Lac-Megantic crash focus of federal rail meeting
Federal regulators and railroad industry representatives are scheduled to meet Thursday for a meeting focused solely on safety issues that emerged in the wake of the Montreal, Maine and Atlantic oil tanker derailment that killed 47 in Quebec in July.
The Kennebec Journal reported that discussion around safety issues and regulatory steps to prevent a similar disaster will be the only focus of a meeting scheduled by the Federal Railroad Administration’s Railroad Safety Advisory Committee.
The discussion will include preliminary findings of the Canadian investigation into the disaster, as well as an order by the FRA that all U.S. trains carrying hazardous materials should not be left unattended at any time. The group is also expected to discuss a separate safety recommendation from the FRA that trains are to be led by two-person crews.
Canadian officials recently ordered all trains operating in the country to have two-person crews. In the U.S. two-person crews remain just a recommendation, though FRA head Joseph Szabo wrote last week to MMA’s chairman, Ed Burkhardt, saying he was “shocked” that the railroad is not using two-person crews in the wake of the disaster.
Robert Kulat, an FRA spokesman, told the paper that the meeting Thursday is still far from any policy decisions, but could give direction to working groups that would then make recommendations to the federal agency.
Most Recent
Most Recent
Comments