Long Freight Trains: Ensuring Safe Operations, Mitigating Adverse Impacts (2024)
Chapter: 1 Introduction
1
Introduction
During the past two decades, U.S. freight railroads have been operating increasingly longer trains. Nearly all of these long trains are operated by the six Class I railroads.1 Based on data provided by two Class I railroads, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported in 2019 that average train length had increased by about 25% from 2008 to 2017.2 By 2021 some trains had reached a length of almost 14,000 ft (~2.6 mi) and the length of about 25% of all trains exceeded 7,500 ft (~1.5 mi).3 Railroads began adopting long trains out of interest in reducing costs and increasing operating efficiency. By making trains longer—and especially by lengthening manifest trains that consist of different types of rail cars—railroads could reduce the number of train starts, crews, and locomotives to move the same amount of tonnage as moved by a greater number of shorter trains.4
The derailment of a 178-car freight train in Bedford County, Pennsylvania,5 in August 2017, which led to the release of hazardous materials and a fire, brought attention to potential safety challenges from
___________________
1 BNSF Railway, Canadian National, Canadian Pacific Kansas City, CSX Transportation, Norfolk Southern, and Union Pacific.
2 GAO (U.S. Government Accountability Office). n.d. Rail Safety: Freight Trains Are Getting Longer, and Additional Information Is Needed to Assess Their Impact.” GAO-19-443. https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-19-443.pdf.
3 AAR (Association of American Railroads). “Freight Rail & Train Length.” https://www.aar.org/issue/freight-train-length (accessed May 20, 2024).
4 AAR presentation to committee, January 2023.
5 “CSX Train Derailment with Hazardous Materials Release, Hyndman, Pennsylvania, August 2, 2017.” Accident Report NTSB/RAR-20/04 PB2020-101012.
operating longer trains. Notably, in its investigation of the derailment, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) raised concerns about how the 10,612-ft-long (~2-mile-long) train had been composed and how hand brakes were used to control speeds on descending grade. NTSB questioned the railroad’s decision to place at the front of the train blocks of empty rail cars, which were derailed by the heavier, loaded cars pushing from behind as the train descended a grade. In its review of the safety and other impacts of longer freight trains, GAO pointed to this incident as indicative of the complexities that can arise in properly constructing trains as they become longer and contain a mix of rail car types and weights.6
As part of its charge, GAO also considered whether the trend toward longer trains was affecting the frequency and duration of blocked highway-rail grade crossings. The Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) had reported that complaints about blocked crossings had been increasing coincident with the increases in train lengths generally. The agency was receiving more complaints about delayed emergency responses at blocked crossings and high-risk motorist and pedestrian behaviors, such as racing to cross tracks in advance of a train, and, in the case of impatient pedestrians, crawling over and under trains stopped at crossings. Although it did not reach a conclusion about whether longer trains have been a factor in the increase in complaints about grade-crossing blockages, GAO reported concerns raised by local communities that longer trains prolong the duration of a blockage and can block more crossings concurrently, making it harder for vehicles to route around the train.
STUDY ORIGINS AND APPROACH
In November 2021, Congress directed the Secretary of Transportation to enter into an agreement with the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine “to conduct a study on the operation of freight trains that are longer than 7,500 feet.”7 Under sponsorship from FRA, the Transportation Research Board convened the Committee on the Impact of Trains Longer Than 7,500 Feet in September 2022. The 12-member committee, with experience in freight and passenger railroad operations, state rail transportation, national rail safety oversight, and freight and passenger rail research, was charged with fulfilling the Statement of Task (SOT) found in Box 1-1.
___________________
6 “Rail Safety: Freight Trains Are Getting Longer, and Additional Information Is Needed to Assess Their Impact.” GAO-19-443. https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-19-443.pdf, p. 2.
7 “Section 22422: National Academies study on trains longer than 7,500 feet”; Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, P.L. 117-58, Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, November 15, 2021. https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/3684/text.
BOX 1-1
Statement of Task
An ad hoc committee will conduct a study of freight trains that are longer than 7,500 feet. The study will examine potential safety risks from the operation of these trains relative to the operation of shorter trains. Consideration will be given to whether there is a changed potential for (a) loss of communications between the end-of-train device and the locomotive cab when taking into account differing terrains and conditions; (b) loss of radio communications between crew members when a crew member alights from the train, including communications over differing terrains and conditions; (c) derailments, including incidents that may be associated with in-train compressive forces and slack action or other operational factors in differing terrains and conditions; (d) adverse impacts from the deployment of multiple distributed power units; and (e) adverse impacts on braking, locomotive performance, and track wear.
As part of its review, the committee will consider the role of locomotive electronics, signal systems, train length, and trailing tonnage with regard to how railroads build longer trains (including the number and placement of loaded and empty freight cars and distributed power locomotives). The committee will review how engineers and conductors are trained and their service readiness to operate longer trains. If warranted from its findings, the committee may examine safety margins and human factors and make recommendations on whether additional engineer and conductor training is required for safely operating longer trains. The committee will also assess the potential impacts of operating longer trains relative to shorter trains on greenhouse gas emissions and other environmental concerns, the scheduling and efficiency of passenger and freight train operations, and the frequency and amount of time that highway-rail grade crossings are occupied by trains.
The committee may also make other recommendations, including to Congress and the U.S. Department of Transportation, on steps needed to better understand and reduce any adverse impacts of longer trains.
In considering the SOT, the study committee had to make several decisions, including about the meaning of terms in the charge and how to orient the study toward salient public policy interests.
Defining Long Trains
The SOT calls for an examination of trains that are longer than 7,500 ft—equivalent to about 1.5 mi—but this value is not uniformly viewed as the threshold for defining a long train.8 As a result, and because the impacts
___________________
8 AAR Standard S-462 is based on extensive testing of the valve portions on a 150-car test rack, composed of 50-ft long cars, for a total train length of 7,500 ft.
from freight trains do not change abruptly when a train reaches or drops below 7,500 ft in length, the committee decided that this value was specified in the SOT and in the legislation calling for the study to signify an interest in the upper portion of the train length range, rather than to define a “long” train precisely.9
Emphasis on Impacts with Policy Relevance
The committee wanted its report and recommendations to be relevant by addressing the most salient public policy issues. In this regard, it is important to emphasize that current policy interests pertaining to long trains stem largely from recent trends within the rail industry to build and operate increasingly longer manifest trains, which haul a mix of freight in many different types of rail cars. In addition to manifest trains, railroads operate unit trains and intermodal trains. A unit train consists of cars of uniform type and weight, such as a train made up of coal cars only. An intermodal train carries only intermodal cars, but these trains can have characteristics similar to manifest trains inasmuch as the intermodal cars can be of varying lengths and weights.
Railroads first began operating long unit trains (up to 200 cars) to transport iron ore and coal during the 1940s, but it was not until recent decades that railroads began operating longer manifest trains.10 Longer manifest trains have spawned public policy interest because they present different operational challenges than the more uniform unit and intermodal trains. Manifest train handling and operations can be more complicated because of their diverse car types and weights. In addition, as blocks of rail cars are picked up and set out en route, the consists of manifest trains may change during a single trip such that the train’s handling demands will also change.
In asking for a review of the impacts of increasing freight train lengths, the SOT calls out four interests in particular: rail safety, highway-rail grade crossing blockages, the operational efficiency of passenger and freight trains, and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Of these impacts, safety is a foremost public concern, and thus it is treated extensively in the report. Likewise, significant attention is paid to highway-rail grade crossings, where trains have a direct impact on the public. With regard to the impacts of longer freight trains on passenger trains, the report pays the most attention to impacts on intercity trains operated by Amtrak. Many of Amtrak’s trains run over the track of freight railroads (called “host railroads”) that were
___________________
9 FRA tested 100- and 200-car trains. Because rail cars may be of different lengths, there is not a one-to-one relationship between the number of cars and the length of the train.
10 AAR presentation to committee, January 2023.
relieved of their common carrier obligation to provide passenger service when Amtrak was created.11 Federal law grants Amtrak trains preference over a host railroad’s trains,12 and thus if conflicts arise due to the increasing length of freight trains, this can be a clear public policy matter.
While GHG emissions are a major public policy concern, freight trains are not intense emitters of these pollutants relative to other modes, and therefore the impact of longer trains on GHG emissions is not treated as extensively in this report as impacts on rail safety, grade crossings, and Amtrak passenger service. The report also gives less attention to the impacts of long trains on the operational efficiency of local commuter trains because, unlike Amtrak, commuter railroads are not afforded preference over freight service by statute, and they can address operational issues related to long freight trains through their individual track usage agreements negotiated with host railroads.
With regard to the impacts of long freight trains on the operational fluidity of other freight trains, some of these impacts are discussed in the report, such as on rail car cycle times, but with recognition that this is not a significant public policy matter because railroads must account for these impacts on their own operations and on their shipper customers when they make choices about when and how to use longer trains.
Methodology
To inform its work, the committee invited presentations from dozens of individuals and organizations, as listed in the Acknowledgments section. They included presentations from all six Class I railroads and the Association of American Railroads (AAR), three railroad labor unions (Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen; American Train Dispatchers Association; and Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation), Amtrak and commuter passenger railroads, shippers, and members of the public and their locally elected officials.
The committee reviewed the academic literature pertaining to all study subject matter and sought data from publicly available sources and from the freight and passenger railroad industries directly. To assess safety impacts, the committee consulted FRA safety advisories and evaluated train derailment records from FRA and train traffic data from the Surface Transportation Board (STB). For this purpose, the committee also asked AAR to provide various data needed to document the extent of long train
___________________
11 P.L. 91-518. Rail Passenger Service Act of 1970. The act authorized Amtrak to assume by contract the intercity rail passenger service obligations of railroads that wished to be relieved of these obligations as common carriers.
12 P.L. 93-146, § 10(2), 87 Stat. 548.
operations and to better align train derailment records with train movements and types; however, restrictive conditions on the supply of this proprietary information, including preapproval of the analytic methods used and a high degree of data aggregation, foreclosed this option.
To examine the role of technology in train operations and communications between locomotives, the committee held a meeting to learn about in-train telemetry. To understand the radio communication requirements of crew members when operating long trains over differing terrains and under different operating conditions, the committee invited presentations from officials and members of railroad labor unions. They explained how train engineers and conductors are trained and otherwise prepared to operate longer trains and how long trains can affect rail yard and dispatching operations.
To understand the impacts on communities from longer trains, including at highway-rail grade crossings, the committee met with members of the public and officials from local communities, including emergency responders from the Chicago area and other parts of Illinois, as well as from Indiana, Maryland, and Iowa. To further evaluate how long trains can affect the functioning of highway-rail grade crossings, a panel of federal, state, and local officials was convened for input, and the committee commissioned an analysis of data recorded by devices located at grade crossings to detect trains in selected locations. To understand how long trains can affect passenger trains, the committee invited presentations from Amtrak and Metra, the commuter railroad of northern Illinois.
To observe the functioning of the largest freight railroad center in North America, the committee held one of its meetings in Chicago, where all Class I railroad operations intersect daily. The visit included tours of the Belt Railway of Chicago, Metra operations, and several area sites that have experienced persistent blocked grade crossings. On this visit, the committee also heard from officials in local communities impacted by long trains, the chair of STB, and officials from the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning.
REPORT ORGANIZATION
Chapter 2 describes the operational and safety challenges of long trains and examines why these challenges are particularly acute for long manifest trains. Chapter 3 examines the technologies used to control long trains and ensure operational safety, including engineer-assist systems, braking systems, and distributed power locomotives. Chapter 4 examines issues related to crew and railroad employees and their preparedness and experience in operating, inspecting, and maintaining long trains. Chapter 5 examines the safety impacts of long trains on the public, namely on
the functioning of highway-rail grade crossings and on Amtrak intercity passenger rail service. Chapter 6 reviews the ways long trains can affect greenhouse gas emissions from rail transportation and from other modes and other environmental impacts. Chapter 7 is a summary assessment of the report’s findings and contains the committee’s recommendations and their rationale.
This page intentionally left blank.
