Unpopular causes like regulating train safety and disaster handling/cleaning?

Airlines are regulated heavily and safe without nationalizing / seizing ownership.

Airline accidents kill hundreds of people outright. The media gives those stories tons of attention (If it bleeds, it leads) and accordingly the airline industry knows it must take safety seriously to protect their profits.

Meanwhile the chemical industry kill the gods only know how many thousands of people over the course of decades with a steady trickle of statistically correlated illnesses, but the media doesn't cover it and the consumers of chemical goods feel insulated from harm which seems very abstract and indirect to them. A consumer buying a chemical good is not directly imperiled by the chemical industry in the same way as an airline flier is threatened by airline crashes.

It doesn't take a genius to figure out why the airline industry is better at safety than the chemical industry.

Yes I agree, that was my point. Though I was comparing train derailments overall, not chemical spills. Chemicals are needed for society.

Nationalizing trains will not help. Nationalizing chemical transfers won't help either if it's the same EPA in charge that said 9/11 debris was safe or this spill was okay.

Heavier regulations on trains may be needed, especially when transferring hazardous loads, but nationalization would be horrendous.

All that be said, investing in pipelines is a much safer form of transfer for these chemicals. Trains are too risky.

I don't see why nationalizing critical infrastructure is off the table. I know it's unrealistic because our federal government is so feckless they can't even apply safety regulations or stand up for workers.

I'll let the citizens of East Palestine know they need to stay calm lest someone propose a policy solution you don't like.

Well given the way they've been running Amtrack I don't trust their ability to run shipping.

It's confusing to me why you think nationalizing the rail company would solve any problem. The government can't even keep us safe when it's telling the rail company what to do. In fact, the issue here doesn't seem to be "rail company not listening to government" so much as "government not listening to rail workers." So you think that same government - which just legislatively forced those workers back to work - can run the rail company, while complying with all the same (and new) regulations, and also not turning it into a loss-making operation funded by taxpayers until in perpetuity (at least as long as the country/economy still exists)?