Freight Trains: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

our main story tonight concerns trains in the 1800s the preferred method of murdering damsels are nowadays anti-depressants for middle-aged dads trains aren't just a mode of transportation they are beloved children's characters in shows like Thomas the Tank Engine except not that one I'm talking about the British original narrated by Ringo Star which is much darker take this episode in which Henry the Green Engine gets frightened of the rain and won't come out of a tunnel everyone begs him and then yells at him Thomas even tries to physically push him out and then finally the head of the Railway steps in with a drastic solution we shall take away your rails he said and leave you here for always and always and always they took up the old rails and built a wall in front of him so that Henry couldn't get out of the tunnel [Music] anymore [Music] yeah the British version of Thomas didn't around and episod who premise is stop complaining about work or we'll throw you in your Forever hole has got to be one of the most disturbing episodes of children's TV ever right up there with the episode of Blue's Clues where blue reveals herself to be the Zodiac Killer come on Steve the clues were a handgun a zodiac symbol and an issue of the San Francisco Chronicle from 196 69 she basically wanted to get caught and if you're thinking well surely that was the midpoint of the episode and Henry was eventually allowed out so that there'd be a happy ending with all his friends it wasn't this is how it ends he wondered if he would ever be allowed to pull trains again but I think he deserved his punishment didn't [Music] you [Music] look there are Children's shows and then there are British children's shows and that is why I am and this is true like this well we're going to be talking about one kind of train in particular tonight freight trains and let me just say for the record this show is prot train they are objectively good they're fast they're loud and they make noises like chuga chuga choo choo and ding ding ding ding ding I love trains and freight trains are essential we rely on them to transport around 28% of the country's Freight and while trucks also carry Freight great distances and have some pretty hit sounds of their own to which trains are much better for the environment as they only account for 2% of us Transportation emissions but unfortunately as we saw earlier this year in East Palestine Ohio when freight trains go off the rails they can cause immense damage that crash incurred an estimated cost of at least 800 $ 103 million in total damages and 80% of residents surveyed say they've experienced headaches rash coughs eye irritation and diarrhea and about 40% say they suffer from PTSD for while that was a particularly nasty derailment the truth is it shouldn't have been that surprising last year there were more than a thousand train deal rment in the US that means an average of three per day and while most occur in Rail Yards and aren't major incidents the ones that occur outside of them can cause a huge mess the Flaming freight train Inferno outside Phoenix Arizona derailing on a bridge in Tempe a runaway train derailing in the Mojave Desert causing a mangled mess tonight new dash cam video shows the moment a norol Southern Train derailed in Springfield Ohio from livecopter 3 an exclusive view with the Union Pacific trained rail Min 33 cars total 22 derailed a red substance was spilled but officials have not confirmed what it is look none of that is good but the phrase a red substance was spilled but officials have not confirmed what it is is truly chilling it sounds less like a legitimate news report and more like the first draft of a Steven King novel so train derailments happen a lot and experts say the reason we haven't had massive loss of life in this country as a result is more luck than anything else the railroads are going to keep flirting with danger keep Flirting With Disaster as long as people are getting rich I don't want to say that we dodged a bullet in East Palestine but the next one may be in a major urban area it may be in a downtown Chicago it may be in a downtown New York City it is terrifying to think a train disaster like East Palestine could happen in New York partly because I live here and partly because New Yorkers are dealing with enough dread and panic as it is we are a Perpetual Terror Target we got the country's first big wave of covid we had a Biblical plague of lantern flies last summer and there's an army of creepy Elmos running rampant in Time Square we don't have the anxiety bandwidth to also worry about a giant Train full of Po poison exploding in the middle of the city so if freight trains have the power to cause that much damage tonight let's talk about them and let's start with the fact that the freight rail industry used to be heavily regulated but in the 1970s after the interstate highway system came along and rail shipping lost a lot of business to trucking there was pressur to deregulate the industry so that it could compete and in 1980 a lot of the controls that we'd had in place were removed allowing for huge consolidation of railroad companies to the point where while there used to be over 100 class one railroads in North America there are now just six massive extremely powerful companies and much of the oversight of safety is left to the Federal Railroad Administration which is a fairly weak regulator and it's not just me saying that a government report found that the agency itself estimates its inspectors have the ability to inspect less than 1% of the railroad activities covered in regulation and as a result railroads themselves have the primary responsibility for the safety of the railroad system and and if history's taught us anything that's not a good formula for positive outcomes if anything the formula is industry plus deregulation minus government oversight equals episode of Last Week Tonight and guess what guys here we are although I will give the fr8 some credit it does produce some spectacular Railway safety videos to show you what not to do around train tracks shoot I think the car just died h seriously this is not happening why did we stop what happened are we stuck it's fine we'll just we'll sit here for a minute and I will call someone but what if there's a train coming don't worry there's never a train here and I'm sure we would hear when coming from pretty far away what are you doing it is hard to pick a favorite reaction from the world's calmest or dumbest mom there I think the car just died when your car clearly died is an obvious Hall of Famer but for my money I'm going to go with the absolute blind confidence of there's never a train here a fact she cannot know and doesn't seem to totally believe herself also and this isn't hugely important but I will call someone who exactly do you think you'd call and how do you think that call would go hi my car broke down on some train tracks I'm in the car with my children get out of the car and off the tracks I'm pretty sure there's never a train here really cuz trains generally go where the tracks are put one of your children on the phone are you going to send someone to help me officer lady I'm not even the police this is just a number that you called get off the tracks but back to the FR as I was saying the problem is that they have limited insight into what's actually happening on the rails and not every problem is as e easy to solve as taking away This Woman's driver's license forever as we learned in East Palestine some trains haul hazardous materials and the truth is neither the F nor anyone else knows their there which is wild it is crazy that the FAA knows about the exact location of 5,000 planes in the sky but the F can't tell you where most trains are or what they contain in fact in the New York area a while back people got pretty alarmed when they learned that volatile crude oil was being transported right along the Hudson River this is the the greatest threat to the Hudson I've experienced in my entire career these trains that run for almost 50 miles right next to the river carrying highly explosive crude oil in rail cars that were not designed for this that sheer an impact 120 cars on some of these trains 30,000 gallons of fuel per car very volatile fuel when it comes down to it each of these train cars is like a rolling bomb it's true and that is not unique to the Hudson Rail Line trains that carry combustible cargo are regular referred to by rail workers as bomb trains which is terrifying bomb train doesn't sound like something that should ever be allowed on a railway it sounds like the title of a Jason Stan movie that's got 27% on Rotten Tomatoes but rolling bomb is a pretty accurate description just 22 train cars carrying liquefied natural gas hold the equivalent blast energy of the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima and there have been inces where train cars full of crude oil have exploded in populated areas in Canada in 201 13 there was an explosion in the area of Lac megantic that killed 47 people and left the town looking like this which may not seem so alarming and you see what that exact spot looked like before the blast it's hard to tell but if you look very closely you'll notice that the town part of that town is gone and the notion that profits might be getting prioritized over safety is in keeping with the larger Trend shaping the freight rail industry because like many big companies these giant Railway firms have felt increasing pressure to squeeze margins to please investors and that brings us to the key Trend in Freight rail over the past few decades Precision scheduled railroading or PSR is the brainchild of this man Hunter Harrison seen here mid colonoscopy until his death six years ago Harrison worked as a CEO at four major railroads and his philosophy PSR has now taken over the entire industry and it's about agressively pursuing efficiency to that end railroads have closed facilities retired locomotives and rail cars and cut workers to lower costs and all of that is the kind of stuff that makes Wall Street idiots extremely happy in fact here's one of them now Hunter Harrison the new darling of Wall Street Harrison will Implement a strategy that's known as Precision scheduled railroading he's already changed routes and schedules and the way the company sorts long trains he actually Maps them out in his own living room I'm not kidding this guy's the real deal the guy is the train Whisperer cool you know a person is pretty awesome if they get a ringing sound effect Laden endorsement on an esteemed show like big bucks word puke with Captain money clown but it's true Hunter Harrison was the type of guy who mapped train routes out at home he was also the type of guy who looked for even the smallest ways to cut costs from tearing up unused tracks to eliminating overnight stays for a train Crews he even flew around in a corporate jet with a tail number that read o59 his aspirational operating ratio Pres something that made him so happy he smiled like this but that efficiency for the companies has come at tremendous cost to everyone else and let's start with one of the things that may be less obvious because a key component of precision scheduled railroading is running fewer but much longer trains and I mean much longer some trains now stretch nearly three miles long and those longer trains aren't just dangerous when they're moving they can also be dangerous when they're not trains frequently need to stop to to allow other trains to pass or to work on mechanical issues and tracks were built to accommodate this with sidings alongside the mainline where trains can pull over the problem is those sidings were built when trains were much shorter and nowadays when they are multiple miles long they can wind up stretching back onto the main track and possibly across roads blocking traffic and that is one reason why this can happen for some East End neighborhoods this has become a way too unwelcome soundtrack The Bells start traffic stops this driver sleeps this guy climbs over this one too another right under all of it without a thought to the potentially deadly consequences the wait just becomes too long so how often does this happen Lorenzo um just about every day that's true in certain towns trains can block traffic and for hours and it's not that they can quickly get out of the way by turning around trains are like Liam Payne they really only work in One Direction last year alone there were more than 30 thousand reports of blocks train crossings Across the Nation with nearly a thousand blocks for more than a day and that can mean people wind up making risky decisions to get to work or even to school it's the kind of moment that takes your breath away a little girl in a bright red coat tiny arms and legs wiggling underneath a train car that could move at any moment it's quiet as she dusts herself off casually picks up her book bag in a dropped water bottle and Carries on that is tough to watch but I guess it is kind of nice for the younger generation to have an immediate counter whenever their older relatives complain about how they used to walk to school in the snow oh was it cold Grandpa did it get chilly I guess I wasn't really thinking about the weather when I was crawling under a train that could crush my tiny arms and legs to get to Home Room on time and while that girl thankfully was okay others haven't been pedestrians trying to cut through trains have been disfigured dismembered and killed after the train suddenly started moving on top of which block train crossings can also seriously delay Emergency Services like fire engines or ambulances as this Oklahoma man knows all too well I think it's going to take a major tragedy for the railroad company to wake up and decide that they're going to do something that was about 6 and a half years ago Chad bird complaining about these tracks near their home and at the time sitting on the only Crossing to get to their home I think the major concern is if somebody's injured trying to get an ambulance to that side fast forward to early September of 2020 Chad's premonitions becoming reality his father Larry Jean bird dying from a heart attack in emergency vehicles were stuck behind a train on those same tracks when emergency crews arrived police asked the conductor if it could be moved he said no the lawsuit adding that he quote closed the locomotive's window and would not respond to any further questions that is awful and while it is not the most important thing are we all just allowed to close our windows and not talk to Cops or is that only for train conductors because if so I will buy one of those stupid little hats tomorrow but also I wouldn't call his prediction a premonition there it was an easily foreseeable consequence of poor policy and that is not a one-off there have been multiple similar stories of people dying and houses burning down after emergency vehicles were delayed at Crossings but longer stopped trains are just the beginning of the issues with PSR there was also the issue of what the Relentless drive for savings does to workers even even as trains got longer staffing has been cut to ridiculously low levels just watch as a union leader explains to a flabergasted news anchor right after East Palestine just how low these levels had become look if you add uh more and more cars to these trains you're introducing more and more points of potential failure um and that's why it's really alarming that the railroad industry actually wants to cut back the number of people operating on a train from two as is the current standard to one I'm sorry hold on are you saying that as of now now a train with 150 cars and that is carrying hazardous material Vinyl chloride whatever as a standard only only has two people operating it just two for that entire train yeah that's correct one conductor one engineer and they want to cut it down to one yes right one person which is absurd trains need an engineer to drive the train and a conductor for the rest of it it's not one of those jobs where we have two people do it even though it clearly only requires one like anchoring the news or renovating a home or hosting the 2011 Oscars and and people who work on these trains will tell you every part of their job is exhausting now for example when there are mechanical or other problems that cause a train to stop the conductor may have to walk from the lead locomotive to the problem area and back again which could mean walking four miles to the end and back on a 2m long train workers being stretched so thin that they're now working ridiculous hours and required to be on call forcing them to pick and choose between work and their families and even medical appointments until recently when workers wanted to take a sick day at BNSF the largest freight Railroad in the US they had to schedule them a month in advance and only for Tuesday Wednesday or Thursday and I don't know how BNSF thinks illnesses work but the flu doesn't have a Microsoft Outlook calendar where you can look at its schedule and book your infection at a time that works for both of you and while BNSF changed that policy this fall it's still in effect at other major railroads a former Union head sums up the situation like this as we say you either go to work uh sick and tired or you get fired that's really the what this has come down to look it is never a good sign when conditions are so Bleak you've come up with a catchy little rhyme for it also no one should get fired for being sick as far as punishments go for not being able to work one day it's right up there with being inomed in the tunnel of constant punishment and having sick tired workers is bad across the board but it gets much worse when you realize some of those workers are the ones who inspect the trains to keep them safe and the time allotted for that keeps shrinking one former Railroader says norfol Southern inspectors used to have 5 to 8 minutes to check a train car's wheels for problems like leaky bearings or damaged components now it's often between 30 seconds and a minute and worse still employees feel that they can't speak out as a result of a pattern of retaliation against workers who report safety violations or injuries one whistleblower even sued his company and had some pretty compelling evidence on his side Don Sanders a former BNSF Track Inspector in Minnesota secretly recorded calls with his supervisor back in 2015 in this recording obtained by five investigates you'll hear what happened when the boss found out Sanders called the Federal Railroad Administration why in the world would we ever call about anything unless I'm absolutely blatantly telling you to break rules or don't do something is that against the company rules it's not good I call him and ask him a question Keith I don't understand I don't want you're doing that yeah that is automatically suspicious if you work at a restaurant and your boss tells you that under no circumstances should you ever call the health inspector best case scenario he is being ratat toed but that's the best case that inspector was later fired in what a JY later agreed was retaliation for reporting too many track defects and another rail worker sums it all up like this the railroad probably 100 years ago came up with safety first when Precision scheduled railroading came out they gave us a list of priorities that we were to work by safety's fourth here's the thing that is true safety is fourth he's not embellishing there Hunter Harrison would frequently run down a numbered list of his guiding principles which started with service then cost control then asset utilization and then and only then safety it was literally fourth on the list and once you get past three items on a priority list anything after that isn't a priority by definition it's like ranking your favorite Beatles there are three that you care about and one afterthought who narrate sadistic children shows about abused trains and at one hearing when Harrison was running through his list and eventually got two safety he wound up making a pretty striking confession the fourth portion of this is which we sometimes don't pay the appropriate attention to is just simply don't get anybody hurt while you're doing this now we can be very sophisticated and we can talk about risk management and loss control and programs and processes and so forth uh I got blood all over my hands uh from injuries in this industry that should have been avoidable wow I've got to say after 10 seasons of showing you Executives deny their neglect that is almost refreshing it's the kind of honesty you only usually get from a guy like that after he's being visited by the ghosts of Christmas and look Railway companies will tell you that safety has always been important to them and they'll point out that derailments have fallen by 44% since 2000 which is true although I'll point out that some of that is because we're running far fewer trains since then also the rate of derailment for large railroads has been creeping up again in recent years one Railway veteran describes a major crash as just a matter of time fearing there's going to be a freight train that hasn't been inspected in 990,000 mies that comes off the track and either explodes or leaks poisonous gas out it's can take something like that and a lot of deaths and then all of a sudden everybody's going to Care you've now heard that exact sentiment multiple times in this piece and he's probably right and look the solution here isn't to turn away from rail again trains are good because for one they're still safer than Trucking and two as we've already established chuga chuga choo choo ding ding ding trains are fun but that doesn't mean they shouldn't be safer and all that requires is some very common sense measures regulating the length of train cars allowing more time for train inspections not letting this woman near trains cars or children properly Staffing trains with appropriate sized Crews and carefully limiting the amounts and roots of hazardous materials being transported now to ensure that happens we need to empower the F to actually monitor trains and Cargo in real time and while we're at it given the ability to limit the amount of time the trains can block intersections and finally and crucially workers need a way to confidentially report safety issues to Regulators without being afraid of retaliation until we fix all of this we might really need to fundamentally change our children's programming to show the world of trains as they currently are Once Upon a Time on the island of Sodor there was a train named Henry Henry was a freight train and he pulled all kinds of important materials around but then one day s toam hat had an idea and suddenly Henry got longer and longer and longer [Music] Henry got so long when he rested he started getting in people's way and drivers got very angry with him I'm late for work what's the hold up train said the driver a little old lady shouted to Henry get a little girl crawled underneath Henry on her way to school that tickles said Henry I hate you train said the little girl a fire engine pleaded with him to move I can't move said Henry I don't have any room so they both just sat there and watched the Children's Hospital Burn but Henry was told he was much more efficient now which is another way of saying profitable and 9 M long he carried all sorts of things people needed like medical bandages corn vinyl chloride fireworks a mysterious red substance question mark question mark hand grenades question mark plugged in space heaters and all sorts of zoo animals what's liquefied natural gas and why am I pulling 22 Cars full of it Henry asked never you mind said s topam hat i m this whole route out at home that's a weird thing to do and I don't really know how to respond to it said Henry just mind your business like a good little rolling death machine Sir Topham hat said sorry I'm a what asked Henry then one day a wheel on one of Henry's tank cars started overheating his engineer hadn't had a chance to inspect it in months Henry was getting worried it's seems my Caboose is loose I can't drive with a loose caboose Henry told the driver but it was too late oh said Henry Henry the Freight engine became Henry the bomb [Music] train oh well thought Henry it could be worse at least my tankers didn't explode meanwhile on the other side of the island oh dear said Thomas the explosion obliterated a significant part of the island of Sodor Henry was so sad Sir Topham had had blood on his hands but he didn't care it wasn't his blood and he could just wipe it off with all his new money as for Henry he was taken out of commission and put in a tunnel but as trains can't die he just had to suffer forever and ever but I think he deserved his punishment don't you that's our show thanks so much for watching we'll see you next week good [Applause] [Music] night

Channel: LastWeekTonight

Views: 5,461,067

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Id: AJ2keSJzYyY

Length: 27min 40sec (1660 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 11 2023