STB adopts rule amending emergency service regs

The Surface Transportation Board yesterday announced it adopted a final rule to amend its emergency-service regulations to provide immediate relief for shippers in certain situations.

The final rule clarifies that the board may direct emergency rail service and establishes an accelerated process for acute service emergencies. However, the amendments to the emergency service rule are not a substitute for the board's ongoing consideration of reciprocal switching rule changes, STB officials said in a press release.

In recent years, the board heard informally from a broad range of stakeholders about inconsistent and unreliable rail service and issued two orders mandating service in urgent situations. Stakeholder concerns have included railroad crew shortages and inability to move trains, 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.

As a result of those issues, the STB held a hearing April 26-27, 2022, on current rail-service problems affecting the network and the recovery efforts involving several Class Is. In addition, board staff have held informal meetings with stakeholders who observed that the existing regulations governing expedited relief for service emergencies are inadequate and the process is too prolonged, resulting in the regulations being rarely used, even when shippers’ interests have been threatened with severe adverse consequence, STB officials said.

On April 22, 2022, the board issued a notice of proposed rulemaking that would amend STB emergency service regulations. The board received several substantial comments that were addressed in newly adopted final rule. Among other processes, the final rule describes the procedures for petitioning the STB for expedited relief.

"In my view, this revised approach to managing service emergencies is a long-needed reform that will help level the playing field for shippers where rail service failures have caused an acute and serious threat to their business, or when emergency relief is necessary to protect the public," said STB Chairman Martin Oberman.

The STB decision to amend expedited relief for service emergencies can be downloaded here.

The board's proposed regulations for reciprocal switching, which are still under consideration, can be downloaded via this link.