National Transportation Safety Board Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy and Board Member Tom Chapman will hold a press briefing at Chicago Union Station on Monday, Sept. 21, 2026, at 10 a.m. CDT, to lay out the actions the agency believes are needed to improve safety across the U.S. rail system.

The central figure behind the event is stark: 3,056 rail workers were injured on the job last year. Homendy intends to use the briefing to outline the NTSB's rail safety priorities and to discuss concrete steps to reduce what the agency describes as preventable injuries and fatalities among the nation's railroad employees. Her remarks, according to the announcement issued Sept. 18 from Washington, will stress that protecting railroad employees and enhancing safety for passengers, communities and the traveling public are complementary goals rather than competing ones.

The choice of venue carries operational weight. Chicago is the nation's busiest rail hub and the only city where all six Class I freight railroads converge. It is the primary interchange point between eastern and western rail operations, meaning that safety failures or service disruptions there propagate across the national network rather than remaining local problems.

Union Station itself anchors a substantial passenger base. The terminal is the busiest rail station outside the Northeast Corridor, serving more than 3 million Amtrak passengers and 35 million Metra commuters annually. Any operational change at the facility — whether driven by safety regulation, infrastructure work or staffing policy — therefore affects a ridership base larger than that of most American rail terminals combined across both intercity and regional services.

The NTSB frames the briefing around the argument that strengthening worker protections is critical to building a safer, more reliable and more resilient rail transportation system. That linkage between employee safety and system reliability reflects a long-standing position of the safety board: incidents that injure workers — shoving-yard collisions, switching accidents, right-of-way strikes — frequently occur in the same operating environments and under the same procedural weaknesses that put trains, freight and passengers at risk.

Homendy and Chapman will speak from the Jackson Boulevard balcony entrance at 500 W. Jackson Blvd. The location, on the public-facing side of the 1925 station, places the briefing in view of one of the busiest commuter concourses in the country at the start of the morning peak period for Metra services.

Chairwoman Homendy will make herself available for one-on-one interviews with credentialed media immediately following the press conference, suggesting the NTSB anticipates sustained questioning beyond the prepared remarks. The agency has asked attending media to RSVP in advance to [email protected].

The briefing comes at a moment when freight railroads face continued scrutiny over crew size, yard operating practices and the pace of implementing safety recommendations the NTSB has issued over successive accident investigations. Chicago's role as the junction point of BNSF, Union Pacific, CSX, Norfolk Southern, Canadian National and Canadian Pacific Kansas City operations — the six Class I carriers serving the city — makes it the natural stage for an agency seeking to address system-wide safety gaps rather than individual carrier performance.

For Amtrak, the stakes at Union Station are direct. More than 3 million annual passengers move through the terminal on long-distance and Midwest corridor services, and the station's function as the western terminus for many eastern connections means that delays or restrictions there cascade onto national route schedules. For Metra, the 35 million annual riders represent the bulk of the Chicago region's commuter rail volume, concentrated on 11 lines feeding the terminal.

The NTSB announcement does not specify new recommendations to be issued at the briefing, and the agency has not indicated whether Homendy will name specific carriers, unions or rulemaking dockets in her remarks. What the announcement does commit to is a public articulation of the board's rail safety priorities by its two sitting members, in the city where the national freight network is most physically concentrated.

The injury figure of 3,056 workers in a single year provides the evidentiary anchor for the event. That number, drawn from the most recent reporting period, covers injuries sustained across the U.S. rail workforce — train and engine crews, maintenance-of-way employees, yard workers and mechanical staff — and the NTSB treats it as a measure of systemic exposure rather than a collection of isolated incidents.

Credentialed journalists covering the event will have the opportunity to question the chairwoman directly on the agency's priorities, the status of outstanding recommendations and the outlook for regulatory action following the briefing.