Railroad safety: U.S. Senate signs off on railroad safety legislation
Despite proposed safety improvements, industry experts say changes could limit rail productivity, be costly for shippers
Jeff Berman, Group News Editor -- Logistics Management, 8/4/2008
WASHINGTON—On Friday, the United States Senate signed off on legislation focusing on improving safety for the nation’s railways.
If signed into law, the legislation—S. 1889, The Railroad Safety Enhancement Act—would dramatically change several safety-related facets of daily railroad operations, including railroad workers hours-of-service, augmenting railroad employee training, and increasing federal safety inspections, among others.
The House version of this bill—H.R. 2095, The Federal Railroad Safety Improvement Act of 2007—was approved by a 377-38 margin last October.
The biggest component of this legislation may be railroad hours-of-service reform. Under the current law, train crews can work up to 400 hours in a 30-day timeframe. The Senate version calls for rail employees to not remain or go on duty for more than 12 hours unless the employee has had at least 10 consecutive hours off duty during the previous 24 hours, or unless the employee has had one period of at least 24 consecutive hours off duty in the past seven consecutive days.
“A twenty-first century rail system cannot run safely on laws from decades ago,” said Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ), the bill’s lead sponsor, in a statement. “We are risking too much by letting train crews work too long and leaving highway crossings unsafe. We need to decrease the risks with smarter regulation and modern technology.”
Other significant components of S. 1889 call for:
- reducing “limbo time,” or time spent traveling—or waiting to travel—to and from an employee’s duty station before or after working;
- requiring railroads to implement positive train control systems, which are designed to prevent train-to-train collisions, overspeed derailments, and incursions into roadway worker work limits, by December 31, 2018; and
- requiring states and railroads to report on how highway rail-grade crossings are being protected, among others.
A research report from Ed Wolfe, president of Wolfe Research, noted that this bill “will likely increase hiring needs for the rails and limit some future productivity gains.” Wolfe also said that the Senate version of the bill places fewer restrictions on hours of service and limbo time and also provides an extra four years for the rails to implement positive train control systems.
With the Department of Transportation predicting an 88 percent increase in railroad freight tonnage by 2035, changes that have the potential to impact productivity are of major to importance to shippers, said William J. Rennicke, director of Oliver Wyman, a Boston-based management consultancy.
“If railroad activity is going to increase by 88 percent, you are going to have a lot more trains crossing, and I would suspect in many jurisdictions the vehicle counts are going to go up on the crossing side,” said Rennicke. “It is unfair to railroad shippers to foist off a lot of those crossing improvements on them by the railroads. If that becomes a one-sided thing where the railroads are required to implement them—which is not the case right now—it is going to become a situation where freight rates go up and shippers are going to be spending a lot of money for the rebuilding and maintaining of all these railroad crossings.”
And for positive train control systems to be implemented, the issue with that comes down to costs, which will be in the billions said Rennicke. This, he said is “where the rubber meets the road,” because it comes at a time when the railroads are trying to increase their throughput to meet the projected future freight volume increases in the coming years. For this to be successful, he said it has to be handled properly so railroads are allowed to deploy new technology in the places that have the biggest bang for the buck, where railroads have a hand in determining where they are most needed.
A spokesman in Senator Lautenberg’s office told LM that the legislation will now be sent back to the House to pass this measure or a similar one, and if the House passes S. 1889 it will be sent to President Bush for his signature. And if the House passes a slightly different measure, the bill will go to conference.
The Wolfe report said the firm’s Washington contacts indicated that the bill is expected to be signed into law later this year and “will be closer to the Senate bill which is less severe to the rails.”
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