From the primaries in 2016 all the way through 2020, Donald Trump was a lightning rod. All eyes were on him and his rhetoric, with little to no attention paid to the corners of the regulatory state under his executive branch. While he often touted removing onerous regulations for all Americans, much of the regulatory tinkering remained out of the headlines.
One critical regulatory question will test the administration as Trump begins his second term: What will happen at the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA)?
At the FRA, a critical issue has volleyed back and forth for over a decade. The topic is railroad crew sizes. A few high-profile incidents in the United States and Canada in the early 2010s led the FRA to promise an action on crew sizes — namely that moving trains should not have fewer than two qualified personnel onboard at a time. The engineer and conductor are vital for operational safety, the theory goes. No level of technology or material changes in operation would undermine that.
Within a few years, the Barack Obama administration proposed a rule to mandate crew sizes on the nation’s railroads. Little quantitative data was put forward, with much of the energy behind the rule coming from union perspectives and a general gut feeling that “two is safer than one.” It took the Trump administration three years of deliberating to reverse course and pull the proposed regulation before it went into effect.
In 2019, Trump’s FRA said, “In withdrawing (the proposed rule), FRA is providing notice of its affirmative decision that no regulation of train crew staffing is necessary or appropriate for railroad operations to be conducted safely at this time.” It said, “FRA’s accident/incident safety data does not establish that one-person operations are less safe than multi-person train crews.”
This was echoed by the independent National Transportation Safety Board, which said at the time that “there is insufficient data to demonstrate that accidents are avoided by having a second qualified person in the cab. In fact, the NTSB has investigated numerous accidents in which both qualified individuals in a two-person crew made mistakes and failed to avoid an accident.”
As an example of Trump administration deregulation (or, in this case, preventing new regulation), the FRA crew size rule focused on data and safety. It prevented government intervention that was not called for and ensured that government inaction would not result in adverse safety effects.
Why highlight this relatively mundane policy question? Rather than a host of other deregulatory actions the administration took, this case study is interesting because of Vice President-elect JD Vance.
The notable and tragic 2023 railroad derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, took place in Vance’s backyard and led him to join fellow Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown in advancing bipartisan legislation on railroad safety. Vance has adamantly stood by the legislation, which includes a provision on railroad crew sizes. Curiously, the East Palestine incident did not involve a single-person crew or insufficient staffing at all, making the inclusion of such a provision a real head-scratcher to those focused on limited government and data-driven regulatory measures.
Many criticized the bill at the time as ineffective, with others arguing it merely compiled union and partisan policy preferences into a reactionary bill. The swift 26 days between the tragic derailment and the bill’s introduction in the Senate only added to these concerns.
Many other provisions in the bill point to relevant and forward-thinking rail safety actions, and like all bipartisan legislation, compromise likely requires give and take on the specific provisions. In any case, Vance is a proponent of a bill that would codify federal crew size requirements.
Meanwhile, since President Biden took office in 2023, the FRA swiftly reintroduced a proposed rule on crew size and pushed it all the way across the finish line. It remains unpopular and unsupported by data even after the East Palestine event. That regulatory action is now a final rule (albeit facing specific legal challenges), while the Vance-Brown Railway Safety Act is still pending.
This presents a unique question for the second Trump term: Will the FRA regulation be removed because no new data justifies the rule, or will it remain in place given Vance’s interest in railroad safety and commitment to his home state, blue-collar backers, and union-friendly populism? The meticulous and multi-year approach to addressing the rule makes the question all the more interesting. It was not a regulation removed lightly.
The fate of the Senate bill has little to do with the question, as the regulatory state is the focus of the question. For Trump to remove the crew size rule would be consistent with his first administration, but potentially create tension with his vice president and a bloc of voters. To leave the rule in place would undermine his deregulatory approach and make either his first administration’s FRA or his second appear political, given the unchanging data and safety record on the matter.
Myriad regulatory questions will test the consistency of Trump’s deregulatory message and how aligned he will be with his previous administration. As the diverse coalition of voters who put him back in office watch the next administration to see if Trump truly represents their views, this seemingly niche regulatory question will be one of his first main tests.
