SMART UnionWASHINGTON – It was an accident investigators say didn’t have to happen: Five years ago a commuter train collided head-on with a freight train near Los Angeles, killing 25 and injuring more than 100.
Technology is available to prevent the most catastrophic collisions, but the railroad industry and its allies in Congress are trying to push back a deadline for installing the systems until at least 2020.
Read the complete story at the Associated Press.
WASHINGTON – The nation was on the brink of a crippling national strike by railroad workers in the summer of 1963 when Congress stepped in to settle a years-long battle over how many men it took to safely operate a train.
The bill, signed by President John F. Kennedy in August 1963, set a historic precedent by forcing labor unions and railroad management into arbitration, a process that eventually allowed rail companies to trim their payrolls yet also protected the unionized workers who filled those jobs.
Read the complete story at the Morning Sentinel.
CALGARY – The tug-of-war between railroads and pipelines in North American oilfields is only just getting started.
In recent months, the popularity of moving crude on tracks has sapped commercial support for new pipelines from oil fields in West Texas to North Dakota’s Bakken. Now it’s raising questions about the importance of Keystone XL, TransCanada Corp.’s controversial project designed to connect Alberta’s booming oil sands to refineries on the U.S. Gulf Coast.
Read the complete story at the Financial Post.
As a young child, Greg Wiseman had the world in his view.
Sitting on the lap of his grandfather – a train engineer – Wiseman was given an up-close look of life on the tracks.
Nearly 50 years later, walking down the aisle of the South Shore Line commuter train headed from Michigan City to Chicago, Wiseman knows every stop, every sway of the train and just about every face he sees.
Read the complete story at NWITimes.com.
Improving and maintaining American transportation infrastructure is critical to the nation remaining economically competitive in a global marketplace, U.S. House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman Bill Shuster (R-Pa.) told a gathering of community and business leaders in Cleveland earlier this week.
“Without safe and efficient transportation, we can’t be competitive,” said Shuster, who was the keynote speaker at the annual meeting of Build Up Greater Cleveland, a northeast Ohio coalition of agencies involved in infrastructure issues.
Read the complete story at Progressiverailroading.com.
Labor Day, the first Monday in September, is a creation of the labor movement and is dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers. It constitutes a yearly national tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country.
In 1894, in an effort to conciliate organized labor after the Pullman Strike, President Grover Cleveland and Congress designated Labor Day as a federal holiday. Legislation for the holiday was pushed through Congress six days after the strike ended. Samuel Gompers, who had sided with the federal government in its effort to end the strike by the American Railway Union.
To learn more about the history of Labor Day, visit the Department of Labor’s “The History of Labor Day.”
District of Columbia State Legislative Director and SMART Transportation Safety Team member Willie Bates has been invited by Federal Railroad Administrator Joseph Szabo to serve on the Stakeholder Review Panel for the agency’s new Clear Signal for Action safety program.
The CSA safety pilot program, funded by the FRA’s Office of Research and Development, seeks to improve railroad safety and railroad safety culture through the use of peer-to-peer coaching and feedback and safety leadership training.
In a letter to Bates, Szabo said “Risk reduction approaches like CSA allow the industry, through collaborative labor and management efforts, to take proactive measures to prevent accidents.”
Responding to Szabo’s letter, Bates said, “I accept the challenge.”
SRP meetings will be managed by the Volpe National Transportation Systems Center, whose mission is to improve the nation’s transportation system by anticipating emerging transportation issues and serving as a center of excellence for informed decision-making.
Besides his new challenge, Bates serves as a member of the Obama administration’s 20-person Transit Rail Advisory Committee for Safety, which drafts federal regulations for 47 separate transit systems that previously set their own safety rules and procedures. Former Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood named him to the committee.
In 2011, the governor of Virginia awarded Bates the Governor’s Transportation Safety Award for rail transportation. In 2009, Amtrak’s highest safety honor — the Charles Luna Memorial Safety Award — was bestowed upon Bates, who has worked injury-free for 25 years as an Amtrak conductor, and never had a safety-rules violation. The award is named for the UTU’s first International president, who later was an Amtrak board member.
A member of the SMART Transportation Division Local 1933 at Washington, D.C., Bates serves as the local’s chairperson, vice president, legislative representative and delegate.
WASHINGTON – The Federal Railroad Administration’s (FRA) Railroad Safety Advisory Committee (RSAC) met today in an emergency session to begin consideration of additional regulatory or other safety measures following the derailment in Lac-Megantic, Quebec, Canada earlier this summer.
“Safety is our top priority,” said U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx. “While 2012 was the safest year in rail history, we are constantly reviewing our work to ensure the public’s safety on our nation’s rails and value the important input we are receiving from industry stakeholders.”
The RSAC is a technical and policy stakeholder advisory group that makes recommendations to the FRA on rail safety issues, and includes representatives from every facet of the rail industry. The issues discussed at the meeting included the safety requirements contained in FRA Emergency Order No. 28 (EO 28) and the recommendations made in Safety Advisory 2013–06, both issued on Aug. 2.
EO 28 is a mandatory directive to railroads requiring them to undertake a number of immediate actions to ensure that trains transporting hazardous materials (hazmat) are secured and not left unattended. The directive also includes communication requirements. Failure to comply with the emergency order requirements will result in enforcement action.
The safety advisory contains recommendations issued jointly by FRA and the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) to railroads and hazmat shippers, including requiring railroads to review their crew staffing requirements for transporting hazardous material, conduct system-wide evaluations to identify hazards that may make it more difficult to secure a train or pose other safety risks, and develop procedures to reduce those risks. The advisory served as the agenda for today’s meeting. The implications as well as potential costs and benefits of new or expanded safety requirements and initiatives, including possible new RSAC tasks to implement them, were also discussed.
“Today’s meeting brings together some of the best and brightest minds our industry has to offer in order to tackle issues of paramount importance,” said FRA Administrator Joseph C. Szabo. “The dialogue will serve to build upon the comprehensive regulatory framework we already have in place, and allow us to further enhance safety by eliminating additional risk from the railroad system.”
During the meeting, RSAC members voted to accept four task statements on: appropriate train crew size; requirements for the securement of trains; operational testing for employees to ensure appropriate processes and procedures for securing trains are followed; and hazardous materials issues relating to the identification, classification, operational control and handling of such shipments in transportation. The RSAC will now establish working groups with the necessary expertise to examine each task, gather relevant facts, and develop a range of options. The recommendations of those working groups will be presented to the RSAC by April 2014.
“As greater quantities of hazmat are transported by rail and other modes, the risks increase and we have to make sure our regulations are keeping pace with market and technology forces,” said PHMSA Administrator Cynthia Quarterman. “We have to work together to identify gaps, be willing to acknowledge them and close them.”
Under current U.S. Department of Transportation regulations, freight railroads are required to undertake safety and security risk assessments and implement procedures in order to transport certain hazardous materials, including creating a plan to prevent unauthorized access to rail yards, facilities, and trains carrying hazardous materials. Railroads that carry hazardous materials are required to follow established protocols while en route, and railroad employees are subject to background checks and must complete training. Railroad training programs and operating practices are reviewed and audited by the FRA routinely and are generally designed to be progressive so that as the level of risk increases, so does the level of safety and security required.
U.S. rail-safety regulators began a “Bakken blitz” of inspections of crude oil tank cars this week as they seek to prevent a railroad disaster in the U.S. similar to July’s fatal inferno in Quebec.
Inspectors from the U.S. Federal Railroad Administration and Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration are examining rail cars moving crude from North Dakota’s Bakken region, Cynthia Quarterman, PHMSA administrator, told reporters today during a break in a Washington meeting to discuss U.S. rail safety risks.
Read the complete story at Bloomberg News.
At The Right Stuff Awards dinner, the Apollo Alliance Project of the BlueGreen Alliance Foundation honors state and national leaders for their work to accelerate the growth of the clean energy, good jobs economy.
On Thursday, October 17, 2013, the Apollo Alliance Project of the BlueGreen Alliance Foundation will host the 2013 Right Stuff Awards at the Parc 55 Hotel in San Francisco. The evening will include a reception at 6:30 p.m. and a dinner and awards presentation at 7:00 p.m.
This year, California Governor Jerry Brown will receive the Government Award; Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) President Frances Beinecke will recieve the Environment Award; and International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers (SMART) General President Joseph Nigro will receive the Labor Award. There are also more award announcments to come.
The 2012 The Right Stuff Award recipients included: Bob King, President of the United Auto Workers; Mary D. Nichols, Chairman of the California Air Resources Board; Larry Schweiger, President and CEO of the National Wildlife Federation; Community Awardee Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy (LAANE); and Corporate Awardee General Motors.
See photos and information from past years here.
Email events@bluegreenalliance.org for more information.