Frustrations with the moribund inertia of Congress are justified.

As the Associated Press and Williamsport Sun-Gazette reported in Friday’s edition, congressional efforts to revise and improve train safety regulations are now deadlocked.

About six months have passed since the East Palestine, Ohio, derailment. As the Associated Press noted, since that disaster there have been more than 60 other derailments.

Safer, more reliable rail transportation for freight is an issue of infrastructure. It’s a vital economic concern. It matters to the jobs and careers of hundreds of thousands — if not millions — of Americans.

What it is not is a matter particularly fraught with ideological division or differences in governing philosophy or principle. This isn’t abortion, or the Second Amendment or the nature of the U.S. border and immigration policy.

In other words, it is exactly the kind of issue on which lawmakers can find common ground.

“These rail lines pass frequently through Republican areas, small towns with a lot of Republican voters,” U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance, R-Ohio, told the Associated Press. “How can we look them in the eye and say, we’re doing a good job by you?”

The United States is a democratic republic and the American people, having directly elected a legislature, deserve to see that legislature openly work to find solutions to problems like rail safety.

As we’ve noted in editorializing about the Biden Administration’s efforts to circumvent the legislature on student loan relief through executive action, the alternative is not acceptable. Only the legislative process, on most matters, can produce the transparent debate and compromise that gives all Americans a stake in how their nation is governed.

But we must concede, when lawmakers are incapable of moving forward on solutions to even the least divisive problems, we can understand why even ineffectual, undemocratic executive actions may look appealing to some.

But the answer remains to hold Congress accountable — not to allow our executive branches wider perimeters for unaccountability.

— Williamsport Sun-Gazette