STB to Hold Rail Service Hearing – 4-26/27-22

The Surface Transportation Board (STB) published a hearing notice in today’s Federal Register (87 FR 22009-22010) for “Urgent Issues in Freight Rail Service”. The hearing will address reported “challenges include tight car supply and unfilled car orders, delays in transportation for carload and bulk traffic, increased origin dwell time for released unit trains, missed switches, and ineffective customer assistance”, specifically including agricultural and energy product shipment delays.

The Board is calling for testimony from executive-level officials, including operating and human resources officials of four Class I railroads (BNSF, CSXT, NSR, and UP) to discuss their “rail service problems and their ongoing and planned efforts to improve service, including detailed plans outlining the steps needed to improve service”. Specifically, the STB is asking those railroads to “to address the extent to which crew shortages, particularly in the context of past employment reductions and current hiring difficulties, may have contributed to these service problems, and their plans, if any, to change and improve their hiring and employee retention policies to alleviate the acute crew shortages that appear to be among the central causes of the current service issues.”

The Board is also soliciting voluntary input from other railroads about how similar issues are impacting their operations and how they have dealt with the problem. The Board is also soliciting “rail customers, shipper organizations, labor organizations, and other interested parties to appear at the public hearing to discuss their service concerns and comment on carriers' efforts toward service recovery.”

Written comments may be submitted to the STB via their website (https://www.stb.gov/proceedings-actions/e-filing/; Docket # EP 770). The requirement to directly provide copies to other participants is waived in this docket. It does not appear that filings in this document will require filing fee payments.

Commentary

Certainly, part of this problem is associated with the employment volatility related to the COVID-19 pandemic. As far as I can tell, this will be the first public hearing by a federal regulatory agency that looks at this problem. It will be interesting to see how much the railroads feel that basic pay issues contribute to these problems and how much of it is related to working conditions. In either case, personnel costs are going to rise if there is going to be any real solution to this problem. Or there is going to be some sort of increase in automation.

I will be watching the filings in this docket for comments from chemical companies about how these shipping problems impact their operations. It will be interesting to see if railroads are using this problem to avoid certain hazmat transportation issues, particularly carrying toxic inhalation hazard chemicals.