Two and a half years after a derailed train spewed toxic gases across eastern Ohio, none of the nation’s largest freight railroad operators have fulfilled promises to join a voluntary federal close call program designed to reduce rail hazards and prevent accidents.

Two railroad companies — BNSF and Norfolk Southern — launched partial trials, but haven’t fully joined the program. A federal working group formed to negotiate railroad company participation recently disbanded.

Railroad firms complained that the safety program — which lets employees report safety issues and close calls without facing discipline — was cumbersome and no better than their own internal processes.

Amtrak and smaller freight and passenger railroad operators across the country, however, do participate and studies show the program reduced accidents by approximately 20 percent.

Program advocates say the big “Class I” freight railroad companies’ reluctance to participate shows the industry failed to learn any lessons from the 38-car derailment in East Palestine in 2023 that engulfed 35 cars in flames and forced the evacuation of homes in a one-mile radius.

“We had an opportunity as a group to make things better and make things safer, and we didn’t do it,” said Jim Mathews, president and CEO of the advocacy organization the Rail Passengers Association. He served on the disbanded working group.

“Think about how much better and how much safer it could be if we could add all of those 120,000 employees into the mix and all of those operations of hundreds and hundreds of trains a day all across the country,” Mathews said.

The federal initiative known as the Confidential Close Call Reporting System, or C³RS, was initially inspired by a similar program in aviation started in 1976 that has helped make flying the safest form of travel in the United States.

Federal transportation agencies argue the rail program could similarly improve safety for passengers, workers and the more than 12,000 communities that can have dangerous chemicals passing through their backyards on freight trains every day.

For the last decade, more than 1,000 trains have derailed every year in the United States, and one accident a day, on average, surpasses $100,000 in damages, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation.

For years, the National Transportation Safety Board, or the NTSB, has said railroad companies need a program that allows employees to report mistakes or close calls without facing discipline, arguing similar programs save lives in other industries.

Amtrak had joined C³RS, but in the midst of contentious contract negotiations and a strict new Amtrak zero-tolerance safety policy, rail unions had temporarily opted out of the close call program and a separate peer-to-peer safety feedback program.

The NTSB investigation of the accident revealed more than two dozen unsafe conditions, “many involving safety rule violations and risky behaviors by workers” across several levels of Amtrak’s organization, including track maintenance workers and dispatchers and management.

The NTSB observed “an inconsistent vision of safety throughout the organization, hostile attitudes between labor and management about no-tolerance rule violations, and ill-equipped work crews.”

Through C³RS, workers can file reports of minor rule violations, mistakes, close calls and malfunctioning equipment with NASA, the aeronautics and space agency that runs the program for the railroad administration.

As long as those reports meet several requirements, like no one was hurt, no hazardous materials were released, or the employee didn’t willfully break the law like drinking on the job, then the employee receives protection from disciplinary action if they broke procedure.

“We know that our employees make mistakes. They work hard to prevent those mistakes, but they do happen,” Leslie Radanovich said in an interview with the Howard Center.

Radanovich manages system safety at Metrolink, a passenger railroad in Southern California that joined C³RS in 2023. A Metrolink spokesperson said employees have made more than 300 C³RS reports so far and Radanovich said the program has become more popular over time.