The Association of American Railroads (AAR) on Nov. 12 filed comments with the Surface Transportation Board (STB) regarding two NPRMs (Notice of Proposed Rulemakings): Final Offer Rate Review (FORR) and Streamlined Market Dominance Approach (SMDA). The former, AAR said, should be scrapped because it is “unlawful” and lacks standards. The latter requires substantial limitations in scope.
Frank Wilner’s excellent article in the September 2019 issue of Railway Age, “STB Moves to Rehab Antique URCS,” brought back many memories of my direct involvement in its development. To this day, I often spell the acronym for the Uniform Rail Costing System, URCS, backwards—SCRU—as many “experts” developing rail costs with it can produce these results!
One expects better from the scholarly American Enterprise Institute (AEI), which on Oct. 9 published an essay recommending folding the independent Surface Transportation Board (STB) into the politicized Executive Branch Department of Transportation (DOT).
NEWS ITEM: The Surface Transportation Board (STB) proposes to change the formula for computing the cost of the equity component of the railroad industry’s cost of capital. This is of consequence to railroads, shippers and investors because cost of capital is a determinant of railroad revenue adequacy and a threshold for a host of other regulatory limitations on rail ratemaking.
Is presumptive Surface Transportation Board (STB) nominee Robert Primus pulling a Reese H. Taylor Jr. redux and risking his chance for nomination or Senate confirmation?
The Surface Transportation Board (STB) recently issued three separate notices with regards to demurrage.
To: The Honorable Ann D. Begeman, Chairman, Surface Transportation Board: I am submitting this testimony to be included in the consideration and record on Ex Parte 711, Reciprocal Switching. Having served 44 years in the railroad industry, both as a Class I marketing/rate department officer and as President and CEO of short line Maryland Midland Railway, I have a unique and comprehensive view of this entire subject.
Recently, I purchased movie tickets on line. As I was checking out, I noticed I was getting charged a “convenience fee,” which for me begged the question: Just whose convenience? After all I was saving the theater the cost of printing the tickets and their employees’ time selling me the ticket. In my mind this convenience fee was really a profit center for the theater.
Two vacant seats on the five-member Surface Transportation Board (STB) could be filled by early 2020, as a Democrat—to be paired with an already nominated Republican—has emerged as a likely nominee.
By age 10, two lessons should be learned—no ketchup on hot dogs, and government does not move at the speed of for-profit business.