Rep. Matt Cartwright, D-Pa., told Newsmax on Wednesday that while the current "maintenance" of rail cars, or "rolling stock," remains a "red flag," cutting corners on freight train infrastructure "is not a good idea."
Speaking to "The Record with Greta Van Susteren" regarding the derailment of a freight train in East Palestine, Ohio, which carried thousands of gallons of environmentally hazardous chemicals, Cartwright says, "when I hear complaints [from the National Transportation Safety Board] about failure to maintain rolling stock, there's no particular reason to disbelieve that. If employees of the very railway complained about not enough effort and investment going into the maintenance of rolling stock, that's kind of a red flag to me."
The NTSB reported Tuesday it would investigate a wheel bearing from the train that derailed in East Palestine.
"The suspected overheated wheel bearing," NTSB says, "has been collected and will be examined by engineers from the NTSB Materials Laboratory in Washington, D.C."
"Editor's note," the report adds, "An earlier version of this release indicated 10 hazardous material railcars were part of the derailment. The actual number is 11."
Despite the derailment, the congressman deflected concerns of it, instead touting improvements to passenger rail tracks "between New York City and my home of Scranton, Pennsylvania, across the top of New Jersey across the Delaware water gap up to Mount Pocono ... that will be part of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act" signed by President Joe Biden on Nov. 15, 2021.
When Van Susteren pointed out, while "standards may be stricter for passenger trains ... some of these freight trains as we've just seen basically carry bombs."
The congressman replied, "I hope that that workers' complaints that not enough money has gone into the maintenance of the rolling stock is fully investigated by the NTSB."
On June 6, 2021, the Bureau of Transportation Statistics released a report outlining that since the year 2000 to 2021, there have been over 1,000 train accidents a year.
CBS reported Wednesday that after the Ohio freight derailed, "an estimated 3,500 dead fish had been found in local streams, tributaries, and waterways, accounting for at least 12 different species," according to the director of Ohio's Department of Natural Resources, Mary Mertz.
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