HARD SELL — It’s been over a month since a toxic train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, sparked a massive fireball, an evacuation of local residents and concerns about a budding ecological disaster. The train wreck led to intense criticism over Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s response to the crisis, but also focused scrutiny on Norfolk Southern — which operated the chemical-carrying,150-car train — and past Republican actions that rolled back Obama administration rail safety regulations. Amid ongoing investigations, today marked the first congressional hearing on the catastrophe in northeastern Ohio. Nightly spoke to POLITICO Transportation editor Kathryn A. Wolfe to get some perspective on prospects for a bipartisan rail safety bill — and the politics standing in the way. What did we learn from today’s congressional hearing on the derailment? That, like in so many parts of life and politics, agreement frays the closer you look. Everybody agrees that trains should be safe, and that the communities that live near tracks should be safe. I live close to the CSX track that runs out of Washington, D.C.’s Union Station, so I pay extra attention to this topic myself. But rifts form when you start asking questions about how the government should ensure that safety — or who is responsible when something goes wrong. You saw those cracks at the hearing today. And while there was plenty of blame to go around, where each party primarily focused its finger-pointing was clear. Democrats went after Norfolk Southern. And Republicans went after the Environmental Protection Agency. Norfolk Southern CEO Alan Shaw was one of the witnesses today. What kind of reception — or grilling — did he get from committee members? Shaw didn’t have any defenders on the committee today, but he started out with what lawmakers most wanted to hear: contrition for what happened and a promise to “make it right.” He talked a lot — and, with conviction — about how much time he had spent in East Palestine, and how he’s sat in the living rooms of families who were worried and angry. But again, the devil’s in the details. What does it mean to “make it right?” Democrats asked repeatedly for specific promises — about reimbursing the community for tanked home values, about whether Norfolk Southern will commit to paying for peoples’ long-term health care costs. His response was typically that his company would do “what’s right.” “All of us are committed to doing what’s right,” Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) shot back at one point. In the early days after the East Palestine crash, it appeared as if there was bipartisan support for new rail safety measures. Is that still the case or are partisan fault lines forming? I think this bill, with the mandates that it includes, was always going to be a hard sell especially in a divided Congress. From the start, Republicans in the House, including those responsible for rail oversight, have been saying they want to wait until crash probes that could take up to a year-and-a-half are done before trying to change the law. And it’s not just the House — just this week the second most senior Republican senator, John Thune of South Dakota, also said he wanted to take it slow. There wasn’t anything in the hearing to dissuade me from that view. It’s not impossible, especially with the White House backing the bill. But it seems like long odds to me. The rail lobby is among the more muscular interests in Washington and has been able to beat back rail safety and other regulatory efforts in the past. Is there any evidence suggesting this time will be any different? We’re still in early days, but not that I’ve seen. Norfolk Southern and the freight rail trade group, the Association of American Railroads, have pledged to shore up safety in a narrowly-tailored way — focused on what appears to be the preliminary cause of the derailment, which was an overheating wheel that wasn’t detected soon enough. I’ve seen nothing that would suggest to me that railroads have any intention of dropping opposition to broader safety changes that advocates have been calling for, for decades at this point — like more advanced braking systems, and crew size minimums. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com. Or contact tonight’s author at cmahtesian@politico.com or on Twitter at @PoliticoCharlie.
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