KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The prospect that the Surface Transportation Board will require specific, operational moves by the rail industry to address its ongoing service issues appears unlikely, and board member Patrick Fuchs spells out why it is not the regulators’ preferred option.
“To the board, carriers are clearly in the best positions to identify and implement steps to improve service,” Fuchs says. This is why the board’s moves to date are “about transparency and public accountability. … The board’s strong preference is for the private sector to solve these problems.”
Fuchs, speaking Tuesday at the North American Rail Shippers conference, says the STB “has no intention of acting recklessly on a short record and creating unintended consequences. … The board wants and expects carriers to resolve these situations without intervention, and when [a carrier] comes to the board, to offer reasonable solutions.”
The board last week required Class I railroads to provide more detailed performance metrics on a weekly basis for the next six months, with four railroads — BNSF Railway, CSX Transportation, Norfolk Southern, and Union Pacific — needing to provide service recovery plans by May 20 [see “Federal regulators require railroads to provide more …,” Trains News Wire, May 6, 2022].
“When the board has considered intervention,” Fuchs says, “it has been careful to clearly establish that whatever intervention can’t negatively affect other shippers, and that limitation may prevent its use in some cases.
“There is no doubt that that if a railroad is struggling for local crews, it might struggle for a reciprocal switch. And there is also no doubt that when a railroad is rapidly adjusting its operating plans in the midst of congestion, adding additional complications from the government, which is not on the ground, could be counterproductive.
“So our final actions to date have been predominantly about metrics, targets, [and] communications with the board and customers, and we have not intervened in an operational, structural way.”
Fuchs told the group he could not comment on a potential change to reciprocal switching rules — which received strong support from shippers in March hearings — since board action is pending. But he did note that reciprocal-switching relief is already available “where there is a substantial, measurable deterioration of rail service or other demonstrated inadequacy provided by the incumbent carrier. … Absent any regulator change, the board has a previously used process available to shippers today.”
He also said that, while the board is seeking a rule change regarding its emergency-service regulations [see “STB seeks to amend emergency rules …,” News Wire, April 22, 2022], such changes would have extremely limited application.
“The proposed rule … is really for true emergencies that could be easily solved and that are tied to a specific public harm. I hesitate to give examples of that, but it is not every situation in which a shipper has suboptimal service. …
“We want to keep the focus on the carriers, the carriers’ ideas for service recovery, and public accountability from everyone in this room.”
Still the STB should require these improvements and not just say the railroads don’t need specific regulations. Trust but verify!