The way to put the screws to the rail companies isn’t to regulate better brakes - just have the NTSB have a policy of shutting down any line that has a derailment for months or longer. The companies will solve it themselves.

The rail companies are "too big to fail" since they are core national logistics.

>they are core national logistics

If they cannot operate safely and they are essential to our national security, perhaps they should be nationalized. I bet the threat of nationalization would get their collective asses in gear.

Then maybe they shouldn’t be private companies that cut corners for profit putting both people and that logistical operation at risk.

They will raise prices and if other logistic will fill the gap, well, they weren't so core after all

Fine them millions per derailment. Increasing with each one.

This can work but they can fight fines, or eat it as cost of business. Much harder to argue against a safety-shutdown.

> Obama passed legislation to upgrade trains braking systems to make them a lot safer, which was then weakened by lobbying, which was then repealed by Trump

I'm not sure it was political. The FAST Act, the legislation from 2015 that mandated that regulators require ECP brakes on some trains also required that the National Academy of Sciences produce a report on the effectiveness of such brakes which would then be used to review the regulation to see if the assumptions behind it were valid. The regulators then had to either publish an explanation of how the regulation was justified or repeal it.

In 2017 the NAS report came out, and found that there really wasn't much evidence either way, and said they were unable to conclude that ECP brakes would outperform other types of brakes.

Given that NAS report I am not at all sure that the outcome would have been different under a Clinton administration.