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: A ground-based role may enable a more predictable, consistent and higher quality-of-life position, like many other railroad employees, such as signalmen and track maintenance workers. Railroads must be able to innovate and compete. The long-term viability of freight rail depends on the industry’s ability to adapt and compete in a rapidly changing transportation sector. Technology and modern staffing models are making freight railroads safer, more efficient and more productive. Crew size mandates would hinder these gains and divert traffic from rail to trucks, which are less fuel efficient, create congestion and further damage the nation’s highway system. Congress must reject legislative efforts to require at least two people in a train crew and instead encourage innovation. Privately owned freight railroads must be allowed, in partnership with rail labor, to determine operating models most conducive to optimal safety and service performance. Federal prescriptions lacking empirical justification must not be made the law. Railroads are committed to good faith negotiations on issues — including the implementation of new technologies and train operations that maximize safety benefits and efficiencies — with their employees in the forum in which those issues have historically been resolved.