More than 3,000 railroad workers were injured on the job last year, and the National Transportation Safety Board is responding with a national campaign launched Monday at Chicago Union Station.

NTSB Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy announced "Strengthening Rail Safety Across America," an initiative aimed at reducing railroad worker injuries and fatalities. The launch coincided with the start of National Rail Safety Week.

"Behind every statistic is a person, a parent, a spouse, a child, a brother, a sister, a friend," Homendy said. "Every one of these losses changes a family, a community forever."

Why Chicago?

Officials chose Union Station because of the city's central role in the national rail network. Homendy laid out the operational case:

• Six major freight railroads pass through Chicago
• Amtrak carries roughly 3 million passengers annually in the city
• Metra handles about 35 million riders per year

"This is the rail capital of America. Literally, this is where East meets West," Homendy said.

What hazards does the campaign target?

The campaign follows an NTSB review that identified similar safety features across 27 of the board's active investigations. Homendy said the recurring patterns include:

• Workers struck by trains or equipment
• Communication failures
• Inadequate training
• Unsafe workplace practices
• Delays in implementing technologies and procedures that could prevent the next accident

"Across our investigations, we continue to see recurring hazards," Homendy said.

One maneuver draws particular scrutiny. The practice known as shoving requires railroad workers to ride on the outside of moving trains to watch for hazards, and it ranks among the leading causes of injuries on tracks. "They've gotten crushed in between rail cars, crashed between a rail car and a structure or other object," Homendy said.

What is the NTSB asking regulators to do?

Speaking to WGN News after her remarks, Homendy drew a distinction between voluntary action and mandated change. While railroads such as Amtrak can adopt safety practices on their own, the NTSB is urging the Federal Railroad Administration and other federal agencies to mandate measures that prevent these incidents.

"When we do an investigation it's not just simply we determine what happened and write a report that sits on the shelf. We issue recommendations that save lives. But those recommendations have to be adopted," Homendy said.

Officials frame stronger worker protections as critical to keeping freight, passengers, and local communities safe — a linkage that ties the campaign directly to network reliability, not just workforce welfare.

What comes next?

Chicago is the first stop. The NTSB plans to take its safety message from city to city across the country.