“Rail safety is public health. Hazardous releases don’t stop at the tracks,” wrote Misti Allison in a recent guest editorial published by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
A resident of East Palestine, Ohio and a public health leader, Allison knows first-hand the harmful effects that train derailments and chemical spills can have on communities and residents. Following the Norfolk Southern train disaster of 2023, she became a fierce advocate for improving rail safety.
“The derailment revealed that federal rail policy had not kept pace with the complexity and volume of modern freight operations,” she wrote. “Weak early detection, inconsistent hazardous materials classification, and limited consequences for safety violations left communities like mine vulnerable.”
She praised the House Transportation & Infrastructure’s bipartisan passage of the BUILD America 250 Act in May, which includes provisions of the BLET and Teamsters Rail Conference-championed Railway Safety Act of 2026. However, much work still needs to be done.
“The committee vote is a milestone,” she wrote. “It is not the finish line.”
She urged the full House of Representatives and the Senate to act quickly. “Policy delay has human consequences,” she wrote. “Senate leadership must move this legislation promptly through whatever process brings it to the floor and to the President’s desk. Every week of delay is a week the system operates without the protections this bill would require.”
Originally introduced in the U.S. Senate in 2023, momentum to pass the Railway Safety Act had nearly come to a halt until BLET National President Mark Wallace and First Vice President Gary Best lobbied lawmakers earlier this year to resurrect the much-needed rail safety legislation. The bill is vital to ensuring that devastating train derailments like the one in East Palestine don’t happen again and includes key BLET and Teamsters Rail Conference priorities like a two-person crew requirement, ensuring that high hazard trains carrying hazardous materials have the proper safety protocols in place, and regulating wayside detectors to ensure they work properly.
Allison concluded: “Somewhere tonight, in a town most Americans have never heard of, a train will pass within yards of someone’s backyard. The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee voted to protect that family. Now the full Congress needs to finish the job.”
Allison’s full message is available behind a paywall on the Atlanta Journal-Constitution website.
Misti Allison is pictured here accepting the The Ohio State University Alumni Association’s 2025 Robert M. Duncan Alumni Citizenship Award
Photo courtesy of Misti Allison