Surface Transportation Board

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.

Railroads free, leave us be!

Freedom from excessive regulation helped transform the freight railroads into the most cost effective of all transportation modes. There’s no reason to change that.

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
  • News

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

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.

Senate bill would mandate STB reforms

It is shipper-friendly legislation with which freight railroads probably can live. And while it’s not all the stuff so-called captive shippers would prefer—such as mandatory caps on rail rates and a study into the benefits of mandatory reciprocal switching—it stands a better probability of becoming law than anything previously attempted in Congress on behalf of shippers.
Commentary

Implications aplenty in Supreme Court Amtrak ruling

The Supreme Court March 9 sent back to a federal appellate court for reconsideration a freight railroad challenge to a provision of the 2008 Passenger Rail Investment and Improvement Act (PRIIA) that allowed the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) and Amtrak to collaborate in establishing minimum on-time performance standards for Amtrak passenger trains operating on freight railroad-owned track. The 9-0 unanimous decision was written by Justice Anthony Kennedy.
Commentary
  • News

Can Sen. Thune mediate a rail/shipper cease-fire?

Could it be that Republicans in control of Congress might facilitate an end to three decades of productivity sapping legislative fisticuffs between railroads and self-proclaimed captive shippers over an appropriate level of regulatory oversight?

Amtrak files complaint with STB over Capitol Limited performance

Amtrak has filed a complaint with the U.S. Surface Transportation Board against Norfolk Southern and CSX over substandard on-time performance of the Washington D.C.-Chicago Capitol Limited, which operates over right-of-way owned by NS and CSX. Including an earlier complaint filed against CN, this is Amtrak’s second such action regarding substandard on-time performance of its long-distance trains.
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