Title: Freight Railroads and Crew Size | Association of American Railroads
Headings: Freight Rail & Crew Size Regulations
Policy
Freight Rail & Crew Size Regulations
Crew size is not a safety issue.
Collective bargaining maintains safety while allowing railroads to modernize their workforce.
Railroads must be able to innovate and compete.

Content: ignore the safe and successful use of single-person crews that have happened for decades at some U.S. freight railroads and in passenger and freight rail systems throughout the world; upend decades of meaningful collective bargaining between rail management and rail labor; and undermine the sector’s ability to compete against less climate friendly forms of transportation. After five years of analysis, The Federal Railroad Administration (FRA), the nation’s the expert federal regulatory agency that Congress has vested authority in establish national standards in every area of railroad safety, has evaluated this issue in the past and has never regulated train crew size. The FRA even went as far to rescind a proposal requiring two people in the cab of a locomotive, concluding that federal crew size regulation is unnecessary. With prior technological advancements, freight railroads and labor unions have reduced crew sizes from five to three to two. These reductions have coincided with safety improvements throughout the industry, particularly for incidents caused by human error. Crew size is not a safety issue. Safety is and always will be a top priority for railroads. There are no data showing two-person crews are safer than one-person crews.