FRA Picked a Side. And It’s Not Railroaders or Rail Safety

SMART-TD leaders, members, and the public have been hit with a harsh reality this week. FRA is no longer on our side, and they aren’t even pretending to be a neutral party anymore. We all need to stop pretending.

After what we saw this week, there’s no gray area left. The FRA and DOT have abandoned their role as neutral referees and are no longer here to balance safety and business.

They’ve picked a side, and they are 100% on team Corporate Railroads.

In the last 48 hours, the FRA dropped 11 final rules that make one thing clear: they are clearing the path for the railroads to do whatever they want, free of guidance and oversight, with hardly any consequences and even fewer workers.

You don’t need to read between the lines to see this reality. It isn’t subtle. FRA is telling SMART-TD and every railroader that the risk to your well-being is worth it for the carriers’ profit.

In fact, Fink said that he “want[s] to see the industry thrive,” and his methodology for doing so is deregulation, noting during his speech that “the previous administration, there wasn’t really that much done on the deregulatory side.” Obviously, he plans to change that.

FRA Administrator Tells the World What He Thinks of Us

At a DOT technology event hosted at DOT headquarters on Tuesday, April 28, FRA Administrator David Fink made it as clear as possible that the goal is to push new tech out “as soon as practical.” According to a report from Bloomberg, it includes autonomous railcars, additional AI monitoring of employees, and systems designed to cut crews out of the picture altogether.

Fink, during his speech, specifically pointed to Parallel Systems (a company actively working to operate freight trains without human crews) as the kind of innovation they want to move forward with. Interestingly, however, is that Parallel Systems’ testing of its technology and equipment was approved under the last administration. The difference, however, is that the approval came with conditional safeguards to keep the railroad system and the public with which it intersects safe. FRA is now working to reverse that.

Let’s connect the dots

They’re rolling back the rules that protect us, while fast-tracking the technology most likely to maximize profits.

That’s not a coincidence. That’s the plan.

SMART-TD was supposed to be at that event. The Director and Deputy Director of SMART-TD’s National Safety and Legislative Department, Jared Cassity and Don Roach, were scheduled to be at the FRA’s technology demonstration on Tuesday.

They didn’t go.

After seeing what FRA pushed out as rulings in the days leading up to it, they made a point NOT to attend.

As Cassity said:

“We aren’t going to be at a party celebrating the FRA’s new path and plan to eliminate our members’ safety, rights, and ultimately their jobs.”

That’s exactly what it was. A celebration. A showcase of a future where railroads run with fewer people, less accountability, and more risk pushed onto whoever’s left standing and the American Public.

Roach and Cassity told SMART News they want to be clear about something. Their protest of Tuesday’s event wasn’t about being against technology.

It’s about what happens when you take trained railroaders out of the equation.

This job isn’t simple. It’s not predictable. It’s not something you hand off to a computer and walk away from.

We move hazmat. We move heavy tonnage through cities, towns, crossings, and yards every single day. Things go wrong. Conditions change. Decisions have to be made in real time on the fly.

That’s what we do.

And now they want to strip that down while also weakening the federal regulations that are supposed to keep everything in check.

Timing Isn’t Just Dumb, It’s Wreckless

Less than two weeks ago, on April 16, SMART News relayed to our rail members a Cybersecurity Alert that we received from the FRA.

This warning was issued by the exact federal agency that stood before a microphone on Tuesday and told the world that we want our freight trains to rely on the systems most vulnerable to bad actors. It’s unfathomable that both of these statements came from the same place, 12 days apart from each other.

We’re in a world where cyber threats are real and getting worse. Systems get hacked. Networks go down. Bad actors look for ways to disrupt critical infrastructure.

And what’s the response from FRA?

Tie more of the operation to software, automation, and remote systems. And while we’re at it, let’s remove the human beings who can actually respond when something breaks or intervene when systems get hacked.

Cybersecurity threats get more plentiful and complex all the time, but right now, Fink and the FRA are pushing for this move while we are in an active war with Iran. For obvious reasons, this underscores the need to be aware of cybersecurity in the rail industry.

Even outside the current global situation, Fink and the FRA are well aware that the railroads have not acted on urgent notices from the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), which has been warning of heightened cyber threats that require immediate attention.

The next time you are having a hard time staying awake, do a quick Google search of  CISA and the warnings they have issued to the rail industry lately. You won’t be nodding off for a long time. Yet, in the face of all of this information about your safety and the safety of the public, the FRA is out there in a room full of press talking about how we should be in the 8^th notch going full speed ahead on turning control of the nation’s railroads over to the very automation he has been told is most vulnerable.

I suppose none of this matters to FRA or the Railroad Corporations hoping to free themselves of the burdens associated with safe train operations. We can’t forget the final ruling they just made on Monday. They addressed it by rewriting the regulatory enforcement process. Their new “prosecutorial discretion” policy means that if this ridiculous strategy is implemented on America’s rail network and inevitably results in disasters that put the public and the few railroaders left at risk, railroads can just negotiate their way out of violations (Final Rule FRA-2025-0077). No set penalties. Just legitimized backroom deals.

So, when something goes wrong, the companies won’t pay the price.

We will.

That’s the reality now more than ever.

The FRA isn’t pretending to balance safety and industry anymore. They’re helping the industry overcome its biggest obstacle: dealing with a trained workforce and following the  rules and regulations that protect it.

You’re living this reality, and you know it better than anyone. The railroads don’t want to train us. They don’t want to pay us. And they definitely don’t want to be held accountable to anyone but themselves.

We, their employees, are the “problem” they’re trying to solve.

And now we know Administrator Fink (who, not surprisingly, was the CEO of a railroad in his past job) is now publicly pledging that the United States FRA is here to help them realize that vision of the future.  

That was made clear on Tuesday.