CHICAGO — Water spray splashing the wheels of Lincoln Service train no. 300 coming off the Chicago River bridge Wednesday morning has nothing to do with Amtrak’s need to wash Windy City trains, and everything to do with making sure hot weather doesn’t sideline them. With temperatures expected to reach 100 degrees as they did […]
WASHINGTON — Union Pacific has asked federal regulators to dismiss a shipper’s complaint that claims the railroad violated its common-carrier obligations by providing unreliable service and unilaterally reducing local service from five days per week to three. The shipper, Sanimax, brought the case to the Surface Transportation Board in November 2020. It asked the board […]
WASHINGTON — The Federal Transit Administration has issued four special directives to the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, giving the transit agency periods ranging from 24 hours to 30 days to address safety concerns. Those concerns address procedural issues revealed by a series of five runaway-train incidents in yards since February 2021; maintenance procedures and programs; […]
WASHINGTON — The National Mediation Board will end mediation between railroads and their unions over the long-running negotiations for a new national contract, moving the contract process closer to intervention by President Joe Biden. The organization representing railroads in the negotiations, the National Carriers’ Conference Committee, said in a press release that it was “disappointed […]
WASHINGTON — An engineer’s failure to operate his train in accordance with restricted speed rules, and his prohibited use of a personal electronic device, were the probable cause of a fatal collision with track maintenance equipment on the Alabama Export Railroad in November 2020, the National Transportation Safety Board said in an accident report issued […]
WASHINGTON – Operational changes related to Precision Scheduled Railroading — including a reliance on longer trains — took center stage at a congressional hearing focused on rail safety. Rail labor leaders and some safety officials were critical of PSR during a House Transportation & Infrastructure subcommittee hearing on Tuesday. But little light, backed up with […]
WASHINGTON – The impact of the Canadian Pacific-Kansas City Southern merger on Metra commuter operations is even worse than initially thought, the Chicago area commuter railroad has told federal regulators. Changes to CP’s operations in the Chicago area as a result of the merger would cause up to a 1,200% increase in delays to commuter […]
WASHINGTON — The Surface Transportation Board, making clear its unhappiness with service recovery plans filed by the four largest U.S. Class I railroads, will require those railroads to correct deficiencies in service recovery plans submitted to the board, and to provide additional information on how they plan to improve service and communication with customers. At […]
WASHINGTON — The Surface Transportation Board will allow a limited number of Amtrak personnel access to raw train data used by CSX Transportation and Norfolk Southern so the passenger operator can run its own Rail Traffic Controller capacity modeling study. In a decision issued Friday, the STB also ordered board-sponsored mediation to address the differences […]
WASHINGTON — The Canadian Pacific-Kansas City Southern merger threatens to degrade intermodal service on the Meridian Speedway that serves as a shortcut between the Southeast and Southwest, Norfolk Southern told federal regulators this week. NS and KCS currently operate interline intermodal trains over the Meridian, Miss.-Shreveport, La., joint venture. KCS handles the NS trains over […]
WASHINGTON — The Federal Railroad Administration has issued its new rule on railroad fatigue management, set for formal publication on Monday, and at least one rail union leader has offered a positive response. The final rule, “Fatigue Risk Management Programs for Certain Passenger and Freight Railroads,” is available here for public inspection. Following its publication […]
CHICAGO — Amtrak is seeking more than $200 million in federal funding, along with money from state and local sources, in an attempt to fix a series of long-standing deficiencies, capacity limitations, and how trains from the south and east enter Chicago. The passenger operator is competing for a portion of $5 billion available between […]
