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Due to a manufacturing issue with one of the nation’s largest suppliers of atorvastatin, shortages may occur.

Express Scripts is working diligently to secure supplies and minimize any impact to you.

In an effort to continue providing you with atorvastatin, Express Scripts may take the following actions until the supply returns to normal:

•It may automatically reduce your prescription amount down to a 30-day supply and adjust your copayment or coinsurance until supply returns to normal.

•When your next refill is due, Express Scripts will automatically ship your prescription for additional supply.  If you do not wish Express Scripts to automatically ship your next order, you must call them to opt out of automatically refilling your prescription.  If you do not notify Express Scripts differently, your atorvastatin will be shipped to you every 30 days until this supply issue is resolved.

•If your prescription is reduced, Express Scripts will resume dispensing atorvastatin in the full days supply as originally written on the prescription, once the supply returns to normal.

For UTU District of Columbia Legislative Director Willie Bates the recognition and honors keep rolling in.

The latest is from the State of Virginia, which on April 7 bestowed upon Bates the Governor’s Transportation Safety Award in the category of rail safety.

His accomplishments in earning the award speak for themselves:

  • Volunteering as a mentor, Bates has frequently declined premium-pay assignments to work overnight on safety-training sessions for newer Amtrak employees.
  • Under what the award describes as his “commitment, dedication and daily active support of safety,” his Richmond, Va., train and engine crew base has worked injury-free for three successive calendar years.
  • Bates has worked injury-free for 25 years as an Amtrak conductor and never had a safety-rules violation.

In June 2010, Bates was selected from among 79 applicants by U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood for appointment to the Obama administration’s Transit Rail Advisory Committee for Safety (TRACS), created to assist the Federal Transit Administration in drafting national safety measures for rail transit. LaHood said Bates was selected based on his leadership and organizational skills in the area of rail safety.

And in 2009, Amtrak President Joseph Boardman awarded Bates Amtrak’s highest safety honor — the Charles Luna Memorial Safety award that is named in honor of the UTU’s first International president, who later was an Amtrak board member. The award, presented annually since 1990, recognizes Amtrak employees who demonstrate the highest degree of safety awareness.

In presenting the award, Boardman described Bates as “a consistent participant in safety programs and safety committees.”

Bates is a former president and vice local chairperson of UTU Local 1933 in Richmond.

Citing a series of on-duty career ending injuries and fatalities over the past 24 months that occurred on or near mainline track, the Federal Railroad Administration has issued a safety advisory on the importance of situational awareness, especially when the job being performed in main track territory changes.

FRA Safety Advisory 2010-03 also includes recommendations to railroads “to ensure that these issues are addressed by appropriate policies and procedures.”

Among the recommendations is that railroads strengthen and expand to all employees, when on or near track, bans on the use of electronic devices. FRA Emergency Order 26 (soon to be made permanent) only restricts the use of cell phones and other electronic devices by on-duty train and engine workers.

Although the employees injured and killed while on or near mainline track “were all familiar with operating and safety rules,” said the FRA, “in each case, the employees’ situational awareness seems to have been degraded.” Therefore, said the FRA, “employee alertness to changing job situations could have been heightened in these situations by the act of engaging in additional job briefings.

“As the railroad industry is well aware, a job briefing should take place at the beginning of a task and anytime the task changes,” said the FRA. “Railroad operating rules and certain federal railroad safety regulations require that these job briefings take place. The job briefing can act, particularly when there is more than one person involved with the task, as a time out for the affected employees to reinforce the need to exercise vigilance and awareness in the performance of their tasks.”

Among the FRA’s recommendations to railroads:

  • Develop processes that promote safety mentoring of fellow workers regardless of their titles or positions.
  • Develop procedures that address the need for dialogue between coworkers when exiting equipment near tracks or moving equipment.
  • Review the current process for job briefings and determine best practices that encourage constant communication about activities at hand.
  • Assess current rules addressing personal safety and employee behavior when on or near tracks, with particular emphasis on main tracks.
  • Review current rules pertaining to activities that could cause employees to become distracted, including rules pertaining to the use of electronic devices, with the view of strengthening and expanding them to include all employees when they are on or near tracks.
  • Review current rules pertaining to sounding the locomotive horn, with the view of requiring the horn to be sounded when approaching and passing standing trains, especially at or near grade crossings, regardless of whether such crossings are located in quiet zones.

For more information on railroad safety, go to the UTU website at www.utu.org and click on “Transportation Safety” link.

SANFORD, Fla. – A new Amtrak station – seating 600 and four times the size of its predecessor – has opened near Orlando for the more than 244,000 annual Amtrak Auto Train passengers, reports an Amtrak press release.

The $10.5 million to enlarge and improve the station – severely damaged by a 2004 hurricane — was funded with $10.5 million from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA). Since the hurricane, part of the waiting room was sheltered in a tent.

Amtrak’s Auto Train, operating between Lorton, Va., (just outside Washington, D.C.) and Sanford, is said by Amtrak to be “the longest passenger train in the world, with two locomotives and 40-plus passenger rail cars and vehicle carriers operating daily.”

The 855-mile Auto Train route is the only Amtrak service to simultaneously transport passengers and their motor vehicles, including cars, SUVs, vans, trucks and motorcycles. Each year, says Amtrak, the Auto Train draws more than 100,000 vehicles off heavily congested I-95.

Said the Amtrak press release: “A look at the license plates on vehicles being driven to and from the Auto Train shows it draws users from the Eastern Seaboard of the United States and several Canadian provinces, all choosing to ride overnight in sleeping compartments or reclining coach seats for the scheduled 17 ½ hour trip rather than drive the distance.”

A Norfolk Southern sought lease of trackage to a newly created short line railroad in Michigan is being opposed by the UTU and the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen, which represent affected train and engine workers.

The U.S. Surface Transportation Board (STB) is being asked by the UTU and the BLET to revoke an exemption from regulatory review previously provided a proposed transaction of NS and Adrian & Blissfield Rail Road, a holding company intending to create a new shortline to lease and operate almost 45 miles of NS track near Lansing.

The new short line, to be called Jackson & Lansing, is expected — as is the case with virtually all upstart shortlines — to hire a new workforce that will be paid lower wages and benefits than NS now pays the five trainmen, three engineers and three other employees now assigned to that trackage by NS.

The UTU and the BLET are asking the STB to revoke a previously granted STB exemption that would permit the transaction to move to completion without regulatory scrutiny. Such exemptions are permitted if the STB is satisfied that neither competition, continued rail service, safety nor other so-called public interest considerations will be jeopardized as a result of the transaction.

In fact, STB Vice Chairman Frank Mulvey filed a dissent in the previous 2-1 decision granting the exemption, saying that the outward written commitments imposed by the parties require more information, “particularly when they contain outright bans on interchange with third party carriers or, as here, economic incentives that can only be evaluated with the provision of additional information.”

Specially, the UTU and the BLET ask the STB to reconsider its granting of the exemption for the following reasons:

  • Competition and reasonable rates: The transaction, as proposed, would exclude third party carriers (other than NS) from operating over the line, and limit interchange to and from other carriers. Also, the transaction, as proposed, appears to limit competition in order that Jackson & Lansing be able to increase freight rates to fund upgrades to the leased track and facilities. This would be in violation of congressionally imposed national rail transportation policy that supports rail-to-rail competition and fair and reasonable freight rates.
  • Safety: The so-far known facts of the transaction suggest it is highly unlikely either the holding company or its shortline, Jackson & Lansing, currently have sufficient funds and cash flow to upgrade the leased track and facilities to provide safe and reasonably timely operations. As expected carloadings will contain industrial waste, track and rail operating safety must be of significant concern.
  • Fair wages and working conditions: In the current economy — especially in Michigan, where unemployment is twice the national average — the affected employees and their families, and the State of Michigan, will suffer significant economic harm. By granting an exemption from regulatory scrutiny, the STB is permitting the transaction to move forward without imposing labor protection.

This also would violate national rail transportation policy, as it requires “fair wages and suitable working conditions.” The STB is obligated to consider (which can only be done by revoking the exemption and investigating the transaction) whether the new entity will impose substandard wages and working conditions, thereby significantly circumventing the terms and conditions of current collective bargaining agreements under which the affected employees are now covered.

Click here to read the joint UTU/BLET filing.

It’s billed as the world’s longest tunnel – 35.4 miles long — and it’s been 60 years in the planning and digging. It’s in Switzerland.

The Gotthard Base Tunnel is the backbone of a proposed high-speed freight and passenger rail network through Europe, according to various news reports, cutting under the Alps and intended to create a high-speed rail link from Rotterdam in The Netherlands to Genoa in Italy.

Train speeds through the tunnel are projected to reach 155 mph.

However, still to be completed, according to news reports, are two more rail tunnels – one in France and the other in Italy — meaning the first high-speed trains from Rotterdam to Genoa along the route might not operate for another 10 years.

A new light rail line from downtown Los Angeles to Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) is moving closer to reality thorough a $546 million federal loan to Los Angeles County, reports the Associated Press.

The almost nine-mile line is expected to create 5,000 jobs; and, equally important, improve transit options in heavily congested Los Angeles County. The new line will link with two other light-rail lines in Los Angeles.

Los Angeles County voters previously approved a half-cent increase in the sales tax to help fund the line, reported the Associated Press. The federal loan is expected to accelerate the $1.4 billion project.

Construction is expected to be completed in 2018. 

Siemens, an international engineering firm with its U.S. headquarters in Washington, D.C., and plants throughout the United States, is hungry to build high-speed train sets for a proposed Florida high-speed rail line.

Tampa Bay online (tbo.com) reports that Siemens, which has built high-speed trains in Austria, Belgium, China, France and Germany, has erected a billboard in Tampa showing one of its trains and proclaiming, “More Speed. Less Gas. With Siemens’ Answers for Florida High-Speed Rail.”

Florida is intent on completing a high-speed rail line between Tampa and Orlando by 2015 – and Miami by 2018 — and some $3 billion is in play for winning bidders, says Tampa Bay online. A lead contractor will be chosen within the next year.

Actually, 40 companies are showing an interest in the project, reports Tampa Bay online.

If the Florida project proceeds as its Department of Transportation expects, Florida’s 88-mile line between Tampa and Orlando will be America’s first, says Tampa Bay online.

“The Federal Railroad Administration has created a set of strict ‘Buy America’ standards for high-speed rail contracts being financed through the Obama administrations $8-billion nationwide high-speed rail program,” reports Tampa Bay online, and Siemens points to its California plant that has built rail equipment in the U.S. for a quarter century.

Florida already has received $1.25 billion in federal money for its project – nearly half the total projected cost for the Tampa-Orlando line.

UTU bus members know the violence aboard school buses all too well.

The latest shocking outbreak occurred on Long Island, N.Y., last week, when a 14-year-old boy was beaten aboard a school bus over allegations he is gay, according to Longislandpress.com.

The UTU is working with other transportation labor unions and the Transportation Trades Department of the AFL-CIO to pressure school districts to provide monitors on school buses and provide more training for drivers in the handling of school-bus violence.

For the first 40 weeks of this year – through Oct. 9 – rail carloadings are up almost 10 percent over last year, and intermodal loadings have soared by more than 15 percent, according to data from the Association of American Railroads.

For the week ending Oct. 9, intermodal was up more than 13 percent versus the comparable week in 2009, while 15 of 19 carload commodity groups showed gains over the comparable week in 2009.