With no public access to railroad inspection reports, warnings of decay, collapse and environmental spills stay hidden
By Lex Doig, Jaehee Kim and Adrian Mancera Cota
Howard Center for Investigative Journalism at Arizona State University
CORVALLIS, Oregon – The fire burned for nearly nine hours, billowing smoke and scorching the wooden trestles of a nearly 75-year-old railroad bridge that spans the Marys River in Corvallis, a small city near Oregon State University. Long after the flames died out, Michelle Emmons, a local environmental advocate, could still smell the noxious stench of charred creosote — a chemical preservative used to treat outdoor wooden structures.
The bridge is owned by Portland & Western Railroad, which says it made repairs after the 2022 fire before reopening the bridge to rail traffic. But Emmons wanted more.
“It was most alarming to us to see that there were still rail cars that were going over the bridge,” said Emmons, who co-leads the Willamette Riverkeeper, a local environmental nonprofit. “It was only going to be a matter of time before there could possibly be an accident.”
That time came nearly three years later on January 4, 2025, when the Corvallis bridge collapsed beneath a passing freight train.
One rail car fell into the river while another car dangled from the bridge and was partially submerged in the water. Nearly 150,000 pounds of fertilizer spilled from the train into the river – a waterway already the focus of local environmental concerns.
Officials from Portland & Western Railroad declined to be interviewed about the bridge collapse, but emailed a statement about the company’s actions after the fire. “Some rail, crossties and bridge caps needed to be replaced,” wrote company spokesperson Tom Ciuba. “It’s important to note that cosmetic appearance and the smell of creosote do not necessarily signify structural damage to rail bridges.”
An investigation by the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism at Arizona State University found that railroad bridge safety across the U.S. is hamstrung by minimal government oversight and limited transparency. This leaves rail companies largely in control of inspecting and maintaining their own bridges – and allows them to keep most details and problems secret.
This system differs starkly from the approximately 623,000 bridges carrying cars and trucks in the U.S., which must be regularly inspected under strict federal guidelines and their inspection records made available to the public.
Among the Howard Center’s key investigative findings:
- Only six inspectors from the Federal Railroad Administration are responsible for reviewing private companies’ maintenance and safety plans for the nation’s nearly 70,000 railroad bridges.
- Roughly 10% of U.S. railroads have not had their bridge management programs audited by the FRA, 15 years after the rule on Bridge Safety Standards went into effect, leaving the public and the government largely in the dark about risks.
- Some larger railroads, owned by companies with billions of dollars in annual revenue, have neglected installation of critical but sometimes costly safety features.
- Even government officials have difficulty getting information about railroad bridge inspection reports.
Portland & Western Railroad declined to allow Howard Center reporters to view its bridge management plans or inspection records for the Corvallis bridge.
“Bridge inspection reports are not something we typically release to the public, as they are very technical in nature and should only be analyzed by bridge engineers,” wrote Ciuba in his email.
Railroad bridge accidents across the U.S.
FRA data show 112 bridge-related railroad accidents dating back to 1976, or on average more than two incidents per year.
Mike Rush, safety director for the Association of American Railroads, said in every bridge-related derailment investigated by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), the cause of the bridge collapse was something other than bridge structure.
But a 2016 report from the Office of Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Transportation found about three railroad bridge collapses per year, over a seven year period, could be attributed directly to failing bridge structures. The inspector general cited FRA data that showed “structural failures of railroad bridges caused 21 train accidents between 2007 and 2014.”
The FRA data include many railroad bridge incidents the NTSB never investigated. The safety board only investigates the most serious accidents – it did not investigate the collapse in Corvallis, Oregon. Of seven accidents involving railroad bridges the NTSB did respond to since 2010, the Howard Center found several where the safety board said companies had deferred critical maintenance before derailments.
In September 2015, a BNSF train derailed while carrying ethanol, a highly flammable liquid, at a bridge near Lesterville, South Dakota. NTSB investigators found that nearly 50,000 gallons of ethanol leaked and caught fire, causing more than $1 million in damage. The safety board said “BNSF was able to defer maintenance on the track” which, along with “poor track structural support, increased the likelihood of rail failure.”
In October 2023, a BNSF Railway freight train hauling coal derailed in Colorado, striking a nearby bridge that partially collapsed and killing a truck driver on the interstate below. NTSB investigators found a broken rail near the bridge approach caused the accident, related to an incorrect weld on the rail.
After this incident, BNSF increased oversight of welding and began mandatory audits of every failed weld. In an email, BNSF said it meets all federal inspection requirements and the FRA has audited its bridge management plan “many times.”
In addition to allowing self-inspections of bridges, federal regulations require railroads to hire their own inspectors to look for defects in railroad tracks they own. But these track inspections don’t have to be made public.
In March 2017, a Union Pacific freight train derailed near a bridge in Graettinger, Iowa. Fourteen tank cars released approximately 322,000 gallons of ethanol, sparking a fire and causing the evacuation of three homes. The NTSB faulted “Union Pacific Railroad’s inadequate track maintenance and inspection program and the FRA’s inadequate oversight of the application of federal track safety standards.”
In July 2020, a Union Pacific derailment involving a broken rail near the Tempe Town Lake, in Arizona, prompted a dozen train cars to derail, strike the bridge, and cause a portion of it to collapse. More than 2,000 gallons of flammable chemicals leaked, and a fire started.
The NTSB determined that the absence of an inner guard rail, a second set of rails which could have prevented the derailed train from crashing into the bridge, contributed to the severity of the derailment.
Union Pacific acknowledged, when questioned by the NTSB, it knew many bridges still needed the safety feature.
“The total number of bridges that require the inner guard rail is 635, and 218 do not have [the] inner guard rail installed,” Tomasz Gawronski, Director of Bridge Inspections for Union Pacific, said in his 2020 testimony.
Gawronski said money may have been a factor. “It’s a rather costly effort, you know, to install the inner guardrails.”
In 2020 Union Pacific reported operating revenues of $19.5 billion, with profits of $5.3 billion.
Company spokesperson Robynn Tysver wrote in an email that Union Pacific has approximately 16,900 bridges and inspects each of them twice a year. Tysver did not answer follow-up questions, including when asked if the 218 bridges that still needed inner guard rails in 2020 had since had them installed.
Too few staff and resources
FRA rules require railroads to develop internal bridge management programs and conduct their own inspections. The FRA is supposed to audit these plans. But the audits are not occurring on a fixed schedule for all railroads.
FRA spokesperson Warren Flatau said the agency audited bridge management plans for 677 out of approximately 755 railroad companies since 2010. That leaves one in 10 railroads never having had their inspection programs audited in that time.
Flatau said the outstanding audits are all for Class III railroads, mostly smaller railroads with less revenue that operate regionally. He said smaller railroads change hands often, making oversight more difficult.
The FRA’s Bridge and Structures team now has just three bridge specialists and three structural engineers who oversee the railroads’ self-inspections of 69,509 railroad bridges the FRA is aware of.
“It’s shocking and just scary,” said Jared Cassity, a union leader with SMART TD, the largest railroad workers union in North America. “When you think about six people and the number of bridges that exist in the United States of America, you cannot adequately perform… the oversight.”
A new push for change
In 2015 Congress passed the Fixing America’s Surface Transportation Act (FAST Act), allowing state and municipal leaders access to a limited number of data fields with some inspection information.
U.S. Rep. Summer Lee, a Pennsylvania Democrat, said those records “were extremely redacted — so much so that it was almost a joke.”
She plans to introduce legislation this year to force more transparency.
“We want to create a public database where residents are able to just readily obtain the information regarding the safety of the bridges in their communities,” Lee said.
Lee’s initial attempt at rail bridge safety reforms in 2024 stalled, which she attributes to influence from railroad companies and their powerful lobbyists.
“It is not an issue that impacts one type of district — blue districts or red districts. This is an issue of national safety, of public safety, all across the country,” she said.
Reporters Matthew Bird, Mackenzie Miller and Justin Patton contributed to this story.
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