The House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure is seeking an investigation of the practice of precision scheduled railroading.
It has asked the U.S. Government Accountability Office to conduct the probe with a focus on how the practice has affected shippers, Amtrak, commuter railroads, employees and others.
A letter from committee chairman Peter DeFazio (D-Oregon) and Donald Payne Jr. (D-New Jersey), chairman of the Subcommittee on Railroads, Pipelines, and Hazardous Materials, asked Comptroller General Gene Dodaro to, “at a minimum,” investigate 10 aspects of the impact of PSR.
“These include the safety and service impacts of longer trains, and of reduced workforces; elimination or downsizing of yards and maintenance facilities; changes in dispatching practices; on-time performance of passenger trains; quality, availability and reliability of service to shippers; and increases in demurrage or other charges.”
The letter noted that longer trains, unhappy shippers, and a workforce pushed to do more with less is not a model to emulate “unless you’re on Wall Street.”
“But we can’t let hedge fund managers write the rules of railroading,” DeFazio said in a statement.
Tags: Amtrak, Government Accountability Office, House Subcomittee on Railroads Pipelines and Hazardous Materials, House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, precision scheduled railroading
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