Rail Workers Weekly News Digest
Number 13 - June 18th, 2019
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Below is a series of article compiled over the previous week.
They are of interest to railroad workers
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2019-13 Article 1
America's Transit Challenge: Part III
As urban areas large and small continue to attract jobs, residents, workers, and visitors, their transportation systems demand ever more upkeep and expansion. For some, the gap between need and the means to pay for it is a bridge too far.
New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority projects a budget deficit of $467 million in 2020, rising to nearly a billion dollars by 2022. The agency is looking at a five-year capital investment plan that could reach $60 billion. Chicago needs $30 billion to fund priority projects.
Other agencies need funds for expansion as they build-out new light rail, streetcar, or commuter rail lines. And all are confronting dramatic changes: adoption of new technologies including integrated and mobile fare systems; accommodating shared and automated vehicle networks; and the evolution of transportation toward the concept of mobility-as-a-service.
Read more ...
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2019-13 Article 2
Class One Railroads: How Did Things Get So Bad?
On May 22nd and May 23rd, the Surface Transportation Board (STB) held an
Oversight Hearing on Demurrage and Accessorial Charges
. Railroad customers objected to escalating fines across the country's seven Class I carriers and referred to monopolistic, unfair, illogical, and arbitrary actions by most of the railroads.
However, Kansas City Southern (KCS) was singled out as the most customer friendly, a better word would be ethical, of the Class Ones. The members of the STB board spent some time asking why the other railroads could not emulate KCS's practices to a greater degree.
In logistics, demurrage is generally defined as a fine paid to a carrier for failing to load or unload a transportation asset - like a truck or ship - and then release the asset to service within an agreed upon of time. But the railroads are different. 70% of railroad cars are owned or leased by shippers. 30 percent are "system owned" - owned by the railroad. Shippers said that railroads had told them they do not want to own these assets anymore and encouraged them to buy their own cars.
Read more ...
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2019-13 Article 3
Brazil General Strike: Bus, subway and Trains to Stop on June 14th
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2019-13 Article 4
When Doing More with Less Poses a Threat
By Dennis R. Pierce, BLET National President
(BLET Editor’s Note: The following message from BLET National President Dennis R. Pierce has been excerpted from the April/May 2019 issue of the Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen News.)
INDEPENDNENCE, Ohio, June 13 — In my most recent President’s Message I wrote about the Precision Scheduled Railroading (PSR) phenomenon in the railroad industry, and how PSR focuses on “asset maximization” in an effort to sharply drive down operating ratio, which is the percentage of railroad revenue spent on operating costs.
This focus on operating ratio suggests that railroads are not very efficient. Data published by the Association of American Railroads (AAR) show otherwise.
Between 1980 and 2016, traffic density tripled, from 5.58 million ton-miles per mile of road to 16.99. And, today, railroads can move one ton of freight 479 miles on one gallon of fuel, which is double the fuel efficiency in 1980.
Read more ...
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2019-13 Article 5
US Poised to Approve Shipping LNG by Rail for Export With No New Safety Rules
On June 6, the U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) announced that the company
Energy Transport Solutions LLC
had applied for a special permit to transport liquefied natural gas (LNG) in unit trains 100 cars long and for the express purpose of moving LNG to export facilities. The
notice in the Federal Register
starts a comment period, ending July 8, for the public to weigh in on the proposal, which represents a new mode for transporting LNG and includes no new safety precautions.
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2019-13 Article 6
What's it Like to be a Young Female Train Driver?
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2019-13 Article 7
Wabtec, labor unions agree to four-year work deal
ERIE, Pa. — Locomotive builders in Erie are working today knowing they don't have to worry about contract talks for another four years.
United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers of America locals 506 and 618 voted on final contract terms with Wabtec that keeps the former GE Transportation locomotive plant in Lawrence Park, Pa., flush with Wabtec work.
Union members voted to approve a the four-year deal with Wabtec after nearly 128 days of negotiations and a strike that brought production to a standstill shortly after Wabtec took over GE earlier this year.
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Railroad Workers United
Solidarity -- Unity -- Democracy
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