Opinion

Commentary

BNSF, SMART seek historic crew consist revision

A gutsy, proactive, and far-sighted collaboration between BNSF and a general committee of its largest labor union has produced a tentative agreement to allow freight trains equipped with Positive Train Control (PTC) to operate as early as next year with a lone engineer in the cab and no conventional on-board conductor between specific territories in the Midwest and Pacific Northwest.
Commentary

STB’s newest: Status quo beware

Moving homogeneous electrons through wires, or freight in trucks over publicly financed highways, is hardly akin to moving cargo over privately owned and maintained railroads.

Commentary

Lose rail vote? Comeback may be sooner than you think

When a community decides that a new rail transit system is essential to meet its mobility needs, it’s not enough to design a good project. You’ve got to find a way to finance it. Often, that means a public vote to authorize some kind of new financing mechanism.

Commentary

Dear Senators McCaskill & Blunt: Fuggetaboutit!

With regard to Missouri’s two U.S. senators, Democrat Claire McCaskill and Republican Roy Blunt, we invoke urban slang from cranky New Yorkers, and their brethren across the Hudson in New Jersey, to suggest that they “fuggetaboutit.”
Commentary

Safety-driven railway realignments

As railroaders, regulators, suppliers, and crude oil shippers convene at the Railway Age Crude by Rail Conference on June 12, they may ponder the full range of proffered remedies to exploding oil trains: re-classification of Bakken crude from merely flammable to explosive; de-gasification before loading; better track and car maintenance; tighter operating rules; sharing of consist details with first responders; and, of course, more robust tank cars.
Commentary
  • News

Data-phobic FRA’s “Book of Mormon”

Rail labor’s sabots are showing. It’s not a pleasant sight. “Sabots”—French for wooden shoes and the etymological root of “sabotage”—were thrown into the gears of textile looms by 15th century workers in failed hopes of thwarting technology.

Commentary

Union boss may have LIRR in checkmate

This is about the Long Island Rail Road. It’s about a dispute over wages and benefits. It’s about politics that have a stereotypically anti-labor House Republican majority poised to line up on rail labor’s side to embarrass a Democratic governor. And it’s about a union boss named Anthony Simon, who should be teaching strategy to future battle commanders at the Army War College.
Commentary

BNSF’s best days are just ahead

If recent reports published by Railway Age and others regarding BNSF’s clogged network have managed to discourage any shipper or industry-related investor, I have news that might brighten their outlook.

Commentary

Stifling regulation: A few history lessons

Over the years I have been led to believe that there are only two places where one can find a complete set of Railway Age and all its antecedent publications and accompanying monthlies. One is the Library of Congress. The other is our conference room in our New York City headquarters.
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