FRA Safety Data Improvement Act

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 4925) to require the Administrator of the Federal Railroad Administration to implement certain recommendations for management and collection of railroad safety data.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and to include extraneous material on H.R. 4925.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, the FRA Safety Data Improvement Act requires the Federal Railroad Administration to develop a timeline and plan to implement improvements to its safety data collection and reporting system.

Rail safety is critical to our Nation, and in order to ensure that regulations are rooted in accurate data, the FRA must make improvements to its data collection system.

Safety data is important to railroad safety, and failures of that concern us. Effective safety data collection and reporting is critical to ensuring railroad safety.

The Department of Transportation inspector general published a report outlining issues with the data collection and reporting for safety data. The report made a number of recommendations to standardizing certain procedures and implementing effective and uniform training programs. Additionally, the report recommends the FRA update its reporting guidance to clear up discrepancies in their reporting forms.

In summary, the bill requires the FRA, the Federal Railroad Administration, to implement the recommendations from the DOT Office of Inspector General report. Additionally, it requires the FRA to develop a timeline and plan to implement the guidelines and recommendations. The bill ensures the FRA addresses these discrepancies by a report requiring FRA to annually update Congress on its progress until completion.

I believe this bill will improve the safety of our railways. Rail safety is obviously critical to our Nation and our infrastructure; and to ensure that safety regulations are effective and clear, they must be updated.

I again thank Chairman Shuster, Chairman Denham, and Mr. Gottheimer for working with me, as well as my colleague, Mr. Capuano.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, this bill and the previous one we discussed reflect the bipartisan commitment to our Nation's infrastructure and to a safe infrastructure. I appreciate my colleagues' support in working jointly in bringing these bills forward. I urge my colleagues to join all of us in supporting this legislation.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I thank Chairman Shuster and Ranking Member DeFazio for their leadership on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, working with me on a bipartisan basis on the FRA Safety Data Improvement Act. Additionally, I want to thank Congressman Mitchell for helping colead this important bill.

In New Jersey, our rails and tunnels are literally crumbling. In a political environment, that is all too often polarized. Democrats and Republicans can certainly find common ground on our infrastructure being deficient, degrading, and incurring accidents that are becoming all too regular.

The American Society of Civil Engineers gave America a D-plus infrastructure rating on their scorecard. New Jersey also received an overall D-plus, with rail and transit in particularly bad shape.

Bergen County, in my district, is the worst in the Northeast for railway crossing crashes. America's infrastructure failure is leading to more and more accidents. In fact, recently, we have seen fatal Amtrak and New Jersey Transit crashes in Hoboken, New Jersey, Washington State, South Carolina, and West Virginia.

We simply can't afford to sit idly by, punting on this urgent need. We need infrastructure investment, but we also need to proactively improve our safety procedures and processes. We need to take on safety in this country. And for all we pay in taxes and tickets, both of which I think are far too high, we cannot play games with the safety of our families and children. From administration to administration, we can't have inconsistencies or delays in implementing rail safety rules.

I am proud to have led on this bipartisan bill to secure America's rails with real safety provisions. The bipartisan FRA Safety Data Improvement Act improves and standardizes reporting and training around railway accidents on railroads like Amtrak and New Jersey Transit. By better standardizing reporting requirements, we can leverage big datasets to improve safety and make smarter decisions. It does so my implementing the DOT's inspector general report and ensuring reporting to Congress on compliance.

The IG found that the Federal Railroad Administration had taken some steps to improve data reporting, but it still lacks standardized reporting and training. This bill codifies steps suggested by the IG, providing more certainty in the safety of our rails.

By allowing us to better leverage bill datasets--and the key here is putting big data to work--this bill will save lives. I urge support and passage of the FRA Safety Data Improvement Act.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, again, this is a relatively easy bill and a bipartisan bill. It simply requires that the FRA train people when they report incidents of safety, that they report them in a uniform manner so that when somebody goes to look to see how many accidents there were or a certain type of accident, they can compare apples to apples instead of apples to oranges. It is kind of simple. It is a straightforward bill and, again, it is bipartisan.

Mr. Speaker, I yield the balance of my time to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Gottheimer), the author of this bill.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.