In 2023 a rumor began to spread through the 5th Ward of Houston, Texas. A migrant worker named Elin Javier Avila-Figueroa had been hit and killed by a Union Pacific train.
There had been no news coverage, and no railroad reported hitting him. Meanwhile residents complained of a new form of rail traffic, locomotives operating without a human on board, crisscrossing residential neighborhoods and existing within a regulatory loophole that made it impossible to accurately track fatal accidents.
These Remote-Controlled Locomotives (RCLs) are often miles-long and carrying toxic chemicals. The railroads claim these trains are safe, pointing to Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) accident numbers that would imply RCLs are safer than conventional locomotives. But rail worker unions repeatedly stressed the extreme danger to pedestrians and cities at large, and pointed out that when a fatal accident occurs railroads are not required to indicate if the train involved was unmanned.
These images focus on the 5th ward of Houston, an industrial/residential neighborhood where residents are penned in on all sides by trains, and may face the brunt of expanded RCL use.
