On June 9th, 2026, members of the Senate Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Surface Transportation, Freight, Pipelines, and Safety discussed recent breakthroughs in transportation technology and implications for current regulatory structures. The hearing, entitled “The Need for Speed: How Technological Advances Are Driving Transportation Innovation”, brought together stakeholders from industry and labor. Discussion primarily centered on the automated inspection of railroad tracks and on standards for autonomous trucks.

Through these cases, members grappled with the more fundamental questions of how the US could encourage innovation while maintaining safety and worker protections. Specifically, they considered whether prescriptive or performance-based regulations are were better suited to handle rapidly-evolving transportation technology. 

Witnesses 

• Ian Jeffries, President & CEO, Association of American Railroads (AAR) 

• Chris Spear, President & CEO, American Trucking Association (ATA) 

• Laura Chace, President & CEO, Intelligent Transportation Society of America (ITS America) 

• Cole Scandaglia, Deputy Director of Political and Legislative Action, International Brotherhood of Teamsters 

Automation in the Rail Sector 

There appeared to be mixed feelings about technological innovation in the rail sector. Ian Jefferies, representing the Association of American Railroads, praised the use of technology to ensure safety and reliability, noting that 2025 was the safest year on record in terms of derailments, equipment-related accidents, and employee injuries. Jefferies attributed the claim to advances in track inspection technology, citing various efforts from freight railroads including automated track geometry inspection (ATI), rail temperature monitoring, automated train inspection portals, and GPS-enabled work zone monitoring. According to Jefferies, these advances in rail technology expand the reach of inspection capabilities, supporting employees in their work rather than replacing them.  

Jefferies expanded on the rail technology discussion by urging Congress to ensure that regulations keep pace with the innovation in the rail sector, by adopting performance-based regulations. He argued that performance-based regulations keep the path to achieving outcomes open for railroads to use new or innovative technologies, without being limited to a particular practice. For railroads, performance-based regulations provide flexibility to test new technologies, so long as they meet the outcomes set by the regulations. 

Cole Scandaglia, representing the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, offered a more cautionary perspective to both automation in rail technology and adopting performance-based regulation. At the core of his argument was labor protection. Scandaglia acknowledged that automated track inspection has benefits in detecting track defects. But he noted that the benefits are narrow in scope. The Federal Railroad Administration has 23 different track defects, and the current ATI technology can only identify six of the 23 defects. Scandaglia pointed to this as a major limitation of ATI. Scandaglia reminded the committee that labor organizations are not opposed to new technologies. In fact, he noted that the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees advocated mandatory deployment of ATI technology. But the best way to ensure track safety, Scandaglia argued, is to retain manual, naked-eye human track inspection.  

Senator Andy Kim (D-NJ) pressed Jefferies on the limited benefits of ATI, pointing to the inability of ATI to identify issues in rail joints, switch components, and trackside vegetation. Jefferies agreed that balance is important, indicating that both human and automated inspection are useful. But Jefferies reminded the Committee that ATI remains 200 percent more effective at detecting issues than the human eye.  

In addition to ATI, Scandaglia also raised concerns about automation in locomotive operations, and the risk they pose to employees. Specifically, technologies like Trip Optimizer (TO), which is a software that can take control of the locomotive, automatically taking into account operating conditions. While not opposed to TO, Scandaglia noted that over-reliance on TO can cause de-skilling because engineers are not making operating decisions while the software is in control.  

Scandaglia further warned against remote control locomotives, which are locomotives operated by an employee who could be a significant distance from a train and therefore has no information about the surrounding conditions. This creates a potential hazard for other employees in the rail yard, or the public on the main line who may not be aware of the train.  While included in testimony, the members and other witnesses did not express any thoughts or raise questions about locomotive operations during the hearing, and the rail technology discussion was limited to automated track inspection. Scandaglia’s testimony points to a larger concern that automation in rail technology lessens the need for human employees, and at the expense of rail safety. While advancements in rail technology present benefits in improving efficiency, the test for the rail sector going forward will be whether companies, as Jefferies put it, incorporate the technologies to support employees rather than replace them.  

On the regulations piece, Scandaglia was skeptical that shifting to performance-based over prescriptive would provide the benefits claimed by other witnesses. Interestingly, Scandaglia’s caution was more focused on data reliability rather than regulatory reform. Part of Scandaglia’s concern was a reliance on data obtained by the “regulated entities,” which likely include private freight railroads. The data provided by a regulated entity may not align with the experience of employees and paint an inaccurate picture of how that entity is meeting a regulation, regardless of if the regulation is performance-based or prescriptive. 

Trucks: Automation, Regulation, and Innovation 

Bipartisan consensus quickly emerged regarding the need for autonomous commercial vehicle regulatory standards. Chris Spear asserted that the patchwork of state-level AV regulations is incompatible with the national nature of the trucking industry. Fragmented equipment standards prevent manufacturers, motor carriers, and supply chains from embracing innovation to drive down costs and improve reliability. He urged Congress to establish NHTSA’s regulatory precedence over vehicle safety standards. Cole Scandaglia agreed on the need for a federal framework. He called on NHTSA to set robust regulatory standards before commercial AVs entered the market and urged Congress to ensure the FMCSA performed substantive oversight over regulatory compliance. 

Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX), chairman of the Commerce, Science, & Transportation Committee, revealed that he now plans to include commercial vehicle standards within an AV title in the Senate’s surface transportation reauthorization package. Though he had initially considered excluding trucks, he now views establishing a national regulatory framework for autonomous commercial vehicles as a key priority that he hopes to pass by the end of the year, alongside the rest of reauthorization. Senator Gary Peters (D-MI), ranking minority member of the subcommittee, concurred, voicing support for consistent nationwide autonomous truck standards. 

Differences emerged on the necessary level of regulatory action and economic consequences of automation. Spear predicted that automation would cause little to no significant job loss within the immediate future. While level four and five automation may be deployed along low-density, straightforward corridors (for example, between Texas and Southern California), the majority of the freight network would only experience automation between levels one and three, all of which still require human drivers. Spear claimed that as demand for trucking increases, automation would simply fill in the gaps, while also opening up new technical, maintenance, and manufacturing job opportunities. 

Scandaglia voiced skepticism, calling it “ahistorical” to imagine companies would voluntarily limit the use of labor-saving technologies over the long term. He urged the federal government to increase its regulatory oversight, which currently only requires that AV companies report crashes to NHTSA, and called on Congress to include meaningful preparations for mass worker displacement in any autonomous vehicle legislation. 

Beyond automation, subcommittee Chairman Todd Young (R-IN) called attention to the 12% federal excise tax on heavy-duty trucks. He claimed that the policy – originally levied over a century ago as a temporary wartime measure – was disincentivizing the purchase of new trucks with safer, more efficient, and lower-emission technology, keeping trucks on the road beyond their optimal lifespans. Spear voiced strong industry support for Senator Young’s Modern, Clean, and Safe Transport Act (S. 4657), which would repeal the truck excise tax. 

Senator Bernie Moreno (R-OH) focused on the California Air Resource Board’s Advanced Clean Trucks rule, which Congress halted last year by revoking the state’s EPA waiver. He claimed that the rule’s requirement for 10% of newly sold trucks to be electric-powered by 2030 – a 5000% increase from the meager 0.2% current rate of adoption – was an outlandish target with potentially “catastrophic” economic consequences. Spear concurred, describing the price of electric trucks as 3.5 times higher than new diesel vehicles and predicting serious downstream costs for consumers if the prescriptive regulation had been maintained. He noted that trucks had already made significant progress in limiting emissions without electrification; current diesel engines emit at a rate 60 times lower than those from 1988.  

Members also discussed issues with trucker licensing enforcement and crime. Senator Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) urged the federal government to crack down on chameleon carriers (trucking companies that evade regulatory standards by continually reregistering under new names) and on undocumented immigrant truck drivers by passing Senator Young’s SAFER Transport Act. Spear likewise urged the committee to combat fraud and cargo theft by passing the SAFER Transport Act, in addition to taking up the House-passed Combatting Organized Retail Crime Act. 

Cybersecurity, Digital Infrastructure, & More 

Members repeatedly raised national security as a key priority, especially for autonomous vehicles. Senator Young emphasized that a permissive nationwide regulatory environment was essential to allowing American AV manufacturers to compete with China, ensuring US control over digital networks, and to incentivize US firms to invest in cybersecurity development. Senator Moreno called his Connected Vehicles Security Act an essential measure to prevent all Chinese firm involvement in autonomous truck manufacturing, while Spear voiced support for the ongoing Bureau of Industry and Security rulemaking process to limit Chinese manufacturing to vehicle parts unrelated to automation. Scandaglia voicedsafety concerns with foreign operators taking remote control of American vehicles. He additionally called for Congress to prevent Chinese firms from establishing manufacturing plants, as their state financial backing could threaten faircompetition with American manufacturers. 

Laura Chace called on the federal government to recognize digital capabilities as an essential counterpart to physical infrastructure. She cited examples of innovative technologies – including smart traffic signals, pedestrian detection, predictive intelligence, and advanced driver assistance – resulting in increased safety and reduced congestion for specific roadway segments and intersections. Progress, however, is currently limited to a few targeted points within the much larger transportation system.  Chase called on Congress to support a nationwide, interoperable digital infrastructure system through opening up flexible, performance-based funding to innovative technologies in the multi-year reauthorization package. She further urged the federal government to modernize its environmental review processes to accept digital documents, including three dimensional ‘digital twin’ models of physical infrastructure. 

Senator Ben Ray Luján (D-NM) focused on Advanced Impaired Driving Prevention Technology, urging the federal government to take action to reduce the unacceptably high rate of fatalities from drunk driving. He criticized NHTSA’s recent report that claimed  ‘the technology just isn’t ready’, arguing that Europe was already deploying similar technology and that federal research funding was being improperly spent. Senator Luján condemned efforts by Representative Scott Perry(R-PA) to eliminate federal support for the technology through an amendment to the House reauthorization bill, and he urged Congress to establish positive market signals for research and development through new federal funding.