DAYTON, Ohio (WDTN) — Ohio senators Sherrod Brown and JD Vance are co-sponsoring bipartisan legislation called the Railway Safety Act of 2023.
The bill will take a number of key steps to improve rail safety protocols, like enhancing safety procedures for trains carrying hazardous materials and establishing requirements for wayside defect detectors.
The bill also plans to increase fines for any violations committed by rail carriers if they fail to meet safety expectations.
“This bill that we are working on will make sure they are doing this more safely will disclose when they’re bringing hazardous materials through communities, will more than triple the fines when they have safety violations and will make sure there are enough people on board to deal with these kinds of problems,” Senator Sherrod Brown (D – Ohio) said.
“I just worry that we’re not doing enough to make sure first that our first responders are able to respond to this stuff and second that we’re doing some things to make this stuff less likely,” Senator Vance (R – Ohio) said.
This bill would grant 22 million dollars to the Federal Railroad Administration for research and development grants regarding railway detectors.
