WASHINGTON -- Federal Railroad Administrator Jolene M. Molitoris today announced that for the first time the FRA will require radios or wireless communications devices, such as cellular telephones or data radio terminals, for many classifications of railroad operations and for roadway workers.

The regulations, published in today's Federal Register, require most trains to be equipped with radio systems or wireless communication devices. Railroads must also equip signal maintainers, track work crews and other roadway workers with communication devices.

The new rules are designed to facilitate communications through the application of contemporary technologies, and to increase the reliability of both routine and emergency communications.

The regulations were developed in cooperation with industry and government experts appointed by the FRA's Railroad Safety Advisory Committee (RSAC), a collection of railroad industry representatives that regularly advises the agency on regulatory issues.

"Safety is Secretary Slater's highest transportation priority, and these new regulations demonstrate how industry and government can work together effectively as partners to advance the cause of transportation safety," said Administrator Molitoris. "These standards will ensure that the ability to communicate 'necessary and urgent safety messages' will be universal for the nation's railroads."

To provide flexibility for small railroads, communication equipment standards and implementation periods have been determined according to the size of the railroad. Large railroads must equip each train with a working radio in each occupied controlling locomotive and with redundant wireless communications devices. For small railroads, the communication equipment required for each train is determined by a variety of factors, including whether the train transports passengers, hauls hazardous materials, engages in joint operations with large railroads, or operates above specified speeds. The communication equipment requirements for roadway workers also vary according to railroad size.

MINNEAPOLIS -- The pressure on President Clinton to intervene in the Northwest Airlines pilots strike mounted over Labor Day as negotiators for the two sides rested.

White House spokeswoman Amy Weiss Tobe said the president met a request Monday from North Dakota's three congressmen to discuss the strike with them. They want Clinton to stop the 11-day-old strike because of economic losses in North Dakota, estimated at as much as $650,000 a day.

She said senior advisers briefed Clinton on the Northwest situation throughout the weekend. After mediators spent Saturday and Sunday in suburban Chicago trying to revive talks that broke off Aug. 28, the parties retrenched on Labor Day.

Another round of shuttle diplomacy -- with mediators meeting independently with both sides in hopes of coaxing them back to the bargaining table -- was scheduled for today at the Radisson Conference Center in Plymouth.

In an interview Monday on NBC's "Today" show, Labor Secretary Alexis Herman said she considered it good news that negotiators from the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA) and Northwest worked Sunday with mediators.

Northwest spokesman Jon Austin declined to comment on the mediation. The two sides are under a self-imposed news media blackout while the work is in progress. The airline has canceled all flights through Thursday, all incoming flights from Europe and Asia through Saturday, and flights between Asian markets through Saturday.

"Obviously, it's better when the two sides are talking than not talking," said Paul Omodt, spokesman for the Northwest ALPA unit. "I don't think the mediators would be expending efforts if they didn't think it would bear some fruit."

Clinton so far has honored requests from the ALPA, the AFL-CIO and certain Democrats to stay out of the two-year-old contract dispute between Northwest and its 6,250 pilots. Opponents of intervention fear that collective bargaining in the airline industry would be undermined by negating labor's right to strike. A pattern of intervention would discourage airline executives from putting forth their best proposals, the opponents have said.

As the strike has worn on, new voices have called on Clinton to act. Late last week, for instance, various Chambers of Commerce called on him to order pilots back to work. In addition, Gov. Arne Carlson joined other Republican governors from states served by Northwest in seeking White House intervention.

In Detroit, striking Northwest Airlines pilots wearing crisp white shirts with ties walked with Teamsters and other union members for the first time in the city's annual Labor Day parade. Detroit is Northwest's largest hub. More than 400 ALPA members from the Detroit area were at the front of the parade, behind the traditional line of politicians and dignitaries.

In other strike-related news Monday, Phil Reed, a spokesman for Express Airlines I, based in Memphis, said he doesn't know whether the airline will comply with a Transportation Department order requiring it to resume limited service by the close of business today. Express is one of two Northwest Airlink feeder lines that shut down operations along with Northwest. The other is Twin Cities-based Mesaba Airlines.

TORONTO -- Air Canada and its striking pilots agreed Monday to resume talks in Montreal, the pilots' union said.

Jean-Marc Belanger, chairman of the Air Canada Pilots Association, said both sides had agreed to meet at the bargaining table today. A news release from Air Canada said the airline hopes an agreement on outstanding issues can be reached.

The union, without a contract since April 1, initially demanded a 20 percent raise over two years, then scaled the request down to 12 percent. The airline has offered a raise of about 9 percent. On average, an Air Canada pilot makes $64,000 a year. The union says its members' pay is 30 to 50 percent less than the pay of pilots in the United States and Europe.

WASHINGTON -- The Surface Transportation Board (STB) found that three railroads' earnings have exceeded their cost of capital for 1997, making them "revenue adequate" by the agency's standards.

The decision issued last week found that Illinois Central Railroad Co., Norfolk Southern Railroad Co. and Soo Line Railroad Co. had net income that was above the industry's 11.8% cost of capital for last year. The STB makes an annual determination of railroads' profitability.

Carriers whose earnings fall below that cost of capital are deemed "revenue inadequate."

The ruling has political overtones, because some shipper groups that are attempting to change the current legislative and regulatory structure have maintained that the STB's "revenue adequacy" review is not a valid indicator of railroads' actual profitability.

Shippers say that many railroads have been earning record profit during the 1990s while only a few carriers are deemed "revenue adequate."

The carriers defend themselves by saying that many companies whose profit has increased still are not generating enough earnings to exceed their cost of capital and encourage reinvestment in their business.

From a commercial standpoint, the STB ruling has a limited application. Carriers found to be "revenue adequate" have their options for rate increases narrowed but not removed altogether.

Illinois Central and Norfolk Southern, which regularly have the industry's highest operating margins, have been "revenue adequate" for much of the 1990s. Soo Line, part of Canadian Pacific Railway, made this year's list for the first time in the decade.

The STB itself launched a proceeding earlier this year to determine whether its formula for determining "revenue adequacy" should be changed. That decision has not been issued.

The agency directed railroads and shippers to seek a private-sector agreement on how to determine rail profitability levels. However, the negotiations failed to produce an agreement.

SAN FRANCISCO -- URS Corporation announced last week that its wholly owned subsidiaries, URS Greiner, Inc. and Woodward-Clyde, are part of a team that has been selected by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority/Long Island Rail Road (MTA/LIRR) to provide program management services for the $3.2-billion East Side Access (ESA) Project in New York City.

The Bechtel/URS Greiner Woodward-Clyde joint venture team will provide comprehensive program management services for the 10-year project. The project, which will provide a direct connection for LIRR commuter rail trains from Long Island to Grand Central Terminal (GCT) on the east side of Manhattan, will be the largest construction project ever performed for MTA and its affiliated agencies in New York State.

The ESA Project is a significant component of the overall transportation improvement program for the Long Island Transportation Corridor and the New York City metropolitan area. The project involves more than 20,000 linear feet of new hard rock and soft ground tunnels and reconstructed tunnels between Long Island City and Manhattan, including the lower level of the existing 63rd Street-Queens Boulevard Connector Tunnel which is part of the 63rd Street Subway line.

The project also will involve a major reconfiguration of GCT's lower level to accommodate ten-track, five-island platforms for LIRR trains, new and/or upgraded LIRR passenger access points at GCT, a new commuter rail station at Sunnyside Yard in Long Island City, and a new railcar storage yard in Queens, as well as traction power, signals, and communications systems.

WASHINGTON -- The Indiana Rail Road Co., which is 89% owned by CSX, lost a bid to have the Surface Transportation Board reconsider a decision that allowed Norfolk Southern Corp. to serve an Indianapolis, Ind., power plant.

The board gave NS access to the Stout power plant as a merger condition when it approved the Conrail Inc. acquisition by NS and CSX in July. Indiana Rail Road hauls coal from Midwest mines to the plant.

The board said NS access was required to preserve competition because the plant would not be served after the acquisition by any company other than CSX and Indiana Rail Road.

Without the merger condition, the only railroads with access to the plant would have been Indiana Rail Road and CSX, which inherited Conrail's rights to serve the Stout plant through a switching arrangement.

Indiana Rail Road asked STB for permission to intervene and request reconsideration of the ruling that gave NS access to the plant in spite of the fact that CSX itself agreed to the merger conditions. STB said the Indiana Rail Road's bid to intervene was not allowable because the company was not a participant in the case when it was being reviewed by the agency.

PARIS -- France's strike-hardened truckers geared up to upset road haulage across much of western Europe on Tuesday, taking the lead in an international day of protest against long working hours.

The International Transport Workers' Federation (ITF) says messages of support for the warning strike it proposed have come in from Europe, Latin America, India and west Africa.

Events include the distribution of protest leaflets at the Mexican-United States border and an information convoy due to traverse Burkina Faso to inform people there about the hardships which long-distance drivers face.

"The road transport industry is a dangerous place to be," Danny Bryan of Britain's Transport and General Workers Union told a news conference in London on Monday organized by the ITF.

"There is the equivalent of the Swissair tragedy in Europe every month," he added, referring to last week's air crash off the Canadian coast that killed 229 people.

France, where truckers have brought the country to its knees twice in the past two years with crippling strikes, was expected to be at the vanguard of the protest.

A key transit point for road transport, France is likely to see long traffic jams at its borders with Belgium, Germany, Italy and Spain as well as the Channel ports linking it with Britain.

Stoppages in France have a strong knock-on effect across western Europe, backing up traffic in southern England and cutting off perishable Spanish produce shipments from their markets in Germany and Scandinavia.

More bottlenecks are planned within France, especially on highways leading to and from Paris, as truckers slow traffic to distribute leaflets explaining their cause.

Truckers unions here have linked the protest over working hours to their wider battle for the harmonization of European Union legislation in the trucking industry.