by Jon Decker
A growing chorus of voices across media, policy, and economic circles is raising concerns about the Railway Safety Act and its unintended consequences.
Editorial boards and free-market organizations agree that its one-size-fits-all mandates fail to improve railway safety while driving up costs across the supply chain.
Below is some select commentary on how this bill undermines safety by shifting freight from rail to more dangerous highway transportation.
Taken together, this coverage reflects a consistent theme: well-intentioned regulation, if not grounded in evidence and innovation, risks doing more harm than good.
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Forbes | Steve Forbes
March 24, 2026
The Railway Safety Act would impose rigid, one-size-fits-all mandates on railroad operations, including prescriptive requirements on crew size and other operating practices. These mandates aren’t serious, evidence-driven answers to the primary causes of recent incidents. They’re political gestures designed to sound tough, compassionate and decisive while shifting power back to regulators and politicians.
This is how bad economic policy is almost always made. A problem emerges. Activists and politicians demand visible action. Congress obliges with sweeping rules that have little to do with root causes and everything to do with appearances. The costs pile up later, quietly but relentlessly, and they’re borne not by the architects of the policy, but by everyone else.
Washington Post Editorial Board
March 8, 2026
Transporting goods by rail is much safer than doing so by truck, which is the closest substitute. Increasing costs for rail through pointless mandates would result in some shippers opting for trucks instead, causing more highway traffic and a greater probability of freight accidents overall.
Just because a bill has “safety” in the title doesn’t mean it will make Americans safer.
Competitive Enterprise Institute
March 4, 2026
By mandating crew sizes, detector standards, speed limits, and inspection times, the Railway Safety Act risks replacing railroads’ flexible, technology-driven safety progress with rigid legislative rules. Congress should reject sweeping mandates and instead let competition and investment continue making railroads safer and more efficient. Rail safety is too important to be guided by slogans and short‑term politics.
Fortune | Michael Gorman, Niehaus Chair in Business Analytics and Operations Management at the University of Dayton
March 6, 2026
The Federal Railroad Administration itself calls U.S. freight rail the safest in the world and has set record safety performance in 2025; but when regulations make rail shipping more expensive, shippers respond rationally by moving freight to far more dangerous trucks. Every percentage point shift from rail to truck increases overall risk to the public.
Daily Caller | James Carter, University of Texas professor
March 20, 2026
The Railway Safety Act would mandate yesterday’s solutions onto tomorrow’s technology. It would freeze innovation in place and drive up costs across supply chains. Freight rail moves roughly 40 percent of long-distance cargo in this country. When rail costs go up, everything costs more: groceries, fuel, building materials, manufactured goods. Working families end up paying the price.
Worse, higher rail costs would push some shippers to trucks instead, putting more freight on highways and increasing the probability of accidents overall. A bill sold as a safety measure would make freight less safe.
An administration that ran on fighting inflation and restoring American greatness should think hard before signing legislation that makes life more expensive for the people who voted for it.
National Review | Veronique de Rugy, Mercatus Center scholar
February 13, 2026
Republicans gain nothing by delivering regulatory victories to organized labor that they failed to secure legislatively. New research shows these rail unions are especially partisan, and not in a good way for the GOP. Conservatives gain little by embracing mandates that raise costs and expand federal authority without clear evidence that they improve safety. An administration that has pledged to reduce regulatory burdens should be wary of resurrecting proposals that do the opposite.
Real Clear Markets | Matthew Kandrach, Consumer Action for a Strong Economy
March 23, 2026
But even as the administration takes steps to increase energy supply and reduce logistical bottlenecks, a different policy push is gaining traction inside Washington—one that could move in the opposite direction.
Some allies of Vice President JD Vance are now reviving proposals tied to the so-called Railway Safety Act (RSA)—a package of prescriptive federal mandates first introduced after the 2023 derailment in East Palestine, Ohio.
If enacted, these provisions would impose new operational mandates on freight railroads, including requirements around train crews and inspection practices that rail operators warn would drive up costs without addressing the root causes of rail incidents.
The contradiction is striking.
At the very moment federal policymakers are scrambling to increase energy flows and lower costs, Washington is also considering regulations that could make it harder and more expensive to move the very fuels the country relies on.
Americans for Tax Reform
March 11, 2026
While costs would increase under this policy, safety outcomes would not improve. The FRA has repeatedly concluded that there is not “reliable or conclusive statistical data” showing that “multiple-person crew operations” are any safer than one-person crew operations.
Similarly, the Railway Safety Act mandates new inspection requirements that increase the frequency and duration of manual inspections, even though automated track inspection technologies have been proven to make rail transportation safer.
The American Spectator | David Ozgo, Executive Director of the Center for Transportation Advancement
March 3, 2026
The Railway Safety Act is well-intentioned, but it is a step backward. It imposes costly mandates without improving safety, stifles innovation, and contradicts the administration’s own deregulatory achievements. The Trump administration has made the U.S. economy more dynamic and competitive by cutting unnecessary regulations. It should not undermine that progress by supporting legislation that revives the very regulatory excess it has worked to dismantle.
Congress should insist on modern, performance‑based safety standards — or set the Railway Safety Act aside entirely.
American Commitment | Jon Decker
Major League Baseball stepped into the future with its recent announcement that “robotic umpires” will be introduced next season. Under MLB’s new Automated Ball-Strike challenge system, teams will have the opportunity to contest pitches they believe were called incorrectly, with an artificial intelligence system determining the outcome.
This is a positive development for baseball. After all, if we have the technology to improve accuracy and reduce errors, why wouldn’t we want games to be called more fairly? Simply, MLB is implementing this technology because it will make the game run more efficiently, not the opposite.
This anecdote offers a valuable lesson for considering the future of transportation and shipping in the United States. While baseball is gradually reducing the role of umpires to minimize — and eventually eliminate — the potential for human error, major labor unions have pushed to effectively mandate human error as a necessary cost of doing business. Although shipping industries — from trucking to rail — have made tremendous investments in automation and AI to reduce accidents, ensure faster and more reliable deliveries, and enhance safety checks for better maintenance, the adoption of these innovations faces serious obstacles from labor leaders intent on blocking progress at the expense of safety.