Three senators and a top federal safety official delivered a blistering critique on Tuesday of the Metro-North Railroad and regulators in Washington for lapses in maintenance and oversight that led to five accidents that killed six people in less than a year.
Led by Christopher A. Hart, the acting chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, the group discussed findings on the probable causes of the accidents, including a derailment that left four commuters dead in the Bronx in December. In that crash, an engineer had dozed off, causing his train to career into a sharp curve at over 80 miles per hour, the safety board said.
Unraveling the knot restricting rail network fluidity cannot be achieved through Surface Transportation Board (STB) intimidation of rail CEOs, or by the agency’s issuance of an emergency service order instructing one railroad to operate over the tracks of another, or by merging the nation’s seven major rail systems into a North American duopoly.
None would cause to appear, in sufficiently short order, the required additional locomotives and track capacity essential to curing the problem.
WASHINGTON – On Nov. 1, the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) will kick-off the 2015 “Be Ready. Be Buckled.” student art contest organized by the Commercial Motor Vehicle Safety Belt Partnership. Open to students in kindergarten through sixth grade with relatives or sponsors in the commercial truck and bus industries, the contest educates kids about highway safety and urges commercial drivers to buckle up on every trip.
“Buckling your safety belt should be an automatic practice for every driver and passenger since it’s the simplest and most effective way to save your life in the event of a crash,” said U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx. “The purpose of this art contest is to engage children and their parents in discussing safety and to provide a calendar of kids’ artwork that serves as a year-round reminder to always buckle-up.”
In just the last three years, safety belt use has continued to rise among medium-to-heavy truck and bus drivers to an all-time high of 84 percent, according to a 2013 FMCSA study. While good news, there is room for improvement. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s most recent data from 2012 showed that 697 occupants of large trucks were killed in crashes; approximately 40 percent were not wearing safety belts.
“The good news is that overall safety belt use for professional bus and truck drivers has steadily increased each year and as a direct result, more lives are being saved,” said FMCSA Acting Administrator Scott Darling. “We are focused on reminding every driver that there is never an excuse to skip the important step of buckling up.”
FMCSA will accept contest submissions through Feb. 28, 2015. Students can submit their artwork by mail to the following address:
CMV Safety Belt Partnership c/o CVSA Attention: Nicole Leandro 6303 Ivy Lane, Suite 310 Greenbelt, MD 20770
Artwork will be evaluated in two categories: one for kindergarten through second grade, and another for third through sixth grade.
Twelve winners will be selected in April 2015, and their artwork will appear in the 2016 “Be Ready. Be Buckled.” contest calendar.
All 12 students will also be honored at a ceremony at USDOT headquarters to be held in the spring. To see last year’s winners and learn more about the “Be Ready. Be Buckled.” contest, visit: http://www.fmcsa.dot.gov/safety-security/safety-belt/index.htm.
The Illinois AFL-CIO has unanimously approved a resolution supporting SMART Transportation Division’s call for federal legislation mandating at least two crew members on all freight trains.
The endorsement came at the organization’s 41st annual Constitutional Convention in Rosemont, Ill.
Citing issues ranging from chronic crew-member fatigue to inadequate crew training to accident prevention and response, the state labor council’s 15-point, two-page document called on the Illinois congressional delegation to vote in favor of House Resolution 3040, the Safe Freight Act, which would require all freight trains in the U.S. to have at least two certified crew members aboard.
The AFL-CIO resolution, submitted by SMART-TD Illinois State Legislative Director Robert W. Guy, charged that community safety is endangered by single-person train operation because the lone employee on board can become overwhelmed with multiple tasks and deadlines while trying to control a heavy train that cannot respond easily to braking commands.
“Railroad operating requirements, and in many cases operating rules themselves, require train crews to perform numerous tasks while concurrently operating moving trains, which the National Transportation Safety Board has labeled ‘task saturation,’” the resolution said.
The AFL-CIO document said overwhelmed crew members could overlook “specific requirements related to the safe operation of a train” and require a second crew member so that a “check-and-balance” system is in place to make sure nobody misses a signal, an instruction or a routine safety practice.
The resolution noted an elusive fact often missing from media accounts of the train-crew issue: the carriers’ current crew-recruitment and training practices often end up rushing freshly trained crew members into very challenging operating environments without the “seasoning” provided by older veterans who have “seen it all” and developed the responses to master even the most sudden and unexpected challenges.
“The general public and the media do not understand how ‘raw’ a new employee can be when challenged with an unexpected situation while trying to control a moving train,” Guy said.
“Currently, new employees operate in the same cab with an older employee who has an appropriate, experienced response to virtually any emergency,” Guy said. “A new employee operating alone in the cab would not have access to that unique resource.”
Guy said there’s really no substitute for the “old heads.”
“Who else is going to know which grade crossings have a bad record?” he asked. “Who else is going to know which stretches of the territory become dangerous when a sudden fog develops, or which signals are easy to misinterpret and which curves can obscure a stopped train just ahead?
“These veteran railroaders are walking encyclopedias of danger and walking manuals of safe practices, and there’s no training program that effectively passes on all of their intricate, intimate, milepost-by-milepost experience to new recruits,” Guy said.
Guy said if the veterans are not in the cab, there’s no way to access their experience in an emergency.
“Company training programs, for the most part, do a very good job of making sure new employees grasp the general principles of operating trains, but only a veteran employee can transmit the specifics associated with each operating territory and come up with the right response when an emergency develops,” he said.
The resolution noted that the need for a second crew member persists because railroads continue to delay addressing the problem of long workdays, irregular assignments and working hours, lost sleep, chronic fatigue and the anxiety associated with maintaining an orderly family and personal life while always “on call.”
The document also cited the railroads “…intentional manipulation of manpower…to maximize profits at the expense of public and employee safety, often times requiring crew members to return to work immediately after the federally mandated minimum rest period has expired.”
“It’s a wonderful feeling to know that the entire Illinois labor movement is behind SMART-TD in its effort to protect railroaders and the public from the dangerous effects of a one-person crew regime,” Guy said.
“All of us are grateful to our brothers and sisters in labor for standing with our members and their families, and the communities in which they live, on what literally could be a life-or-death issue.”
Pictured, from left, are Sheet Metal Local 73 Business Agent Frank Ivonelli, SMART Transportation Division Illinois Legislative Board Chairperson John O’Brien, Sheet Metal Local 73 Business Agent Mike May, SMART General Vice President Rocco Terranova, SMART Transportation Division Alternate Illinois Legislative Director Carl Draper, Guy, Transportation Division Local 265 Secretary & Treasurer Chuck Ruegge, Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn, Sheet Metal Local 265 Business Manager John Boske, SMART Transportation Division Assistant Illinois Legislative Director Joe Ciemny, Sheet Metal Local 1 Business Rep. Larry Louis, Sheet Metal Local 73 Recording Secretary Mike Vittorio, Sheet Metal Local 73 Business Agent Brian Mulheran and Sheet Metal Local 73 Business Agent Dan Ahern.
An executive for the Rapid City, Pierre & Eastern Railroad said the start-up RCP&E is getting steadily better at moving grain this harvest – good news for farmers dealing with record wheat crops, good corn yields and some record sunflower yields.
“There is a tremendous amount of grain that needs to move, and RCP&E is working hard to help our customers, the elevators and farmers, to catch up as much as possible,” said Jerry Vest, senior vice president of government and industry affairs for Genesee & Wyoming Railroad Services Inc. Genesee & Wyoming operates the Rapid City, Pierre & Eastern Railroad, which got its start earlier this year.
The National Transportation Safety Board said Oct. 28 that the December 2013 Metro-North train derailment that killed four and injured 61 occurred when the train engineer had fallen asleep.
The train rounded a curve at 82 mph, well above the 30-mph speed restriction. The NTSB report determined that the operator had “an undiagnosed severe obstructive sleep apnea exacerbated by a recent circadian rhythm shift required by his work schedule.” In other words, his apnea condition was made worse when his regular shift was moved from one that started in the late afternoon and ended in the early morning to another that began between 4 and 5 a.m. and continued until the afternoon.
Amtrak posted record ticket revenues for its Fiscal Year 2014 ending Sept. 30 and achieved an increase in ridership over the prior fiscal year, reflecting strong continued demand for passenger rail. However, meeting future growth in passenger demand requires investing in the infrastructure that supports intercity passenger rail and resolving unacceptable congestion delays caused by freight railroads that own the tracks.
For Fiscal Year 2014, ticket revenues reached $2.189 billion, up 4.0 percent from the prior year. Ridership was more than 30.9 million, an increase of 0.2 percent over adjusted FY 2013 numbers. The slower growth in ridership than in recent years is due, in part, to a harsh winter season and on-time performance issues associated with freight train delays and infrastructure in need of replacement.
With ridership of 11.6 million, the Northeast Corridor (NEC) had its highest ridership year ever in FY 2014, up 3.3 percent from the prior year. However, ridership on long-distance routes and state-supported services declined by 4.5 percent and 0.6 percent, respectively.
The Acela Express and the Northeast Regional services each set a new ridership record. In particular, Acela showed strong popularity, with 28 days where the number of trips topped 14,000 as compared to just five such days in the previous year. Eight other routes also set ridership records, including Adirondack, Auto Train, Albany-Niagara Falls-Toronto, Blue Water, Capitol Limited, Empire Service, Piedmont, and Washington-Lynchburg.
“Amtrak is clearly selling a product that is very much in demand,” said Amtrak Board Chairman Tony Coscia. “Achieving strong ridership and revenue despite the challenges with aging infrastructure and freight rail congestion demonstrates Amtrak’s commitment to improving its financial and operating performance, and is a credit to Amtrak’s management and staff. It is now time to leverage Amtrak’s successes in increasing ridership and improving performance by making much-needed investments in our nation’s passenger rail system.”
“As more and more people choose Amtrak for their travel needs, investments must be made in the tracks, tunnels, bridges and other infrastructure used by intercity passenger trains particularly on the Northeast Corridor and in Chicago,” said Amtrak President and CEO Joe Boardman. “Otherwise, we face a future with increased infrastructure-related service disruptions and delays that will hurt local and regional economies and drive passengers away.”
Boardman explained that nowhere is the connection between passenger rail and economic growth stronger than in the NEC, but its infrastructure continues to age and suffers from a chronic case of long-term underfunding. He said a new federal policy and funding arrangement is needed to create a significant and reliable multi-year capital investment program to reverse the decay of NEC infrastructure and support other intercity passenger rail projects across the nation.
Further, many long-distance and state-supported trains operate over tracks owned and dispatched by freight railroads that could benefit from infrastructure upgrades to improve the fluidity of the rail system. Not only are delays to passenger trains on these tracks increasing, but so, too, is the magnitude of those delays. On many of these routes, passenger rail has experienced a significant decline in on-time performance, lower ridership and revenue, and increased operating costs.
“The freight railroads simply have to do a better job in moving Amtrak trains over their tracks,” Boardman stressed. “Amtrak is prepared to take all necessary steps with the freights to enforce our statutory, regulatory and contractual rights to meet the expectation of our passengers for improved on-time performance.”
Amtrak is working with the freight railroads to address the congestion situation and is also pursuing remedies through the federal Surface Transportation Board. In addition, Amtrak is open to supporting public funding to supplement freight railroad track capacity, but only after the operational and maintenance improvements under their own control have been exhausted and prove to be insufficient.
The Discovery owned cable network has renewed Railroad Alaska for a second season, which is set to premiere on Saturday, Oct. 25, at 9/8c, TVWise has learned.
Railroad Alaska follows an elite crew who live along Alask’a critical railway as they tirelessly work to keep the train rolling 365 days a year in order to deliver life-sustaining supplies to Americans living off the grid and miles away from civilization. Tom Langan and Jane McGoldrick serve as series producers on the series, which is produced by indie Wind Fall Films. The executive producers are Carlo Massarella, David Dugan and Caroline Perez.
Congressional elections do matter. Actions of Congress can make a big difference when it comes to our job security, our wages, our fringe benefits, our retirement and safety in our workplace.
In this issue of the SMART Transportation Division News are our official endorsements for the Nov. 4 election. These endorsements are based on recommendations from our state legislative boards which, with our national office, reviewed the voting records of incumbent lawmakers and conducted thorough interviews with new candidates seeking national office.
Our constitution requires that we make these endorsements and we take this obligation seriously. A full listing of how Congressional legislators voted on issues important to our members can be found on the Transportation Division website at www.utu.org by clicking on the 2014 Voter Information tile at the bottom right corner of the homepage.
The upcoming session of Congress will be a busy one. We will be working to pass legislation requiring a minimum of two persons – a certified conductor and a certified engineer – working on all trains. One current bill, Senate Bill S. 2784 – the Rail Safety Improvement Act, is reported on page 1 of this publication.
We will be working to see that our transit systems and Amtrak receive the funding they so desperately need. Likewise, we will be working to make sure that the National Mediation Board receives the funding it needs to resolve disputes in the workplace in a timely manner. We will be working with our Sheet Metal brothers and sisters on issues important to the construction industry and to ensure that the Essential Air Service program is properly funded.
Electing labor-friendly legislators is the key to our success. Our Legislative Department can be the best in the business, but if this election produces a Congress in which a majority of its members don’t even believe in the fundamental rights of workers, our efforts to protect our members’ jobs, paychecks, benefits, retirement income and workplace safety will be much harder.
We all have our personal views about life and the government. I understand that we have members that are Democrats, Republicans, independents, Tea Party Libertarians, Green Party environmentalists and just about every flavor out there. While I appreciate our diversity, I urge you to take into consideration the endorsements in this newspaper when you cast your ballot.
These endorsements were based on issues like support for two-person train crews, Amtrak, the coal industry, mass transportation funding, and other work-related issues.
Our endorsed incumbents have supported our work-related issues and the endorsed candidates have pledged to do so.
Neither I nor anyone else in our union tells anyone “how to vote.” What we do is fulfill our constitutional responsibility to endorse those that we believe will support us once they’re elected. To do anything less would be shirking our constitutional responsibility.
Come Nov. 4, no matter whom you choose to vote for…choose to vote. If your state has early or absentee voting, take advantage of this opportunity, especially if you work a road job or an extra-board.
I look forward to serving each of you as your National Legislative Director and pledge to do my best. That being said, our legislative department’s odds of success will be much better if you send folks to Congress that support our issues.
John Risch
National Legislative Director SMART Transportation Division
Below are Congressional scorecards compiled by the SMART Transportation Division Legislative Office. See how your legislators voted on the issue affecting your job.
Click here for the SMART Transportation Division’s congressional endorsements as determined by its state legislative boards and National Legislative Office.
Railroad and rail transit roadway workers are subject to on-the-job risks and hazards markedly different from those faced by other railroad employees. The jobs of railroad engineers and conductors include risks primarily related to moving trains – derailments, collisions with other trains; the jobs of roadway workers involve hazards that include moving rolling stock and other equipment and vehicles, as well as falls, electrocution, and natural hazards.
During 2013, 11 railroad roadway workers died while doing their jobs, which is nearly 80 percent of the total number of railroad employees who died in 2013 (14). This represents the largest number of railroad roadway workers killed while on duty in 1 year since 1995, when 12 died. Also in 2013, four rail transit roadway workers died.
The types of accidents in which roadway workers lost their lives in 2013 included falls from bridges, incidents involving bucket lifts, and a mudslide, as well as strikes by moving equipment. The number of roadway worker deaths in 2013, the findings from investigations of those deaths, and the increasing number of these fatalities prompted the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) to initiate a special investigation to identify safety issues facing roadway workers and to recommend actions to address these issues.
The NTSB examined the roadway worker fatalities reported for 2013. For some accidents, the NTSB performed limited investigations either on scene or through reviews of the accident records. For other accidents, the NTSB used information prepared by other investigative agencies, including the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA), the Federal Transit Administration (FTA), and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), as well as railroads and rail transit agencies.
The purpose of these NTSB examinations was to identify the circumstances in which the accidents occurred and to discover any deficiencies or limitations – in operating procedures and regulations or adherence to those procedures and regulations – that suggested causes and remedies.
Of the roadway worker fatalities in 2013, 11 resulted from 11 accidents on railroads regulated by the FRA, and four resulted from three accidents on rail transit properties with FTA oversight. Because roadway worker fatalities have been increasing over the past four years, careful examination of the causes of these recent fatal accidents is warranted.
To view the NTSB’s Special Investigation Report, click here.
Unraveling the knot restricting rail network fluidity cannot be achieved through Surface Transportation Board (STB) intimidation of rail CEOs, or by the agency’s issuance of an emergency service order instructing one railroad to operate over the tracks of another, or by merging the nation’s seven major rail systems into a North American duopoly.
WASHINGTON – On Nov. 1, the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) will kick-off the 2015 “Be Ready. Be Buckled.” student art contest organized by the Commercial Motor Vehicle Safety Belt Partnership. Open to students in kindergarten through sixth grade with relatives or sponsors in the commercial truck and bus industries, the contest educates kids about highway safety and urges commercial drivers to buckle up on every trip.
The Illinois AFL-CIO has unanimously approved a resolution supporting SMART Transportation Division’s call for federal legislation mandating at least two crew members on all freight trains.
Amtrak posted record ticket revenues for its Fiscal Year 2014 ending Sept. 30 and achieved an increase in ridership over the prior fiscal year, reflecting strong continued demand for passenger rail. However, meeting future growth in passenger demand requires investing in the infrastructure that supports intercity passenger rail and resolving unacceptable congestion delays caused by freight railroads that own the tracks.
Railroad and rail transit roadway workers are subject to on-the-job risks and hazards markedly different from those faced by other railroad employees. The jobs of railroad engineers and conductors include risks primarily related to moving trains – derailments, collisions with other trains; the jobs of roadway workers involve hazards that include moving rolling stock and other equipment and vehicles, as well as falls, electrocution, and natural hazards.