On July 28, 2021, a Neutral appointed by the National Mediation Board issued his ruling finding that on certain railroad properties, the current moratoria in those crew consist agreements do not prohibit the railroads from serving a Section 6 Notice regarding crew size. The p [...]
U.S. Rep. Peter DeFazio of Oregon, chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, responded to a recent Fortune Magazine column by a pair of economists who defended the rail industry’s Precision Scheduled Railroading (PSR) scheme and accused unions o [...]
Members have been able to spend half a year now with the 2021 SMART-TD bus and rail timebooks that were revised last year with membersʼ input. Weʼre sure there are things you like about the revisions and things that you would want to have changed about the timebooks so they a [...]
On June 15 and 16, 2021, the simmering dispute between the SMART Transportation Division and carriers over crew consist finally reached arbitration before neutral party John LaRocca in Sacramento, Calif. Class I railroads BNSF, UP, NS and KCS initiated a claim in October 2019 [...]
CLEVELAND, Ohio (July 1, 2021) — SMART Transportation Division leaders expressed their appreciation as the Investing in a New Vision for the Environment and Surface Transportation (INVEST) in America Act (H.R. 3684) successfully passed out of the U.S. House of Representatives [...]
The paths to the Rule of 2 are open. Path 1: The INVEST ACT (H.R. 3684, the House Infrastructure Bill) and Path 2: a regulatory priority of the Department of Transportation (DOT) and the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) to revisit freight crew size. U.S House Transportat [...]
After a session that began the morning of June 9 and carried on overnight into the pre-dawn hours of June 10, the INVEST in America Act passed out of the U.S. House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee with two-person crew and other provisions important to SMART Transp [...]
A surface transportation reauthorization bill introduced June 4 by chair of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) has a wide-reaching positive impact for members of the SMART Transportation Division. Mostly mirroring the identically n [...]
CLEVELAND, Ohio (June 4, 2021) – Leaders of the SMART Transportation Division today announced their full support of the 2021 version of the Investing in a New Vision for the Environment and Surface Transportation in America (INVEST in America) Act. The transformational $547 b [...]
On May 27, the chair of the federal Surface Transportation Board (STB) Martin J. Oberman reached out to all Class I CEOs asking them whether the carriers are prepared to reverse the workforce cuts they have made in anticipation of handling an economic rebound as the coronavir [...]