The 37-union-affiliate Transportation Trades Department, AFL-CIO (TTD) on July 1 sent a letter to the Surface Transportation Board in response to the agency’s “information collection request” regarding Class I railroad reporting requirements. The letter, signed by TTD President Greg Regan, asks the STB to further increase the already stepped-up reporting requirements to include additional employment data.
The Surface Transportation Board has published its annual deflator factor and inflation-adjusted railroad revenue thresholds for 2021.
Whether the Surface Transportation Board (STB) and Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) will suffer from a June 30 Supreme Court (SCOTUS) trimming of regulatory agency authority to interpret their own governing statutes and remedy ambiguities remains to be seen.
The Surface Transportation Board (STB) on July 1 accepted for consideration responsive applications by CN and Norfolk Southern (NS) regarding the Canadian Pacific-Kansas City Southern merger, which is under STB review and seeks to create North America’s first transnational freight railroad, Canadian Pacific Kansas City, or CPKC.
The four largest U.S. freight railroad companies—BNSF, CSX, Norfolk Southern, Union Pacific—all reported, per the request of the Surface Transportation Board, supplemental information about their efforts to improve service and network fluidity. This is, of course part, of an ongoing STB service investigation with public hearings held back on April 26 and 27 of this year.
The Petition for Rulemaking that would update the demurrage and accessorial rules governing the railroads’ use and handling of privately owned freight cars “is a step in the right direction,” the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) said in comments filed June 30 with the Surface Transportation Board (STB).
Recently, three filings with the Surface Transportation Board in opposition to the Canadian Pacific-Kansas City Southern merger application came across the transom that strike me as odd. One is from a California Congresswoman. The second (multiple letters, actually) is from a Chicago region group called The Coalition to Stop CPKC. The third—and strangest—is from three Federal Maritime Commissioners.
The Surface Transportation Board (STB) has set the third-quarter 2022 RCAF (Rail Cost Adjustment Factor), described as “an index formulated to represent changes in railroad costs incurred by the nation’s largest railroads over a specified period of time.”
CSX and CN have mutually terminated their transaction in which CN would purchase CSX’s Montreal-Syracuse, N.Y., Massena Line and fold it into its Bessemer Subdivision, the former Bessemer & Lake Erie, which CN acquired in 2004 as part of its larger purchase of holding company Great Lakes Transportation.
The Surface Transportation Board (STB) on June 17 directed Union Pacific (UP) to deliver on its commitment to move unit trains of corn from origins in the Midwest to California on behalf of Foster Poultry Farms, following the chicken and feed producer’s exparte petition for an emergency service order.