The Surface Transportation Board on June 13 issued an order directing the “Big 4” Class I’s—BNSF, CSX, Norfolk Southern and Union Pacific—to correct what STB says is “deficiencies in their rail service recovery plans” filed in response to the Board’s May 6 order requiring them to “develop service recovery plans as a result of the severe service deficits presently permeating their rail networks.”
RAILWAY AGE, JUNE 2022 ISSUE: Car shopping has become one of the more unpleasant pandemic chores.
The Surface Transportation Board (STB) on June 10 ordered Board-sponsored mediation in the Gulf Coast case between Amtrak on one side and CSX, Norfolk Southern (NS), and the Alabama State Port Authority and its Terminal Railway Alabama State Docks division (collectively, the Port) on the other. CSX and Amtrak respond.
WATCHING WASHINGTON, RAILWAY AGE JUNE 2022 ISSUE: At a late April Surface Transportation Board (STB) hearing, up bobbed aggrieved shipper witnesses, one following another as hammers in a pianoforte, much as Charles Dickens (Bleak House) amusingly described the successive appearances in chancery of 18 attorneys.
We recently reported on Amtrak’s request to the Surface Transportation Board (STB) to set terms and conditions for a new operating agreement (OA) between Amtrak and CN, as one of the host railroads whose lines Amtrak uses for its trains.
The authority vested in the Surface Transportation Board (STB) to decide issues concerning passenger trains has been expanding lately. On May 27, Amtrak asked the Board to intervene in a dispute with Canadian National (CN) over a number of issues, including on-time performance (OTP), penalties for low performance, and incentives to improve performance.
CSX on June 1 reported completing its Pan Am Railways, Inc., acquisition, six weeks after the Class I railroad received regulatory approval from the Surface Transportation Board (STB). Transaction terms were not disclosed.
Frank N. Wilner’s commentary “Threats Lurk to STB Independence” (May 22, 2022) raises interesting issues reaching back to the 1700s. The U.S. Constitution, ratified in 1789, is patterned on the Massachusetts Constitution
BNSF, CSX, Norfolk Southern (NS) and Union Pacific (UP) have answered the Surface Transportation Board’s (STB) call to submit service recovery plans—identifying the steps they will take to clear congestion and improve service plus the metrics they will use to evaluate progress over the next six months.
A group of politicians from both sides of Washington’s great divide have joined the parade of people and organizations professing before the Surface Transportation Board the perils of poor railroad service, painting the carriers and PSR as a prime accelerant of U.S. economic problems, everything from inflation to high fuel prices to undernourished cows.