This week marks Rail Safety Week 2021, whereby community and industry leaders encourage the public to make safe choices around railroad tracks and trains. Coincidentally this year’s rail safety week coincides with the final push to get infrastructure legislation across the finish line in Washington. This push means much more than new roads and bridges across the country, it also represents a serious opportunity to make our infrastructure safer, maintaining a fuel-efficient way to move freight while reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Take the Texas freight rail system, a vast network of 54 rail companies operating across 10,500 track miles. While freight railroads are the safest way to move freight over land and always working to be even safer, the Senate-passed bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) contains hundreds of millions of dollars for improvements where roads intersect with railroad crossings and $5.5 billion for infrastructure grant programs.
