A trade group representing passenger rail wants the Surface Transportation Board to maneuver quickly in responding to Amtrak’s criticism that Union Pacific is contributing to the lackluster on-time performance of Amtrak’s Sunset Limited service.
Jim Matthews, president and CEO of the Rail Passengers Association, said in a recent website post that his group continues to be waiting for STB to maneuver forward with Amtrak’s criticism, which was filed in December 2022. This criticism is important since it’s the primary criticism that calls upon STB to analyze why Amtrak is failing to fulfill customer on-time performance metrics. Amtrak uses portions of the Class I rail network to run passenger trains, and so Amtrak has argued its Sunset Limited service is directly impacted by UP’s service.
“When Amtrak filed its criticism in December it asked for a fast 60-day resolution to what’s clearly and unmistakably a consistent failure to fulfill the standards now legally required for host railroads,” Matthews said.
“The Dept. of Transportation and the Federal Railroad Administration made similar pleas and FRA attorneys reminded the STB in April that neither Congress nor the rules-writers at DOT intended every on-time performance criticism to involve years-long litigation and thousands and thousands of dollars’ value of white-shoe motion practice. And yet, here we’re.”
Amtrak’s on-time performance metrics were under debate for years, with the problem even making its solution to the Supreme Court in 2015 due to debate over Amtrak’s role in establishing those metrics.
Eventually, in 2020, the Federal Railroad Administration published a final rule on performance metrics for passenger trains. The ultimate rule requires Amtrak and host railroads to certify Amtrak schedules and set an on-time performance minimum standard of 80% for any two consecutive calendar quarters.
Amtrak said in April following its initial criticism to STB in December that there may be an “urgent need for investigation” because data from the newest fiscal quarter still showed substandard customer on-time performance of Amtrak’s Sunset Limited service. Substandard performance occurs when on-time performance falls below 80% for at the very least two two consecutive calendar quarters, attorneys representing Amtrak said in an April 18 filing.
“The April host railroad delay report (essentially the most current available) shows that the everyday Sunset passenger was late 63 percent of the time, and was a median of an hour and a half late attending to their destination. Freight-train interference is by far the biggest single category of delays, and host railroads are answerable for greater than two-thirds of all delays,” Matthews said.
Matthews also said Amtrak’s delays come as UP runs long freight trains but hasn’t invested in constructing enough longer sidings to accommodate the trains.
Last January, UP (NYSE: UNP) said Amtrak should align its data higher with FRA’s standards.
“Amtrak has not agreed to changes needed to bring the Sunset Limited train schedules into alignment with the FRA’s metrics and standards. It has also refused to just accept other changes UP has proposed to make the schedules reliable and achievable. Amtrak is asking the Board to start litigation based on schedules that aren’t realistic and never compatible with the FRA’s metrics and standards,” said attorneys representing UP in a Jan. 27 filing.
STB confirmed that the proceeding involving Amtrak continues to be open. Since this proceeding can be the primary involving Amtrak’s on-time performance metrics, the board continues to be figuring out its next steps.
Decisions made in Amtrak’s criticism could set a precedent for future proceedings
As of this week, the last filing within the proceeding NOR 42175 got here from the Association of American Railroads, which said on May 11 that the board’s processes within the Amtrak proceeding must be “efficient, well-understood and fair,” especially since this may be the primary proceeding that seeks to interpret the brand new performance metrics.
What kind of information must be utilized in this proceeding is a component of the problem.
Amtrak’s data measures the performance of Amtrak’s trains against its own schedules, but not all of those schedules have been certified to align with FRA’s metric, in line with attorney Frederick Miller Jr. on behalf of AAR.
“[Amtrak’s] data provides little insight into the causes of delay, let alone whether such delays indicate a failure to offer appropriate preference. Amtrak’s train delay reports don’t measure delays against Amtrak’s schedules, but moderately delays against an idealized train trip (i.e., one with no delays in any respect). There isn’t a distinction in the information between delays that affect a train’s [on-time performance] and people who don’t.”
The board also needs to be answerable for determining the causes of the passenger train delay and the extent to which that delay could be addressed by the host railroads or Amtrak, AAR said.
Meanwhile, the overall counsel for the U.S. Department of Transportation noted the importance of this proceeding, because it’s the primary test difficult a freight railroad’s contribution to Amtrak’s inability to fulfill performance metrics.
DOT has encouraged STB to not take the proceeding too slowly.
“The Board’s decision and its approach to an investigation of the causes of substandard on-time performance (OTP) of Amtrak service could have far-reaching implications beyond the Sunset Limited service and can be essential, whatever its conclusions, to strengthening Amtrak passenger train performance,” John E. Putnam, DOT general counsel, said in an April 13 filing. “We consider it’s imperative that the Board conduct a focused and time-limited investigation, and that a lengthy, protracted adversarial proceeding wouldn’t conform to the relevant statutory direction … nor wouldn’t it serve the interests of the general public or of the parties. … Establishing a predictable investigative process will profit all parties by providing certainty and by extension facilitating productive Amtrak-freight rail carrier discussions. We consider that in turn it will result in morereliable intercity passenger rail service across the country.”
Norfolk Southern (NYSE: NSC) also noted how this Amtrak proceeding could inform future proceedings, in line with an April 26 filing to the board.
Nonetheless, NS “doesn’t support a ‘drawn-out’ proceeding, but given the importance of this proceeding, any investigation shouldn’t exclude the power of parties to completely participate, to access and evaluate up-to-date information beyond what the FRA publishes, and to place that data into proper context, even when doing so would look like ‘adversarial.’ Nor should any such investigation be limited to simply the OTP and train delay data that FRA already collects and publishes on a quarterly basis,” said attorney Bill Mullins on behalf of NS.
“It’s important for the STB to place into place a process designed to permit the STB to make an informed decision on a record developed with the fair input of all parties, moderately than to truncate the proceeding to the detriment of the due process rights of most of the parties and to the detriment of the general public that the STB is challenged to guard pursuant to its clear mandates,” NS continued.
For now, Matthews contends that the losers on this proceeding are those passengers his members rely on.
“The numbers show that today the Sunset continues to be struggling to get fare-paying passengers to where they need to go inside anything higher than an hour to two-hour window. The information are there, and so they are clear,” Matthews said. “For the sake of the American passenger, who supported massive Federal infrastructure investments to make trains higher, we actually hope the STB is capable of end the talk by ruling in the subsequent few weeks, once and for all.”
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