“As trains — many carrying hazardous material — have grown longer, crews should not be getting smaller,” said Eddie Hall, the president of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen union. He praised the FRA for taking the step President Joe Biden promised. Hall said keeping two people in the cab of a locomotive is crucial now that railroads rely on longer trains that routinely stretch for miles.
Why? Passenger trains and subways are already very safe thanks to remote control & monitoring systems, Deadman’s switches etc. Many urban rail sstems don’t use drivers at all! Is there a subway accident from the past 20 years that could have been prevented with an extra driver?
when the blue line in my city went off the rails folks were leaving while the engineer was communicating with central and they barely got the electric rail deactivated. They used to have a conductor who would do that people management. Also back in the day when we had conductors if you were taking the train at a sketchy hour you could make it a point to ride in the car with the conductor who is openly in a train car as opposed to the engineer who is in a locked part of the front of the train and has no visibility into the train but the cameras. Why the F can’t we just use more humans and keep a better quality of life in our processes.
Oh, I forgot about the quality of US infrastrure. If an engineer needs to make a voice call to communicate to unpower the line because a train has derailed, that’s a systemic problem. I think all metros in the EU have telemetry and any major railway implements ETCS. Weird that “safety first” means that schoolkids cannot see the eclipse but public transport infrastructure gets way underfunded.
Also, a certain “blue line” keeps going off the rails in the US. I read this out of context and thought the police staged a riot.
sorry. yeah its just the name of a metro line.
You’re talking about conductors. The article is talking about drivers
Its talking about personelle. there are no other positions besides driver.