Afterscoring a three-season renewalthat will allow us to see its host reduce his life expectancy on a weekly basis,Last Week Tonight with John Oliverwas ready to go off the rails in this week’s episode. As it sometimes happens with the show, the main segment covered a subject that we never saw coming: trains. But don’t worry,John Olivermakes it clear that the show is very much pro-trains.The problem is, of course, the companies that administrate them.
The point of the episode was to draw attention to the alarming number of derailments that happen with increasing frequency in the U.S.—just in 2022, there were 1,000—and reveal thatthey tend to happen for a reason. While the freight train industry used to be heavily regulated, this is no longer the case thanks to a man named Hunter Harrison.
He was known for implementing something called “Precision Scheduled Railroading,” which presented itself as guidelines to maximize transport efficiency, but it turned out to bea list of measures to cut costs and maximize profitfor the six reigning freight train companies now operating in the U.S. Just to provide a little insight into the kind of guidelines that the PSR had, “safety” came #4 in the list of priorities defined by the program.
Freight Train Companies Adopted Guidelines That Granted Them A Spot on ‘Last Week Tonight’s Main Segment
Not by chance, in the long term the PSR promoted a lack of maintenance in freight trains, stimulated companies to apply a reduction of the workforce (freight trains are operated by a whopping number of two people), andadopted abhorrent practicessuch as asking workers to ask for their sick leaves one month in advance. At the same time, the PSR made sure freight trains started to get more cars, which made them significantly longer. In some places like Houston, this causes problems in traffic andthreatens citizens’ lives and healthwhen a 3-mile-long train has to stop for whatever reason and blocks traffic.
And, of course, it’s not like there isn’t an agency that has to regulate and control freight train operations. The problem is, that theFederal Railroad Administration(FRA) only has the personnel to inspect less than 1% of the freight trains and railroads in the country, which leaves the other 99% for companies to do. AsLast Week Tonightviewers know pretty well,companies are typically not good at regulating themselves. With all of this said and done, there’s nothing left to do other than use a bit of grim British stop-motion animation to illustrate just how badly handled freight trains are, as you can see at the end of the main segment above.
Tune in next week for the next episode ofLast Week Tonight.
