Railroads' most important assets: lobbyists

[Chacal]

BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — The Trump administration said Thursday it was withdrawing a proposal for freight trains to have at least two crew members, nullifying a safety measure drafted under President Barack Obama in response to explosions of crude oil trains in the U.S. and Canada.

A review of accident data did not support the notion that having one crew member is less safe than multi-person crews, Department of Transportation officials said. The withdrawal also seeks to pre-empt states from regulating crew sizes.

The 2016 proposal followed oil train derailments including a runaway oil train in 2013 that derailed, exploded and killed 47 people while levelling much of the town of Lac Megantic, Canada. Other derailments of trains carrying oil and ethanol have occurred in North Dakota, Oregon, Montana, Illinois, Virginia and other states.

Under Obama, regulators concluded that having two or more crew members would be worth the extra cost even if it prevented a single accident.

The rail industry, which long maintained that crew requirements were unnecessary, cheered Thursday’s move.

https://apnews.com/191418eef34a4df895f26512e47b4264

[buzz456]

This is pretty political for a admin my friend.

[Chacal]

This is more about how industry resists safety regulations. We have discussed this oftentimes here.
Being Canadian, I'm not too interested in US politics, but the Lac Megantic disaster struck literally close to home.
I'm sure Canadian Railways do their own lobbying too.

[buzz456]

Well since two Presidents were mentioned and the article was kind of pimping for one of them I would say it was political. I guess we agree to disagree on this one. While I certainly agree that single operator mainline train movement is a truly stupid idea I think it can be expressed without the political element. I believe someone should ask the people pushing for this if they understand the liability that they open themselves up to if one does this.

[EngineerJohn]

Interestingly enough, Boeing is also pushing the idea for cutting the crew from 2 pilots down to 1 with the same sort of logic being applied as these railroad lobbyists.

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/20/boeings ... board.html

They better be dern sure whatever system they come up with is completely foolproof, and everyone knows there is no substitute for manual intervention on an automated system when things start to go bad.

[buzz456]

Interestingly enough, Boeing is also pushing the idea for cutting the crew from 2 pilots down to 1 with the same sort of logic being applied as these railroad lobbyists.

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/20/boeings ... board.html

They better be dern sure whatever system they come up with is completely foolproof, and everyone knows there is no substitute for manual intervention on an automated system when things start to go bad.

That's at least as stupid idea as it is in railroading. As a private pilot I can testify with some knowledge that the load level of instrument flight with a single pilot is about four times what it is with two pilots. Every time I go somewhere with another pilot I am reminded how much less there is to do using proper CRM. That's cockpit resource management. As we all know from recent events things do go wrong with automation and the problem solving it so so much easier with two of you usually one to diagnose and hopefully solve the problem while the other one keeps you alive by properly managing the aircraft. Even in normal trips in and out of busy airspace can get pretty darn busy for crew. Until we take the weather out of the equation it will always be a dynamic situation subject to rapid changes of plans requiring action.

[mindenjohn]

Are today’s pilots and train crews exempt from sudden illness, they have not been before or this called progress?

[philmoberg]

What I’m about to say should be understood in the context of the experience of somebody who was in train service, qualified under the rulebook used by the Class 1s, as well as one who spent well over two decades immersed in Federal policy analysis for a state transportation agency. There are so many errors of fact and substance in stories like this that it is difficult to know where to begin. I’ll start with the big picture on the government side, noting that my comments pertain to US practice only.

When discussing anything related to regulations, it is necessary to be familiar with the enabling legislation. This is conspicuous by its absence in this case. As such, the first place one should be looking is the Legislative branch, i.e. Congress, rather than the Executive branch, much less whoever happens to be the titular head of it at any given point in time.

The second thing one should keep in mind is that policy issues tend to have a very long and complicated history, to the extent that the will outlast generations of staff assigned to work on them. I recall reports and draft regulations on these issues crossing my desk back in the ‘80s, and they were not news then. I’ll give you an even better example: the earliest Federal report I’ve seen on what is now called Bus Rapid Transit was published in 1959, fully half a decade before the Feds had a transit agency as such. If this was the first time it came up, and I have reason to believe it wasn't, the planning justification probably pre-dated my birth.

Thus, the question of whether this is a political, or more properly described, partisan question is, at best, unimportant if not irrelevant. Dig into it to the level I have, in which I’ve seen who sponsors what, who votes for what, what the conference committed reports say the true legislative intent is, and what actually is adopted as implementing regulations, and you’ll quickly find yourselves wracking your brains trying to reconcile reality with what you’ve seen in the press releases and media reports. This case is but one example, and not, by any means, the best I’ve see. The basic Congressional policy logic is usually (yes, there are exceptions … from time to time), “We must do something. This is something. Therefore, we must do it.” As a rule, once something becomes an issue, all intelligent discussion stops, and the problem that prompted it is forgotten.

As to the industry, I have some serious concern that we are beginning to run into the same sort of problems we’ve run into with highway safety, in which well-intentioned measures to make wrecks more survivable have the unintended effect of enabling more of the bad behavior that caused them to begin with. In attempting to design-out the technological risk, we end up maximising the most risky factor in the equation. The Lac Megantic disaster is a case in point, having nothing to do with “how many guys are in the cab,” but with the fact that the train was improperly laid up and the hand brakes improperly applied. The guys I worked with would have considered these savagely irresponsible.

To that end, I am far more concerned with the PTC mandate than a one-man-crew rule. I’m aware that the Europeans have had one-man crews in some cases for decades. I’m also aware that North American conditions are different, and that the potential for analogous services is limited. PTC, on the other hand, is much like the Cat IIIc autopilot, which can land you hands-off, but you wouldn’t want to bet your life on it. The danger of PTC is that you can put anybody in the cab … until the PTC fails and you have a catastrophe. If I had to choose between having one conscientious professional in the cab as opposed to an automatic system that is supposed to provide a fail-safe, I’ll take the professional every day.

It is easy to criticise railroad management. Most of us in the US have been trained to do so since our early schooling, with the discussion of Credit Mobiler, the robber barons and the early strikes. The traditional is that they have to keep a railroad running in the black in the face of taxation and regulation well in excess of that imposed on other modes. You can be sure that if the financial risk of one-man crews exceeds the benefit, the will have no choice but to drop it like a hot potato.

There is an excellent video on YouTube that illustrates the problem of self-appointed Congressional experts and railroad safety: https://youtu.be/u9LTOnQaYfc Perhaps you’ll understand my skepticism.

[CArailroader]

I think one of the biggest issues at hand is the disconnect between management, leadership, and the train crews themselves.

Leadership shows they only care about the bottom line and it's been that way for as long as railroads have been in existence as Phil said.

Then we have management that today are being recruited right out of college with ZERO railroading experience (yes I know there are a few exceptions to this) and are handed the rule books and told here, go make sure our train crews follow this to the letter.

And lastly are the uncared-for for train crews, out there in no matter the condition getting it done who see and understand the terrible crap show that will occur if the whole country goes one man crew.

What happens when the train goes into emergency out in the middle of nowhere and that one man has to secure the cab and walk the whole mile long train himself and the train for whatever reason has an undesired release? We have another Lac-Mégantic or BHP. Simple as that. And it will happen. Because unless Congress passes a crew size mandate law, we will start to see one man crews here in the US.

Now I must say that as a Conductor and about to start my engineer training, I'm glad I work a Shortline where our president and our managers all started at the bottom and understand the safety side of railroading as well as management. Having heard the horror stories of the class 1 from fellow co workers that came from them to friends that currently work for them, I'd never go to a class 1 because of how they operate.

[buzz456]

Poor uncared-for engineers. https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Union- ... O14,33.htm

[BNSFdude]

The pay is good, yes. But the lifestyle is the whole reason we get paid well.

[philmoberg]

... I'm glad I work a Shortline where our president and our managers all started at the bottom and understand the safety side of railroading as well as management. ...

I s'pose that's some consolation for not having managed to get hired by a Class 1 myself. About half the guys I worked with were, and while most of them did, or are still doing at least reasonably well, their results were mixed. I ended up on the government side in a bid to get around the "no experience" excuse, but ended up staying there for reasons too long to get into. It was the '70s, and those days were weird in the industry. Of course, at that point a lot of folks didn't expect the industry to be around much longer. "What a long, strange trip it's been."

[CArailroader]

Poor uncared-for engineers. https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Union- ... O14,33.htm

The money is only good if you're not furloughed... Or worse, laid off permanently, which is what is happening to a lot of folks since precision scheduled railroading started happening.

[buzz456]

Poor uncared-for engineers. https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Union- ... O14,33.htm

The money is only good if you're not furloughed... Or worse, laid off permanently, which is what is happening to a lot of folks since precision scheduled railroading started happening.

Like how many? You do know that layoffs happen everywhere every now and then.

[Chacal]

Well since two Presidents were mentioned and the article was kind of pimping for one of them I would say it was political. I guess we agree to disagree on this one. While I certainly agree that single operator mainline train movement is a truly stupid idea I think it can be expressed without the political element. I believe someone should ask the people pushing for this if they understand the liability that they open themselves up to if one does this.

I see your point. I was thinking more on the lines of railroads vs DOT.