Commentary

Rails to Congress, STB: “If in doubt, don’t”

Successful baseball pitchers learn to throw first-pitch strikes and stay aggressive in the strike zone when their team is in the lead. Life imitates baseball, meaning railroad spokespersons will serve their industry well over the next 10 weeks if they similarly perform—first before a congressional subcommittee examining 35 years of partial economic deregulation under the Staggers Rail Act, and then the Surface Transportation Board (STB) as it considers shipper entreaties that the railroads’ improved financial condition warrants tightening of the strike zone.

Commentary

STB nominee reflects a shipper tilt

Paint former Surface Transportation Board (STB) Chairman Dan Elliott a darling of the National Industrial Transportation League (NITL), a shipper organization asking the STB to require—through so-called open access—that two Class I railroads be available to compete for freight carloads even if the tracks of only one railroad serve a shipper’s facility.

Commentary

Keystone boosters turfed from office in bitumen’s homeland

Prospects for the contentious Keystone XL pipeline proposed to connect Alberta’s northern tar sands with U.S. Gulf Coast refiners has endured another brutal body check, this time from the home team. The province’s brand-new, left-leaning government elected May 5 says it will cease its predecessor’s long campaign of supplicating and bullying President Barack Obama for the pipeline’s approval.

Commentary

Dan Elliott’s STB renomination hearing: May 6

Former Surface Transportation Board (STB) Chairman Dan Elliott, whose renomination to a second five-year term has been on ice since November, will have a Senate Commerce Committee confirmation hearing May 6, but will remain estranged from the agency unless and until the entire Senate acts favorably on the renomination.

Commentary

FRA freezes on tank car sloshing; DOE oil volatility bombshell drops like a dud

How crude oil sloshing inside moving tank cars affects train stability was under close scrutiny by the Federal Railroad Administration, the regulator’s Acting Administrator told reporters back on March 13. That was after a string of mid-winter oil train disasters exposed the prevailing focus on tank car thickness to be essentially pointless in the quest to prevent oil train derailments and explosions.

Commentary

DOT “suggests” and FRA “recommends”

The U.S. Department of Transportation circulated a press release detailing actions taken to “address some of the issues identified in recent train accidents involving crude oil and ethanol shipped by rail.”
Commentary

Amtrak pen trumps Freedom of Information Act sword

John Mica, the Republican pol from Florida, alleges something fishy with Amtrak’s hamburger prices. Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito have a beef that Amtrak’s president is chosen by a board of directors rather than facing Senate confirmation.
Commentary

Tank car builders don’t agree on DOT-111 obsolescence timeline

Tank car builder The Greenbrier Companies is urging the White House Office of Management and Budget to disregard advice by the company’s own industry trade group, the Railway Supply Institute-Committee on Tank Cars (RSI-CTC), and proceed full speed ahead with the U.S. Department of Transportation’s proposed schedule for fleet renewal.
Commentary

Uncertainty clouds key rail bills in Senate

Two bills of substantial importance to railroads—Staggers Rail Act revisions as part of reauthorization of the Surface Transportation Board (STB), and extension of the deadline to implement Positive Train Control (PTC)—took meaningful steps forward March 25, gaining the imprimatur of the Senate Commerce Committee.
Commentary

API twisting DOE report on crude oil

A survey of crude oil science commissioned by the U.S. Department of Energy is being cited, rather loosely, by the oil industry’s national lobby to discredit proponents of compulsory treatment of crude oil before it is loaded into railcars.
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