“Obama imposed stricter rules on trains carrying toxins. Trump killed them.”
Get PolitiFact in your inbox.
Obama-era safety rule for high-hazard cargo trains was repealed under Trump
If Your Time is short
During former President Barack Obama’s administration, the Department of Transportation enacted a rule requiring high-hazard cargo trains to be equipped with electronically controlled pneumatic brakes by 2023, allowing them to brake faster.
The Trump administration repealed this rule, citing government reports that found the cost of requiring these kinds of brakes was not economically justified.
Even if this safety rule had still been in effect, it would not have applied to the Norfolk Southern train that derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, because it was not categorized as a high-hazard cargo train.
After a train derailment caused a toxic chemical spill in East Palestine, Ohio, forcing residents to evacuate and raising concerns about environmental impacts, many social media users are criticizing government regulations around rail transport.
Multiple posts on Facebook and Twitter claimed former President Barack Obama set tougher regulations for trains carrying hazardous materials that former President Donald Trump later repealed.
"Obama imposed stricter rules on trains carrying toxins. Trump killed them," claimed a Feb. 15 Facebook post from Occupy Democrats, a liberal advocacy group. The post includes an image from the aftermath of the train derailment in Ohio.
The post was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)
An Occupy Democrats spokesperson told PolitiFact this post was referring to changes to a rule about braking systems for high-hazard flammable unit trains.
PolitiFact looked into this rule change and found the claim to be largely accurate.
In 2015, during the Obama administration, a new safety rule was adopted requiring electronically controlled pneumatic brakes to be installed on all high-hazard flammable unit trains by 2023, allowing them to brake faster. Trump rescinded that requirement three years later.
The rise and fall of an Obama-era train safety rule
In 2014, following several high-profile train derailments, the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration and the Federal Railroad Administration (which both operate under the Department of Transportation) proposed rules to bolster safety standards for trains carrying hazardous materials.
A year later, these two agencies finalized the rule for trains carrying high-hazard, flammable materials. New trains were required to have the electronic brakes and older trains were required to be retrofitted with them by 2023.
A high-hazard flammable unit train was defined as a train going faster than 30 miles per hour with at least 70 loaded tank cars containing certain highly flammable liquids, such as crude oil and ethanol.
Electronically controlled pneumatic brakes work on all train cars simultaneously. This allows the train to brake faster than when equipped with conventional air brakes, which are applied sequentially along the length of the train.
Featured Fact-check
