Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg shared tweets that, by his department’s assessment, were misinterpreted and led to some confusion about the cause of the Feb. 3 train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio.
Buttigieg addressed the train derailment in a lengthy Twitter thread on Feb. 14. In the thread, Buttigieg said his department has made “historic investments on rail safety” but went on to say that the department has been restrained from implementing some safety regulations, such as implementing requirements for trains to use electronically controlled pneumatic (ECP) brakes.
“We’re constrained by law on some areas of rail regulation (like the braking rule withdrawn by the Trump administration in 2018 because of a law passed by Congress in 2015), but we are using the powers we do have to keep people safe,” Buttigieg posted, with a link to a Trump-era decision to withdraw a 2015 regulation requiring the use of electronically controlled pneumatic (ECP) brakes for trains….