Author: Frank N. Wilner

Commentary
  • News

Whose Interests Do BLET and SMART-TD Serve?

WATCHING WASHINGTON, RAILWAY AGE JULY 2024 ISSUE: Those scorpions in a bottle—the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen (BLET) and the Transportation Division of the International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail

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Commentary

CARB’s Unattainable Rail Mandate

WATCHING WASHINGTON, RAILWAY AGE JUNE 2024 ISSUE: One would think California’s housing cost crisis, soaring energy prices, hundreds of companies relocating and a population exodus would induce greater regard for benefits and

Jennifer Homendy
Commentary

NTSB’s Top Cop: ‘Accept Fact-Based Science or Hit the Road, Jack’

WATCHING WASHINGTON, RAILWAY AGE, MARCH 2024 ISSUE: National Transportation Board (NTSB) Chairperson Jennifer Esposito Homendy can be a pain in the neck, and elsewhere. Celebrate that tenacity. It assuredly saves what cannot be calculated—injuries not suffered and lives not lost in preventable transportation mishaps.

Commentary

Can STB Pivot to Satisfy Shippers?

WATCHING WASHINGTON, RAILWAY AGE FEBRUARY 2024 ISSUE: Rail captive shippers—primarily of chemicals and coal—unable to utilize barge or truck alternatives and lacking two-railroad competition owing to decades of mergers are an unhappy

  • News

Fuchs Renominated to Second STB Term

Republican Patrick J. Fuchs, 35, has been nominated by President Biden to a second term on the Surface Transportation Board (STB), which has economic regulatory authority over railroad rates and practices. His

Commentary

Railroads to Investors: ‘We Got This’

WATCHING WASHINGTON, RAILWAY AGE JANUARY 2024 ISSUE: It is observed—positively and negatively—that Class I freight railroads are lucrative ATMs for investors, dispensing from profits $253 billion in stock dividends and buybacks since