In December, President Obama signed into law the Fixing America’s Surface Transportation Act, informally known as the FAST Act. It’s the first federal law in more than a decade that provides long-term funding for surface transportation, including rail. It authorizes $305 billion for the US Department of Transportation’s highway; highway and motor vehicle safety; public transportation; motor carrier safety; hazardous materials safety’ rail’ and research, technology and statistics programs, with funds to be spent throughout fiscal years 2016-2020. The FAST Act clears the way for state and local governments nationwide to move forward with critical transportation projects including new highways and transit lines. And for the first time ever, the law brings passenger rail into the larger surface transportation authorization. Among the key factors for rail included in the bill are annual allowances for Amtrak, starting at $1.45 billion in 2016 and rising to ...

February 28, 2016

The numbers are in. Officials with the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) recently announced that fiscal year 2015 represented the agency’s highest ever civil penalty collection rate in its 50-year history. It’s a result of a stepped up enforcement of railroad safety regulations.  Last year, the FRA reported nearly 6,500 company violations that resulted in civil penalties totaling some $15 million – up 12 percent over fiscal year 2014. Officials expect to collect 75 percent of these penalties. Over the previous six years, the collections ranged from 67 percent to 69 percent. Intensified efforts to enforce penalties will serve to better hold rail companies to higher safety standards. “Safety must be the number one priority for every railroad, and the Department of Transportation will continue to take aggressive action against railroads who fail to follow safety rules,” US Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said in a media statement. &ld...

February 12, 2016

Officials with the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) recently announced they’re partnering with Google to help make rail crossings safer for drivers and passengers nationwide. In a recent media release, the agency confirms that Google will integrate the FRA’s geographic information system (GIS) data which pinpoints the location of the nation's approximately 250,000 public and private railroad crossings, into its smartphone mapping applications. This will allow for drivers to receive notification that they’re approaching a railroad crossing.   “For drivers and passengers who are driving an unfamiliar route, traveling at night, or who lose situational awareness at any given moment, receiving an additional alert about an upcoming crossing could save lives,” FRA Administrator Sara Feinberg said in the release. FRA statistics show that last year, upward of 270 people died and another 843 suffered non-fatal injuries in highway-rail collisions, most...

January 28, 2016

In late November 2013, a commuter train traveling through the Bronx in New York derailed off a sharp curve at 82 miles per hour, killing four people. A subsequent investigation revealed that the Metro-North engineer behind the controls that day had suffered from a previously undiagnosed severe obstructive sleep apnea, a condition that causes severe drowsiness even throughout the day. Despite the condition, the engineer had passed all medical exams required by the rail company. In another highly concerning incident, a Union Pacific engineer with a history of epileptic seizures blacked out while driving a train, crashing it into a Nevada warehouse. The same engineer suffered a seizure at work in November 2008 but was back on the job less than five months later, after one of two neurologists who examined him cleared him to return to duty. This flies in the face of recommendations by interstate trucking and bus industry regulators that anyone who suffers a seizure go at least 10 years ...

January 15, 2016

In a horrifying scene in Midland, Texas three years ago, a Union Pacific freight train slammed into a flatbed trailer being used as a parade float. Twenty six people were on board the float, including 12 US armed forces veterans who had been wounded in action. Four were killed and sixteen were seriously injured. Now, family members of the victims are repealing a court decision, alleging that railroad officials had prior knowledge of a critical defect in the warning system and may also have violated an agreement with the state of Texas by resetting the warning timing mechanism. Shortly before a trial was set to begin last January 26 of the survivors and victims' family members settled for an undisclosed amount with Union Pacific, the nation's largest railroad with $5 billion in profits last year. A judge dismissed the remaining case in February, citing an investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board concluded that the float may have begun crossing the track after the cr...

December 18, 2015

In October, House and Senate lawmakers made a controversial move by extending the December 31 deadline that America's railroads had been given to implement new safety technology known as Positive Train control, or PTC. Now, Federal Railroad Administrator Sarah Feinberg has served notice, essentially telling rail companies that she expects their strict adherence to the new 2018 deadline. "The focus has to remain on getting PTC up and running and implemented as soon as possible," Feinberg said in a recent speech at a railroad conference. "I recognize that the legislation allows 2018 to be the goal and there to be a potential extension beyond 2018 to 2020. But the deadline is 2018. If you need to get to 2020, there are certain boxes that have to be checked in order to get there." PTC is designed to monitor locomotive operations along 60,000 miles of track and to help keep trains from derailing by automatically slowing or stopping a train when the system senses a p...

December 4, 2015

With a drop in fuel prices and a slowly improving economy, travel experts expect a significant increase in Thanksgiving holiday travel this year over the past several years. In fact, it's expected to be the busiest since the Great Recession. Many of those heading out of town to Grandma's house for the annual family feast will be traveling by rail, and reports show that the rail industry is preparing. For instance, Amtrak officials say they're working with municipal, state and federal law enforcement agencies across the country to gather intelligence and tweak security accordingly at the company's stations, on its trains and along its tracks. Among the added measures you'll see are uniformed personnel, K9 officers and long guns. Employees all have been given guidance on just what to do during a range of potential happenings including active shooter incidents. If you plan to travel via train this holiday season, expect longer-than-usual waits and know that this can mean higher level...

November 20, 2015

Congress recently made a controversial move extending by three full years a deadline for the installation and implementation of Positive Train Control (PTC), a much needed automated railway safety technology designed to monitor locomotive operations along 60,000 miles of track. Even more controversial is the revelation that such technology has been available for more than three decades. A recent New York Times article revealed that technology similar to PTC was developed back in the 1980s by Richard M. Bressler, chairman of the Burlington Northern Railroad. He came upon the idea while traveling by corporate jet and wondering if the same technology used by airlines to track the locations of planes and operations of pilots could be applied to the rail industry. Soon after, Bressler's employees had developed the Advanced Railroad Electronics System (ARES) and installed it for testing on several trains traveling a section of track in Minnesota. Among the key features was the abil...

November 7, 2015

In a controversial move that has many railroad safety officials and advocates shaking their heads, House and Senate lawmakers this week reached an agreement to extend a Dec. 31 deadline for railroads to implement new safety technology known as Positive Train Control, or PTC. Railway companies now have three additional years to fully install the technology designed to keep trains from derailing by automatically slowing or stopping a train when the system senses a potentially dangerous situation. Railway companies claimed that they hadn't been given adequate time to meet the requirements and that attempts to do so would be costly and ultimately unsuccessful. Many threatened to suspend operations, particularly relating to transporting crude oil or hazardous chemicals come January 1 if the extension wasn't granted. A recent spike in domestic oil production led to a significant increase in the amount of crude oil transported via rail, particularly a highly volatile and flammable type of...

October 23, 2015

Officials with the Federal Railroad Administration today confirmed the cause of February’s CSX/Plains All American train derailment in Mount Carbon, West Virginia and announced new rail standards resulting from the investigation. Investigators concluded that a broken rail, resulting from a vertical split head rail defect, was to blame for the accident, which resulted in 27 derailed cars and a fire that burned for days and forced the evacuation of hundreds of local residents. They also revealed that the defect was missed on at least two separate inspections by both CSX and their contractor, Sperry Rail Service conducted in December and January. Furthermore, the broken rail was located near a previous broken rail that had been discovered by an FRA inspector and repaired in May 2014. Both CSX and Sperry were fined $25,000 each for failure to verify a potential rail defect. To help minimize risk and prevent similar accidents in the future, FRA officials also announced the follo...

October 9, 2015