The Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) is cracking down on cross-border train operators from Mexico who lack basic English language proficiency, in a bid to make rail operations safer in the United States, the Department of Transportation (DOT) Secretary Sean P. Duffy said in a Dec. 19 statement.
This past fall, FRA inspectors conducted routine regulatory oversight of cross-border operations on Union Pacific Railroad (UP) and Canadian Pacific Kansas City Limited (CPKC), finding that several inbound crew members faced difficulty when interpreting General Track Bulletins and communicating safety requirements in English.
DOT highlighted that railroads can only certify locomotive engineers and conductors if they have the required skills, knowledge, and abilities necessary to carry out operations safely. Since critical train documents and radio communications are in English, the potential language barriers FRA observed among some of the crew members at CPKC and UP raised safety concerns, it said….