Date: 2007-10-17
Speaker: LINCOLN DIAZ-BALART (republican)
Chamber: H
State: Florida

Mr. Speaker. Id like to thank my friend. the gentlewoman from California for the time. and I yield myself such time as I may .consume. The Federal Railroad Administration was created by the Department of Transportation Act of 1966. The Federal Railroad Administration. FRA. is charged with overseeing the Federal rail safety program. As all of our colleagues know. Mr. Speaker. railroads crisscross every congressional district. and their safe operation is of national importance. especially since they play such an integral part in our national economy by transporting products and people to and from ports. and in the instance of products. from manufacturers. to suppliers. to the consumers. Since 1978. theres been adramatic decline in the number of railway accidents. Last year. there. were just over 2.800 such accidents. obviously too many. but a significant decline compared to the past. Obviously more can be done to reduce the number of accidents and save lives. anld more should be done. FRA classifies the causes of train accidents into five categories: human factors. track and structures. equipment. signal and train control. and miscellaneous. Of those categories. human factors and track are responsible for the majority of train accidents. Last year. 2006. over 70 percent .of such accidents were caused by human factors or track defects. Most railrelated deaths are to pedestrians on rail lines. trying to cross obviously. and motorists colliding with trains at grade crossings. While there are nearly 1.000 railrelated deaths each year. about 20 to 30 rail employees unfortunately are killed while on duty each year. The underlying legislation being brought forward by this rule. the Federal Railroad Safety Improvement Act of 2007. seeks to reduce the number of accidents caused by human fatigue by strengthening the hours of service law for signalmen and train crews. The legislation makes changes to what is known as limbo time. which is the wait period when locomotive crews wait for pickup after a days run. Specifically. the bill phases down limbo time over 3 years. 40 to 30 to 10 hours per month. The bill also creates new exceptions to limbo time in the case of an accident. track obstruction. weather delays or natural disasters. It gives signal and train workers additional hours of rest. 10 hours in 24. and mandatory days off. 1 in 7. The Department of Transportation estimates that by 2020 the amount of freight moved by rail. measured by .weight. will increase by approximately 50 percent. Furthermore. many local governments are interested in establishing. or expanding. commuter rail operations. which often operate on the freight rail network. As a result. the number of train miles on the Nations freight rail network will significantly increase in the coming years. If train accident rates do not improve. this will lead obviously to an increased number of accidents. injuries and fatalities and some of the gains of the past decade may be lost. and obviously wed like to avoid that. Id like to thank both Chairman OBERSTAR and Ranking Member MICA for their bipartisan work on. this legislation. especially on this issue of the limbo time. I think it goes to show that when people are willing to work together across the aisle to try to come up with compromises that good progress can be made. Now. unlike the bipartisan nature by which the Transportation Committee worked on this bill. the majority in the Rules Committee did not live up to that standard. Only four out of 10 amendments. There were 10 amendments proposed. A lot of time those amendments take a lot of work by Members. a lot of work. a lot of time. a lot of dedication. and only four out of the 10 amendments that Members brought to the Rules Committee were made in order. and of those. only one was an amendment by a Member of the Republican side of the aisle. During consideration of this rule. Mr. Speaker. the minority made several attempts to make Republican amendments in order. but in the Rules Committee. the majority blocked each amendment by a partyline vote. and I think thats unfortunate. Its quite a contrast to how the Transportation Committee worked and some other committees in this Congress. Its unfortunate. especially when we take into account the promises made by the majority that they would bring transparency and openness and fairness to the process. We see time and time and time again exactly the opposite. This is really sad. Mr. Speaker. I reserve my time.