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PATTERN · 14 items · May 25, 2026

What the federal government did to railroad safety in 2025

The Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) has issued a concentrated wave of 14 new rules and proposals. These are not routine, but are a direct response to a coordinated, top-down White House deregulatory directive. Namely:

Under Executive Order 14192, issued on January 31, 2025, federal agencies operate under a strict "10-for-1" deregulatory mandate: to pass a single new rule, they must kill ten old ones.

This is what that looks like.

14 documents
Federal Register US rail safety regulators finalized new rules for signal workers. Now they want to cancel them.
Federal Register Railroad companies can now use simulators to train safety staff, not just real tracks
Federal Register Historic freight cars no longer need safety stencils if they stay off main lines
Federal Register Railroads no longer have to check old bridges for load limits
Federal Register Railroads can now post injury reports online, no signature required
Federal Register Railroads no longer need to measure track 'runoff' — other rules cover it
Federal Register Train horns can stay quiet at more highway crossings
Federal Register Railroad regulators cut 13 rules that required paperwork to prove they were doing paperwork
Federal Register Train engineers can now use electronic licenses, changing how they prove their qualifications
Federal Register Train conductors can now use digital licenses, and it's harder to revoke them
Federal Register US railroad regulators will not require dispatchers to be certified
Federal Register Federal railroad inspectors can now ignore minor safety violations
Federal Register Railroads can skip some safety checks if they report their own close calls
Federal Register Railroad safety rules get a technical fix after an accidental deletion
The pattern

This wave of 14 rollbacks cuts a range of safety baselines that have built up since 2021. Things like:

  • Scrapping worker certifications
    They are cutting mandatory federal training and certification for the people who handle the tracks and signals, and refusing to certify train dispatchers.

  • Moving to simulators and digital IDs
    Instead of training workers on actual, physical tracks, they’re moving them to 3D simulators. They're also switching to digital licenses that are way harder for federal regulators to pull back if someone screws up.

  • Pushing self-regulation
    They are telling federal inspectors to look the other way on "minor" safety violations. These multi-billion-dollar rail companies can skip physical safety audits entirely, as long as they promise to self-report their own near-misses.

By treating safety rules like currency to pay down a federal regulatory budget, the government is intentionally lowering the bar for running a railroad. While these cuts instantly wipe out paperwork and operational friction for the rail industry, they push the physical risk of a wreck directly onto rail workers and the towns along the tracks.

We are tracking the direct consequences. Over the next 12 months, we will be monitoring Class I mainline derailment rates and labor union injury logs to see if this reduction in oversight correlates with a spike in structural failures.