WASHINGTON — U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) introduced a bill this week seeking to better define railroads’ common-carrier rules and establishing criteria for the Surface Transportation Board to consider when assessing complaints about service issues, as well as a timeline to do so.
Baldwin says in a press release that the “Reliable Rail Service Act,” introduced Tuesday, would ensure railroads provide reliable service at reasonable rates. The bill is supported by a lengthy list of shipper groups and labor organizations.
“American farmers, producers, and manufacturers are paying sky-high prices for subpar rail service to get their goods to market, and consumers seeing the impact on their pocketbooks,” Baldwin said. “In order to build a strong Made in America economy and also lower costs for consumers, we need to ensure our agriculture, energy, and manufacturing businesses have reliable rail service.”
Full text of the bill is available here and a summary is available here.
The bill should not be confused with the Freight Rail Shipping Fair Market Act, introduced in the House of Representatives in August. That bill, to reauthorize the Surface Transportation Board, also includes direction for the STB over common-carrier obligations but would give the board more regulatory authority [see “House bill would expand STB’s authority …,” Trains News Wire, Aug. 2, 2022].
I’ve said it before and I’ll keep saying it:
IF the Class I’s want to improve service (as they claim), improve profitability, and increase profits, they desperately need to partner with shortlines to take the burden of local service and switching the yards off the big boys and thus allowing them to do what they want – move trains as fast and as efficiently as possible from terminal to terminal.
It is a proven fact that shortline service will increase traffic with much better service, thus providing Class I’s with much more traffic and revenue.
It will be argued that the unions will not be happy. Well, they are already unhappy (rightfully so), so why not just yank the dressing off the scab (no pun intended) and deal with the overall picture. In the end, you’re going to see higher employment in the industry, better wages, and better service, all due to the increase in traffic and revenue.
I can only hope that someday an old but accurate saying will actually be true for America’s Railroads:
“LESS TALK, MORE ACTION.
Dumb question why don’t shippers as a group buy blocks of railroad stocks?
Nothing like going to the Chief Executive Officer and or the Board of Directors with service complaints.
Give the robber baron attitude of today’s rail leaders a modicum of regulation is absolutely essential.
Self regulation almost never works. Even with the best of intentions an outside source needs to look at the internal conflicts. These days the rail industry has minimal regulation by design, and as a consequence is full of conflict between public good (eg. customer needs or wants) and profit maximization. This is a natural tension in any business, but when profit becomes the single most important part of an industry that has national import; then the national government will take notice. Matt Rose warned that this would happen if the rail industry did not make some changes, the situation has only gotten worse with PSR.
Sooner or later acting as a monopoly gets government attention. Who will apply this attention to RRs is yet to be determined ?.
Re-regulation, as predicatable as today’s sunrise.
And a classic example of how to shoot yourself in the foot.