Gov. Laura Kelly’s transportation secretary nominee on Wednesday defended a proposal requiring railroads operating in Kansas to have at least two crew members in the cab of the lead locomotive.
Calvin Reed told the Senate Oversight Confirmation Committee that the rule was intended to provide a minimum safety standard for the railroads, noting there was nothing that kept them from operating trains autonomously.
“This a public safety issue,” Reed told the committee, which sent his nomination to the full Senate for approval.
“I think there is a real question out there about what we are willing to live with in terms in train-crew size.”
Reed said he didn’t feel comfortable with the idea that there is no law that keeps railroads from moving to an autonomous crew. He called it a “tremendous risk” to Kansans.
“This regulation is a common sense regulation where we are looking at the current industry standards and we are setting that as a floor,” Reed said.
“We do not feel comfortable with the risk to our citizens of doing less than that,” he said.
The debate over two-man crew mandate started in earnest in 2013 when 49 people were killed when an unattended freight train loaded with crude oil crashed into a Canadian town in what was one of the worst rail disasters in that country’s history.
Advocates of the rule – labor unions – say a two-person crew can help respond to a train wreck and control the ensuing damage.
The railroads have argued that the rule lacks any safety justification and that it will disrupt collective bargaining and hinder the rail industry’s ability to compete with less climate-friendly transportation modes while impeding innovation and harming businesses.
The railroads say technology and modern staffing models make freight railroads safer, more efficient and more productive.
It was reported this week that Union Pacific plans to test the idea of a one-person train crew when it conducts a pilot that uses a conductor in a truck to respond to problems on trains in Nebraska and Colorado.
Earlier this year, Kelly renewed a proposal to require two-person train crews, something that’s now used on the major railroads in Kansas.
More states have been adopting two-person rail crew rules with arrival of technology that could allow trains to run autonomously.
But the proposal has meet stiff resistance from not only the railroads, but also from a joint legislative committee that last week urged the agency to withdraw the rule.
The joint committee, at times, became irritated with staff from the Transportation Department who sometimes struggled to answer lawmakers’ questions.
At one point, the governor’s chief of staff made an unplanned appearance before the committee wearing a polo shirt and slacks to explain the proposal.
Reed apologized to the Senate oversight committee for how his agency handled the hearing where the train rule came under sharp criticism.
He acknowledged his staff wasn’t as prepared as it should have been in responding to questions at last week’s hearing on the two-person train crew rule.
“We’ve had some really good conversations afterward about what it means to be prepared, how we need to respect the time of our Legislature and all the committees and make sure we are prepared to answer their questions.”
Reed has served three stints at the Kansas Department of Transportation, one from 2019 to now, another from 2006 to 2015 and yet another from 2002 to 2004.
He started as a bridge designer from 2002 to 2004, and then during his second run at KDOT he worked as a bridge maintenance plans engineer and state bridge design engineer and assistant bureau chief.
During the last several years at KDOT, Reed was bureau chief of structures and geotechnical services, the director of the division of engineering and design before moving up to acting secretary.
For more than three years, Reed worked for an engineering consulting firm as transportation division manager and bridge team lead.
He is a graduate of Kansas State University with both a bachelor’s and master’s degree in civil engineering.
