The Railway Safety Act of 2023 is a bipartisan effort led by Ohio’s U.S. Senators, Republican J.D. Vance and Democrat Sherrod Brown.
The following article was originally published in the Ohio Capital Journal and published on News5Cleveland.com under a content-sharing agreement.
Lawmakers also revisited the definition of “high-hazard” trains and the heightened safety requirements that follow. The train in East Palestine didn’t qualify as a high-hazard train under existing law, and so Norfolk Southern didn’t face more stringent notice and information sharing requirements. “That notice really has to be advanced notice,” she insisted. “It’s really not enough for folks to kind of be flat footed in the event of a disaster. They need to know ahead of time, especially when you have high hazard trains moving through communities.”The measure includes grant funding for emergency agencies to purchase protective equipment and funding to reimburse agencies after a disaster. But Junod worries rural communities still bear the brunt of accidents.
“If you were to see an accident like what happened in East Palestine happen in Columbus, in downtown,” she described, “you could easily — and not at all to catastrophize — but you could easily, handily, very quickly shoot right past that that liability coverage.” Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, voted against the measure in committee and argued the bill “as written” wouldn’t get to 60. In a press call after the vote, Sen. Brown offered a blunt response.“He was wrong about the bill and Committee,” Brown continued, “he thought there might be no Republicans with maybe the exception of Vance. He tried to weaken it, he tried to slow walk it. We knew we had the support of the country, not just people in eastern Ohio.
Brown noted Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer wants to move quickly, but added there’s always queue of bills lined up for the Senate floor.Assuming Brown’s vote count is correct, the Railway Safety Act still faces an uphill climb. Rep. Chris Deluzio, D-PA, has filed a companion bill in the House, but the Ohio delegation has lined up behind a slightly different proposal.
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