company recorded an average of just over 160 derailments and about three hazardous material releases per year.
Although train derailments involving bridges are rare, they do happen. In 2012, a train carrying vinyl chloride derailed while crossing a bridge in Paulsboro, New Jersey, triggering the evacuation of hundreds of residents.
David Schmidt, a structural engineer and certified bridge inspector who was hired by Rail Pollution Protection Pittsburgh to carry out the inspections, said that one of the bridges, on 7th Street in Freeport, appeared to be too damaged to justify repairs.
“If I were the owner, I would be looking at replacing that bridge. I wouldn’t be looking at fixing it. It had too many problems,” he said.
Garcia, with Norfolk Southern, said the 7th Street bridge is “confirmed to be safe for rail operations” but is “slated for pre-scheduled maintenance work in 2025.”
Schmidt said failing rail bridges have the potential to cause far more harm than a derailment can alone. “If a bridge collapses, the whole thing’s going to fall over,” he said. With structural collapse, the danger to conductors and bystanders is far greater, and that danger is compounded if the train is carrying hazardous materials like the cars in East Palestine were.
Olcerst said the age of Pennsylvania’s bridges makes them particularly vulnerable to disrepair. Climate change is another concern; the environmental stressors accounted for during their construction decades ago are no longer the norm.
“The weather since 100 years ago has changed. The climate has changed,” he said.
Schmidt said his visual inspections should be “taken with a grain of salt” because of their limited scope, although he was doubtful that a more thorough inspection would reveal fewer problems.
“What we could do is look from the ground. Based on that, what I’m seeing is that the bridge is not in very good condition,” he said. “If I got hands-on, I might find it to be worse than what I think [now]. I don’t believe it would be any better.”
Schmidt’s inspections were also limited by the lack of public information about previous inspections. Those are conducted by the company, not the government. “I do believe the feds should be more involved in the railroad industry,” he said. “We can’t even get their [Norfolk Southern’s] reports to see how they compare to what we found, and they’re not required to disclose anything.”
Schmidt said rail bridge regulations should be more like the rules for highway bridges. “If a politician wants to know the condition of the highway bridge, he can get it, but the railroad bridge he can’t,” he said. Rail bridge safety, unlike road bridges, is the responsibility of private railroad companies.
Advocates for tougher federal rail regulation are unlikely to find allies in the second Trump administration. During President Donald Trump’s first term, he cut funding for the Department of Transportation, and deregulation is a priority of Trump’s new DOT secretary, Sean Duffy. Trump’s nominee to lead the Federal Railroad Administration, David Fink, is the former CEO of Pan Am Railways.
Rail safety reform bills introduced in Congress in response to East Palestine have stalled after facing Republican and industry-led opposition, including a bill introduced by Vice President JD Vance while he was one of Ohio’s senators.
“I refuse to let these railroads treat communities like ours like collateral damage in the way of their profits.”
— U.S. Rep. Chris Deluzio
U.S. Rep. Chris Deluzio, who represents part of southwestern Pennsylvania and serves on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, held a press conference last week to address the legislative stalemate on rail safety. In the wake of East Palestine, Deluzio sponsored the Railway Safety Act of 2023. The bill aimed to strengthen safety regulations for trains carrying hazardous materials.
Deluzio, a Democrat, said Republican congressional leadership is the “main obstacle” he has faced in getting the bill passed, but he also blamed lobbying by the railroads. “We see the railroads lobby hard. They are powerful down in Washington,” he said. “I know we can’t trust the railroads to regulate themselves.”
Deluzio said the rail bridges report was “yet another wake-up call about the lousy condition of railroad bridges in Western Pennsylvania” in an interview with the Pittsburgh Union Progress.
“I refuse to let these railroads treat communities like ours like collateral damage in the way of their profits. We are people whose dignity and safety matters, no matter our politics, no matter where we live,” Deluzio said at the press conference. “So many of us live along the tracks. Nearly half of my constituents live within a mile of the tracks. That’s a lot of people in my district who are at risk if this happens again.”
Olcerst argued that rail safety is “not a partisan issue.”
“We have a railroad that comes through Pennsylvania that is more interested in profits over people,” he said. “Nobody wants a bridge to collapse and an East Palestine in their backyard.”
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Kiley Bense
Reporter, Pennsylvania
Kiley Bense covers climate change and the environment with a focus on Pennsylvania, politics, energy, and public health. She has reported on the effects of the fracking boom in Pennsylvania, the expansion of the American plastics industry, and the intersection of climate change and culture. Her previous work has appeared in the New York Times, the Atlantic, Smithsonian Magazine, the Believer, and Sierra Magazine, and she holds master’s degrees in journalism and creative writing from Columbia University. She is based in Pennsylvania.
