UTU News Digest - Thursday, January 6, 2000

UTU Daily News Digest

Information of interest to operating railroad and transportation employees

Thursday, January 6, 2000

NEBRASKA: Sen. Kerrey questions BNSF-CN rail deal

OMAHA -- Sen. Bob Kerrey, D-Neb., who gave his "enthusiastic support" to Union Pacific Corp.'s 1996 acquisition of Southern Pacific Rail Corp., now has raised questions about another proposed railroad deal, the Omaha World Herald reported.

In a statement issued Tuesday, the senator said that the proposed merger of Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp. with Canadian National Railway Co. "gives me some concerns."

The proposed merger, announced in December, would combine Burlington Northern Santa Fe's 34,000 miles of track with Canadian National's 16,700 miles, creating North America's largest railroad.

Without mentioning any railroad by name, Kerrey said that as railroads have become bigger, "I haven't seen service improve for shippers in Nebraska."

Chris Straub, Kerrey's chief of staff, said the senator didn't mean to imply criticism of any particular railroad but was "just concerned that shippers in Nebraska have good service."

Omaha-based Union Pacific came under heavy criticism following its 1996 acquisition of Southern Pacific. The deal was blamed for widespread service problems that angered many shippers.

In a 1996 hearing on the Southern Pacific deal, Kerrey wrote a letter to the Federal Surface Transportation Board that expressed his support and said merging the railroads would be good for Nebraska.

Meanwhile, Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said Wednesday that he has organized a Jan. 19 meeting in West Des Moines for Iowa farm and business representatives to talk about the pros and cons of the proposed merger.

Grassley earlier said he was concerned about what the merger would do to competition in transportation, especially for grain shippers and farmers.

In his statement, Kerrey raised questions about the impact of railroad consolidations. "Increasingly the rails are conveyor belts for coal or for coast-to-coast shipments," he said. "Meanwhile, branch lines in the Heartland are taken out of service and our elevators and industries have fewer options."

The Nebraska Department of Roads said that from 1994 to now, Union Pacific has abandoned seven line segments with about 68 miles of track. Over that same period, Burlington Northern Santa Fe has abandoned 3 miles of track on one line.

Both railroads also have leased or sold clusters of lines to short line carriers in lieu of abandonment, the department said. Most line abandonments took place from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s, the department said.

Kerrey called on the Surface Transportation Board "to carefully review not only this proposal (the BNSF-Canadian Railway merger) but also the role of railroads in our total transportation infrastructure."

Straub, Kerrey's aide, said the senator's comments should not be interpreted as opposition to the proposed merger. He said Kerrey simply wants regulators to examine how the merger would affect shippers.

Burlington Northern Santa Fe spokesman Steve Forsberg said the concerns raised by Kerrey "are legitimate issues and questions." He said that "we fully intend to address all the issues and concerns in the application, and we are vigorously working in the early stages of putting that together."

Forsberg added that Burlington Northern Santa Fe's service record "has gotten increasingly better" since its merger with Santa Fe Pacific Corp. in 1995.

In 1999, the railroad's trains were on time 90 percent of the time, a performance he said was unprecedented in the industry.

Burlington Northern Santa Fe employs about 4,500 people in Nebraska.

A Union Pacific spokesman declined comment on Sen. Kerrey's statement; nor has U.P. taken a position on the Burlington Northern Santa Fe-Canadian National merger.

CANADA: CN resumes operation of gasoline shuttle after deadly accident

MONTREAL – Canadian National Railway resumed operation of its Ultratrain gasoline shuttle last night, as municipal officials along the route the tanker train takes from Levis to Montreal East pointed out the dangers of running trains filled with 45,000 barrels and more of highly flammable petroleum products through residential areas, the Montreal Gazette reported.

The shuttle service was interrupted last Thursday after an eastbound freight train slammed into a loaded Ultratrain tanker car that had just derailed east of Mont-Saint-Hilaire and was blocking the track.

The locomotive engineer and conductor of the freight train were killed instantly in the resulting blaze, which destroyed 35 of the 68 tanker cars making up the train, shutting down freight and passenger traffic on CN's main line as well as adjacent Highway 116 for almost a week.

Levis Mayor Jean Garon said yesterday he has written to federal Transport Minister David Collenette and his Quebec counterpart, Guy Chevrette, to express safety concerns about the routing of the gasoline shuttles through his city.

"More and more dangerous products are being carried by trains," Garon said, adding that it is difficult to control heavy trains more than a kilometer long that are loaded with dangerous materials and are traveling through built-up areas.

Honorius Charbonneau, mayor of Mont-Saint-Hilaire, said trains have been running through his town since the 19th century and he wants to work with CN to minimize the dangers of carrying hazardous goods, adding that the 80-kilometres-per-hour speed of trains through Mont-Saint-Hilaire is "pretty fast."

"It would have been more serious if it had happened in the centre of town," Charbonneau said.

"We want a public inquiry to determine what caused the accident," he added.

Charbonneau said it is not easy for his town, population 13,000, to deal with Montreal-based CN, which will become North American's largest railway with its proposed merger with U.S.-based Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp.

"Just because they are big, they don't have the right to kill people," he said.

Guy Boissy, mayor of suburban Saint-Lambert, which the Ultratrain passes on the CN main line before crossing the Victoria Bridge, said railway safety will be discussed at next week's city-council meeting.

Boissy said the quality and the quantity of what is carried by rail has changed and safety issues have to be reviewed.

Marcel Sevigny, independent city councillor for Point St. Charles, where the Ultratrain shuttle enters Montreal, said the homes in his district have always been close to the CN tracks and a school, ecole Charles LeMoyne, is on the route of the gasoline shuttle.

Sevigny said the officials of the city of Montreal are "politically irresponsible" because they haven't questioned the routing of gasoline shuttle trains through the city and now the Montreal Urban Community has said it is prepared to discuss the transport of spent nuclear fuel through its territory.

"We are playing with the safety and the health of people when what is at stake is not clear," Sevigny said. "When there are no accidents, it doesn't scare people."

Ultramar Diamond Shamrock Corp. has no refinery in Montreal and relies on a constant stream of Ultratrain shuttles to carry refined petroleum products from its refinery in Saint-Romuald, across the St. Lawrence River from Quebec City, to supply the Montreal market.

Because of the shuttle-service interruption, Ultramar has been using tanker ships operated by Petronav, a division of Transport Desgagnes Inc., to supply the Montreal market. It will continue to supplement the Ultratrain shuttle with tanker ships until the 35 tanker cars destroyed in the fire can be replaced.

Ultramar spokesman Louis Forget could not say how long it would take to replace the railway tankers and suspend the tanker-ship deliveries.

Forget defended the use of the Ultratrain shuttles to carry refined products, saying there is a risk factor "every time you move products and there are other dangerous products. There is no transportation mode that is 100-per-cent safe."

Forget said Ultramar studied the possibility of building a pipeline to carry refined products between Saint-Romuald and its storage tanks in Montreal East, but a pipeline would cost a "huge amount, more than $100 million."

Statistics compiled by the Transportation Safety Board demonstrate that pipelines are the safest form of transportation. There have been no fatalities caused by a pipeline accident in Canada since 1988.

By contrast, for 1998, the latest year for which figures are available, there were 328 aircraft-related fatalities in Canada - 229 of the total in the Swissair Flight 111 crash off Nova Scotia - as well as 99 rail fatalities and 47 marine deaths.

All but one of those people killed by trains in 1998 were crossing rail lines or trespassing on railway property.

Altogether, air, rail and marine fatalities account for about 8 per cent of all transportation accidents in Canada. Highway accidents account for 92 per cent of transportation deaths.

When CN proposed the Ultratrain in 1995, Ultramar saw it as a solution to two problems at an acceptable cost, Forget recalled: supplying the Montreal market and capturing new markets in Ontario and New England.

Ultramar used to rely on tanker ships, but winter conditions on the St. Lawrence resulted in service disruptions, forcing Ultramar to ship products by highway tankers. The Ultratrain shuttles operate year-round.

With about 24 or 25 per cent of the Quebec market, Ultramar has little room to expand in the province, Forget said, and the Ultratrain option gives it the possibility of supplying new markets in Ontario and New England by rail.

While it is satisfied with the Ultratrain shuttles and believes that rail transport remains safer than highway transport, Forget said, Ultramar also has questions for CN.

"We want to know exactly what happened."

NORWAY: Burning train and freezing cold hamper Norway rescue efforts

RENA-- It was a rescue worker's nightmare. Intense heat from the burning trains. Freezing cold of a Norwegian winter. Trapped, tortured victims almost within arms reach yet impossible to save, the Associated Press reported.

"The worst thing to experience is to stand there and watch people burn," said Ola Sunderaal, one of the first rescuers on the scene.

The head-on collision between two passenger trains on Tuesday was one of the worst in Norwegian history, with 20 believed dead. The exact number remained unclear a day after the crash because of uncertainly about precisely how many people -- about 100 -- were on board.

The high-speed crash was so savage that several railcars were compressed into a pile of metal the length of a single car. A 100-ton locomotive lay on its side, which rescuers hope to move Thursday.

Fires blazed for about six hours hampering initial rescue efforts. Five bodies were pulled from the wreckage before darkness fell Wednesday. Twelve in all have been recovered with at least four more bodies on the train.

Police late Wednesday adjusted the number of missing and presumed dead to 4, from about 20 earlier in the day. They gave no reason for the downward revision, but said there was no hope of finding more survivors.

Of the 30 passengers and crew who were injured, 12 remained in the hospital, some with broken bones.

The accident happened at Rena, Norway, about 110 miles north of the capital Oslo.

On Wednesday, the high-pitched scream of cutting tools ripped through the forest silence and tangled wreckage of the trains to pry loose bodies, many burned beyond recognition. The process could take days to complete.

"It is very hard work because [the bodies] are so stuck in the wreckage," said Trond Simarud, a rescue specialist. "We have to work millimeter by millimeter [inch by inch] to get in there."

During the day, three busloads of friends and relatives of the dead and missing arrived to place flowers, light candles and seek solace. Young soldiers, many of whom had spent the freezing night in tents, cordoned off the wreck site.

Later, family members, some crying, joined rescue workers and police in uniform for memorial services in nearby churches, where torches burned outside in the darkness.

During the day, bulldozers, army tanks and workers felled tall pine trees to improve access to the wreckage.

The lingering stink of smoke from the burned-out wreckage was a pungent reminder of the chaos, terror and frustration of the previous day.

Mr. Sundervaal, an ambulance crewman, recalled he had entered wrecked cars trying to help.

The fire drove him back.

"It was the worst thing I have experienced, going through the train seeing people who were alive and conscious who we couldn't help," he said.

An express train, with 83 people aboard, was headed south for the city of Trondheim. A local train, at first said to have 17 people aboard, was headed north. The state railroad NSB on Wednesday said that number was no longer certain.

The cause of the crash has not been determined. The trains raced at each other at about 55 miles per hour around a corner. The engineers had no chance to stop, officials said.

WASHINGTON: NTSB probes fatal Greyhound case

WASHINGTON -- A sleepy, drugged driver and poor safety procedures contributed to a Greyhound bus crash on the Pennsylvania Turnpike that killed seven people and injured 16 others in June 1998, federal investigators said Wednesday, the Associated Press reported.

The National Transportation Safety Board determined that Milton Wisner's alertness was adversely impacted by an antihistamine and Greyhound Lines Inc.'s scheduling of irregular work periods for its drivers. The board also said the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission's practice of allowing non-emergency parking in pull-off areas contributed to the accident's severity.

Greyhound Executive Vice President Jack W, Haugsland disputed the findings and said fatigue was "not a major factor'' in causing the accident. He said studies by their pathologists indicated Wisner had suffered a heart attack, a claim the board specifically rejected.

Haugsland also said the company's scheduling and safety were sound, noting that the company has a good safety record.

Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission spokeswoman Kathy Liebler said the agency would not comment on the board's findings.

Wisner, 61, of Boothwyn, Pa., suffered from chronic fatigue syndrome and had complained to his physician about it. He was taking an antihistamine to combat a chronic sinus problem. In addition, NTSB records indicated that Wisner had been involved in seven accidents since 1990 and had been cited for speeding twice. One of those incidents resulted in his being suspended for five days.

He was on his last run before retiring, driving in a mountainous area, when at about 4:30 a.m. on June 20, 1998, his bus ran into a tractor-trailer legally parked in a roadside area about 60 miles west of Harrisburg. The crash pushed the truck into the back of another truck parked in front of it.

The bus left New York City with 23 passengers and had stopped in Philadelphia on its way to Pittsburgh.

Wisner, his wife and an 8-year-old boy in their care were killed along with four other passengers. The truck's two co-drivers, who had been asleep in the cab, were injured.

The board criticized Greyhound's "lax'' procedures in documenting safety violations and monitoring the "widespread speeding'' of its drivers. The board said the company does not adequately respond to consumer complaints about safety, saying it had taken no action when a woman complained about Wisner's driving habits.

The NTSB recommended that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration require that signs over emergency exits be constructed to illuminate in the dark and that all buses be equipped with emergency lights with self-contained, independent power sources.

Greyhound should revise its scheduling process, improve its record keeping, and insure that complaints made on its 800 line are acted on and placed in drivers' files, the board said.

And it recommended that the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission prohibit non-emergency parking in pull-off areas adjacent to the highway, provide adequate rest areas for nonemergency parking, and conduct more drills to improve handling of large-scale disasters.

Commentary: A hard line on BNSF-CN merger -- or is it?

WASHINGTON -- The reaction of many in the railroad industry and on Wall Street to last week's order by the Surface Transportation Board expanding the evidence it will consider in the Burlington Northern Santa Fe-Canadian National merger case was swift: "Oh, oh, they're not going to be able to get approval."

One wag even suggested the order had been written in the Union Pacific law department and forwarded to the STB through the railroad's Washington lobbying office.

Actually, there may be less to the order than meets the eye.

On the face of it, the STB has raised the bar for approval by inviting shippers, competitors and other interested parties to present evidence of the proposed transaction's long-term effects, including possible defensive mergers that competitors may feel they would be forced to enter.

The order brings to mind the Rock Island case, in which Union Pacific proposed to buy the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific, with a key route between Kansas City and Tucumcari, N.M., going to the Southern Pacific.

There were so many protesters in the case, initially filed in 1963, that the hearing examiner -- they're now called administrative law judges -- ended up virtually redesigning the entire western rail system.

By the time the Interstate Commerce Commission granted approval, the Rock had slipped into bankruptcy and UP walked away from the deal. The Rock is the only Class 1 railroad that ever was allowed to disappear; some of its routes were sold, others abandoned for scrap.

The situation now is different. The 12-year Rock Island case also led, in 1976, to inclusion of time limits on rail-merger proceedings in the Railroad Revitalization and Regulatory Reform Act. The ICC -- and now the STB -- was required to decide rail merger cases in 31 months.

There also aren't 40 Class 1 railroads to intervene. And the STB doesn't have the staff to really try to restructure the railroad industry, even if it wanted to do so.

The invitation to offer evidence of the cumulative and crossover effects of the proposed merger, including any subsequent financial transactions that it may trigger, is altogether unprecedented for the STB and its predecessor, the ICC. Moreover, it is likely to bring in altogether speculative and unsupported doomsday prophecies by protesters seeking to gain their own ends.

What would be relevant is an impartial and objective analysis of the promises the proponents in the past have made to gain approval of their mergers and their post-consummation performance, in terms of the impact on both rates and service. That's something the STB has shied away from like the plague, just as the ICC did before it.

A railroad executive who thinks there have been too many mergers, and who cannot be identified because of business relationships, comments: "BN/CN must necessarily beget UP/CP, which must necessarily beget BN/CN/NS or CSX and the same for UP/CP/CSX or NS, all of which would be bad.

"Given the experience of the past few years, even if one merger can be pulled off without an unmitigated disaster -- best case -- the mere fact that it drives others to do the same should be reason enough to not allow the first one to occur.

"To me the bottom line is the industry is less responsive, less innovative, less competitive, less profitable and has a lower stock price than it did before the most recent round of mergers beginning with BNSF. When it comes to modern railroads, the whole is worth less than the pieces!"

My friend forgets how the SP struggled with insufficient density to support its infrastructure and a lack of capital. Like it or not, the trend toward consolidation is occurring in most capital-intensive industries.

The so-called hard line, or shot across the bow, by STB may be more for public consumption than anything else.

The board, which has been accused of being a rubber stamp favoring railroads in merger and competitive-service cases, still awaits reauthorization by Congress. There are forces in Washington that want to transfer rail-merger oversight to the anti-trusters at the Justice Department, and the remaining STB functions to the Transportation Department.

The order broadening the BNSF-CN review issues may be STB Chairman Linda Morgan's way of saying "I hear you, and I will prove I can and will regulate in an even-handed way."

Does history repeat? The ICC faced similar complaints in 1986 when a serious effort was under way to roll back key provisions of the regulatory reform laws. The agency rejected the merger of Southern Pacific with the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe -- the only merger disapproved in the last 30 years.

- By Lawrence H Kaufman, national transportation correspondent, The Journal of Commerce

MINNESOTA: Northwest Airlines wins order to stop "sick-out"

ST. PAUL -- Northwest Airlines has won a temporary restraining order to prevent flight attendants from engaging in a "sick-out" to protest stalled contract negotiations.

The leader of Teamsters Local 2000 denied the union had sanctioned any illegal job action, but Northwest told a federal judge that a higher-than-normal illness rate around the holidays was "guerrilla warfare" by the attendants.

The airline said it has had to cancel more than 300 flights since Dec. 30.

U.S. District Judge Donovan Frank on Wednesday ordered Local 2000 to take immediate steps to stop its members from staging a sickout.

"The union's public posture may be one of denial, but the evidence indicates that its private strategy is one of advocating a concerted 'sickout,"' Frank wrote.

In a letter to members sent late Wednesday, Local 2000 President Billie Davenport again denied the airline's accusations.

"We must not let the company tactics pull us apart and, at the same time, we cannot let a handful of individual flight attendants determine their own strategy separate and apart from the majority," Davenport said.

The Railway Labor Act prohibits sickouts and other job actions against employers before the National Mediation Board has declared negotiations at an impasse.

Although mediated talks between Northwest and its flight attendants have been recessed since Dec. 7 and no talks are scheduled, the board has not declared an impasse to trigger a 30-day countdown to a strike.

The union of 11,000 Northwest flight attendants has been seeking a new contract since September 1996. In late August, Local 2000 members overwhelmingly rejected a tentative agreement that had been endorsed by union negotiators.