WATCHING WASHINGTON, AUGUST 2019: The Surface Transportation Board (STB) and other independent regulatory agencies operate as a fourth branch of government, exercising quasi-judicial and quasi-legislative powers.
For a sleep inducer, consider working with the Uniform Rail Costing System (URCS), long a general costing system indispensable for determining maximum reasonable rail rates. Worse, its second side-effect is indigestion, as this 30-year-old accounting relic is much like a classic car lacking modern GPS and satellite radio. Practitioners too often become frustrated with its built-in averages from a time when railroads, rather than shippers, owned most of the freight car fleet and line hauls were shorter as the modern merger movement had not yet run its course.
Amtrak’s Hoosier State train, Nos. 850 and 851, died on Sunday, June 30 at Indianapolis, after a long illness. She was 38. The immediate cause of death was removal from life support by Indiana state officials. During her lifetime, she ran between Chicago and Indianapolis, but her later life was difficult and plagued by ever-increasing weakness, except during one brief period in 2015-17. She is survived by Amtrak’s Cardinal, which traverses the same route on its journey between Chicago and New York, but only three days per week.
CEO Richard Anderson’s announced strategy to reposition Amtrak’s train operations is a puzzle. It appears incapable of working. He proposes to end most long-distance services in favor of higher frequency corridor services connecting nearby urban areas. Yet, much better opportunities exist that are easier to exploit and promise much higher returns on invested capital.
Editor’s Note: RealClear Markets published this editorial by AAR President and CEO Ian Jefferies on Aug. 1. With mixed economic signals coming from Washington D.C., Jefferies argues that federal lawmakers must do their part to provide certainty.
CSX Executive Vice President Operations Ed Harris addressed his railway operating peers at the annual Association of American Railroad Superintendents conference the week of July 22. The topic was his view of Precision Scheduled Railroading (PSR). We have all seen and read about PSR multiple times. What could Harris possibly add, especially for the experienced operating men and women seated before him?
On June 20, Dr. William Huneke, the former Director of the Office of Economics at the Surface Transportation Board (STB), offered his observations in Railway Age regarding the recently released Rate Reform Task Force Report. This article offers a view from the shippers’ perspective.
FINANCIAL EDGE, JULY 2019: The longstanding and well-regarded Editor-in-Chief of Railway Age, William C. Vantuono, recently had the dubious honor of rescuing the Leasing and Equipment Finance panel at the Rail Insights Conference, held last month at the Union League Club of Chicago.
WATCHING WASHINGTON, JULY 2019: If paper smothers rock, scissors cut paper and rock smashes scissors, short line railroads, controlling neither the paper nor rock, face a grim outcome in a quest to “cut up” so-called paper barriers erected by Class I railroads and sanctioned by the Surface Transportation Board (STB).
July 17, 1979 was a momentous day in the annals of U.S. transit history. The New Jersey legislature passed, and Gov. Brendan T. Byrne (1924-2018) signed, the bill that became the Transportation Act of 1979. The legislation established New Jersey Transit (NJT), and in so doing, began the process of consolidating the state’s bus service under a single statewide umbrella. That step was considered radical in its day, but it set a model for bringing public transportation into the public sector, at a time when railroads and bus companies in the private sector were working hard to get rid of it.