The Surface Transportation Board announced on August 4th that, at the invitation of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, the three Board Members will testify on the topic of “Freight Rail Reform: Implementation of the Surface Transportation Board Reauthorization Act of 2015” at a full-committee hearing to be held on Thursday, August 11, 2016, in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
The Surface Transportation Board On July 27, 2016 proposed new regulations “to improve the availability of reciprocal switching,” an action the railroads have been anticipating for more than a year. The proposed rules “allow a shipper to gain access to another railroad if the shipper makes certain showings,” STB said.
The Surface Transportation Board announced on July 18 that a proposed, 240-mile, high-speed rail line between Dallas and Houston, Tex., does not fall under STB jurisdiction and does not require Board approval.
The Surface Transportation Board (STB) issued an Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPR) on June 15, 2016 outlining measures to expedite its handling of rate cases.
The Surface Transportation Board is proposing to amend existing procedures for the arbitration of disputes before the Board to make those procedures conform to statutory requirements of the Surface Transportation Reauthorization Act of 2015.
Now available from the Surface Transportation Board Office of Economics is a report providing annual carload and corresponding tonnage data for freight railroad transportation either originating, terminating, or traversing each U.S. state.
News item: Executive Order No. 13725, issued April 15 by President Obama, and published in the April 20 Federal Register, mandates that Executive Branch federal agencies take specific actions to promote competition.
In a letter to the Surface Transportation Board filed April 13, 2016, CSX contends that “giving Amtrak trains absolute priority over the old RF&P (Washington-Richmond) upends commuter train operations, drastically limits the number of available slots for freight trains, and likely results in congestion on tracks and in yards that would ripple through the network,” says Frank N. Wilner, Contibuting Editor of Railway Age.
In a letter to the Surface Transportation Board filed April 13, 2016, CSX contends that “giving Amtrak trains absolute priority over the old RF&P (Washington-Richmond right-of-way) upends commuter train operations, drastically limits the number of available slots for freight trains, and likely results in congestion on tracks and in yards that would ripple through the network.”
The Surface Transportation Board, in seeking comments addressing Canadian Pacific’s petition for an expedited declaratory order, has received letters from the U.S. Department of Justice and the Department of Defense-United States Army, Military Surface Deployment and Distribution Command Transportation Engineering Agency, Railroads for National Defense Program opposing CP’s proposed acquisition of Norfolk Southern, and/or CP CEO Hunter Harrison becoming a senior executive at NS.