Of course not - It's a small volume chemical. And blaming the Jones Act (as bad as it is) for a shipmnet from Illinois to Pennsylvania takes a certain kind of logic. OP is going to lose it when he realizes he can't blame "unions" for gutting the rail safety regulations that Obama added in 2015..
“The mission of the FRA is safety and not focusing on what is convenient or inexpensive or provides the most cost savings for the rail industry,” said Sarah Feinberg, the FRA administrator at the time, about the new rule. “When I focus on safety, I land on ECP. It’s a very black-and-white issue for me.”
Soon after the rule’s enactment, the railroad industry took the matter to Congress and found allies in Senate Republicans, after an election cycle that saw rail industry donors dump $6 million into GOP campaign coffers.
Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) — the Senate’s third largest recipient of rail industry campaign cash — pushed to repeal the electronic braking rule outright, before settling for a measure requiring additional research and a new cost-benefit analysis of the technology. Under former President Donald Trump, the braking upgrades quickly became another casualty of his administration’s slash-and-burn approach to regulatory policy.
While the Obama administration had estimated that the rule could save more than $1 billion by averting accidents, the Trump administration rolled out new figures that cut the estimated benefits by a third.
The AAR lobbying group concurred that “the costs of the ECP rule substantially outweigh its benefits,” and claimed the mandate would cost them about $3 billion — or roughly 2 weeks of their operating revenue in a typical year. The FRA estimated the brake requirement would cost about half a billion.
Trump’s Transportation Department ultimately rescinded the brake rule in late 2017.
Thune praised the decision in a statement arguing that “sound science and careful study” had won the day.
But a 2018 investigation from the Associated Press revealed that the Trump Transportation Department had flubbed its calculations. By excluding the most common type of train derailments, the government’s analysis omitted at least $117 million in estimated future damages when it revised the rule’s potential benefits to justify its repeal.
The agency acknowledged the error and issued a technical correction to its analysis, but said that the expense was still too great to reinstate the ECP brake rule.
https://www.levernews.com/rail-companies-blocked-safety-rule...
“The mission of the FRA is safety and not focusing on what is convenient or inexpensive or provides the most cost savings for the rail industry,” said Sarah Feinberg, the FRA administrator at the time, about the new rule. “When I focus on safety, I land on ECP. It’s a very black-and-white issue for me.”
Soon after the rule’s enactment, the railroad industry took the matter to Congress and found allies in Senate Republicans, after an election cycle that saw rail industry donors dump $6 million into GOP campaign coffers.
Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) — the Senate’s third largest recipient of rail industry campaign cash — pushed to repeal the electronic braking rule outright, before settling for a measure requiring additional research and a new cost-benefit analysis of the technology. Under former President Donald Trump, the braking upgrades quickly became another casualty of his administration’s slash-and-burn approach to regulatory policy.
While the Obama administration had estimated that the rule could save more than $1 billion by averting accidents, the Trump administration rolled out new figures that cut the estimated benefits by a third.
The AAR lobbying group concurred that “the costs of the ECP rule substantially outweigh its benefits,” and claimed the mandate would cost them about $3 billion — or roughly 2 weeks of their operating revenue in a typical year. The FRA estimated the brake requirement would cost about half a billion.
Trump’s Transportation Department ultimately rescinded the brake rule in late 2017.
Thune praised the decision in a statement arguing that “sound science and careful study” had won the day.
But a 2018 investigation from the Associated Press revealed that the Trump Transportation Department had flubbed its calculations. By excluding the most common type of train derailments, the government’s analysis omitted at least $117 million in estimated future damages when it revised the rule’s potential benefits to justify its repeal.
The agency acknowledged the error and issued a technical correction to its analysis, but said that the expense was still too great to reinstate the ECP brake rule.