number of years regarding rail train consist information, real train information for emergency responders which the pipeline and hazardous materials safety administration already issued a final rule on. but in addition to that we saw and need to highlight in our recommendations training, especially for volunteer firefighters and radio interoperability which was a big issue for responders for thank you, chair. thank you. try join on overtime. i want to say since 9/11 of 2001 we've talked about interoperability and church medication, and we have failed significantly even since. it's a problem they really hamstrings emergency response. god bless them and thank you. >> i now recognize ms. titus for five min. >> thank you, mr. chairman. thank you for letting me sit in on this committee. across the country we've seen trains just grow in length. it's amazing to me now, class

one railroads are running trains that can be up to four miles long. mr. hynes, i wonder if you would, on that? are those trains less safe and does smart 113 support the federal government having a larger role to play in the regulation of these traits, especially those those that are carrying hazardous waste for hazardous material? >> anybody who is been blocked by a train can say that a four-mile long train is a problem. for obvious reasons. they cut cities and have come especially rural communities. one of these trains stopped in the city, that's how is cut in half. emergency vehicles, , you're having a heart attack, you need to get the hospital, it's on the other side of the train, oh well. as far as just how obvious it is that it's a bad idea. it creates so much more force because the trains are so much

heavier. they are longer and the railroads think that if they put some distributed power in the middle of the train that we're good to go. what they don't report on and what's not collected is how often these knuckles break, you know, the knuckles to hold the course together, and the draw bars did foldout, and this happened regularly. another thing would require to two people to change a knuckle. you have to have an engineer, a conductor, a lot of the stuff. it's just so strange to me that they just want bigger and bigger. instead of running two trains,, the combining them into one train just by connecting them. or even three trains or more. and the derailment numbers don't go down, even though they're running fewer trains, they are longer trains and the derailment

numbers don't go down. so, i mean, it's not a good idea for so many reasons. i do want to bring all your time. >> may i add? we investigated a terrible tragedy involving two u.p. trays, a standing train and moving train in granite canyon wyoming in 2018 and found the length of the train was an issue. it lost breaking capabilities, emergency breaking capabilities, crested, as a crested a and went down and descended 13 miles, it was increasing in speed all the while the train crews were trying to get breaking back and put on the emergency breaking. in the end the train hit 55 miles an hour and slammed right into a u.p. standing train and the locomotive engineer and conductor both died. we found in that that one of our finding was the length of training camp of the train was a

factor and it was 103 cars. >> congresswoman, , as you know there's no federal regulation that restricts train length. at fra under my watch we make sure to collect data about train length so that the process is more transparent and we have data available to take action on that. having said that, we are not waiting for the data to come in. we issued a safety advisory on train length. we have also issued a safety advisory on the makeup of trains because the also factors into this. we are taking action that we can under the authorities that we had to address the situation. but communities are experiencing this and we're not sitting idly by. >> you wouldn't oppose federal regulation or legislation to help you in that effort? >> aced on the data that we are gathering right now, it something we should definitely take a look at. >> yeah, i think so. as you said it's kind of so

obvious that it's kind of you don't need the date and declination but it's there to support that conclusion. speaking of regulation, i know that the fra finalize an important role ricketts been mentioned before about the two-man crew. i think these things kind of go together and i've been pushing for a two-man crew for several years now and i know our rule was finished and it's somewhere in limbo out there. i know in the legislation we want to see a two-man crew. it's about person issued. administrator, would you comment on that way that stand? >> congresswoman, thank you for asking that question. i'm proud to be the administrator that got a final rule done on minimum crew size. a significant step forward for safety in the railroad industry. as you know without that rule, railroads could go to one person or below without that rule in

place. so it's an important step forward. i also know we been taught but east palestinian. i'm confident in saying the community, the people who represent east palestinian our match better knowing that there's more than one person, or there was more than one person on that crew. >> thank you. in one. >> gentlelady's time i now recognize mr. d'esposito, original sponsor of the legislation. >> thank you, mr. chairman. throughout your testimony you mention that carmen are under intense pressure to perform inspections quickly. often having to choose which components to inspect due to time constraints. with up to 15% of railcars found to contain and fra defect, how does limiting inspection time affect the safety of the rail system as a whole? >> well, i would say -- well, thank you for the question. i was a much of what i've talked about today, which is you can't

put a time constraint on safety. if you do that, people are going to miss things, the matter who's actually inspecting the cars. but it's also important to make sure the right person for suspect in the cars. i'm not sure if your earlier but we can't i printed off this. these are the regulations that the carmen are held to, the standard that the carbon are held to in these of the other crews. it's night and day the amount they have to respect to the level, the regulatory standard. if you harass anybody to inspect too fast, , they're going to mis things. it's kind of obvious. >> if i missed it i apologize but can you discuss or share with us any specific instances where an adequate inspection time has possibly lead to an accident or a near miss? >> that would be hard for me to disclose because of the confidential nature of those

things for my members. i assure you i have plenty of stories but it would want to really talk about them. >> kenji came to describe we effect of limiting the inspection time has on the workers and the morale? >> it's incredibly depressing as a mentioned earlier imagine being hired to do a job and then being told not to do it. it's very insulting. you train all your life for this thing. you spend three years, 732 working days to go from an apprentice carmen to a journeyman. when you. when you get there they say, if you find the facts were going to disappoint you. no more defects, no more defects. you got a target on your back. it's not necessarily for finding a defect that they're going to disappoint you. it's for everything else. put your shoes untied, i've heard of guys getting written up for changing their hat over to a safety helmet.

i mean, wiping their safety glasses. really just heady stuff. but that's what happens when you get a target on your back, you don't fall in line. >> now you also mention in your testimony that fra conducted a study that found when inspectors were present carmen average one minute and 44 seconds per car inspection. however, when inspectors were not present, carmen were only given about 44 seconds per car to inspect. what measures do you think could be at the meant to ensure consistent safety practices? >> you could pass this law that would make it illegal to prohibit or to enforce any kind of time constraint upon the carmen. as i've said before you can't put a time constraint on safety. i will also note in , in the a study there were remarks from specific fra inspectors in there

where they talked about how one, you know, this effort inspector walked behind a carmen doing his job. they found a whole bunch of defects, ten, 17, whatever combined between the two of them in one train. then he looks at the fra inspector, pulls up the records of that railroad, in the previous 24 hours they only found three the whole day. it's just not realistic. it's not the truth. something is going on. this kind of type of legislation has been a long time coming. >> congressman, if i could step in, fra administrator. when mr. arouca, is like the what the railroad from his information did, that's absolutely unacceptable. anytime fra sees that a railroad is a gaming the system, is gaming the inspection process that we have the oversight that

we have, we are going to take action on that. it was a railroad the found out about our safety culture assessment and the questions we're going to ask in that assessment, as soon as we found withdrew that safety culture assessment of that railroad and made it clear that's unacceptable. >> my times expired, mr. chairman. i yield back. >> thank you. the gentleman yields. are there any further questions from the members of the subcommittee that is not been recognized? seeing none, we have votes here i see on the screen. this concludes are heading for today. i want to thank each and everyone of you for being here. i thought this, this was a very productive meeting and this subcommittee stands adjourned. [inaudible conversations]

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