The U.S. Surface Transportation Board has slammed shut the door on a proposal by 65 regional and short-line railroads to permit them to abandon track virtually without regulatory oversight -- a strategy that could have been used in collaboration with major railroads to avoid labor protection.

The regional and short-line railroads sought to exempt themselves from much of the existing abandonment oversight because they object to the burden and cost of having to seek regulatory authority.

For example, they do not like having to prove to the STB that they are losing money operating the line, or prove that the abandonment will not impose an undue burden on shippers or communities from the loss of rail service.

When rail regulations were extensively overhauled by Congress more than a decade ago, Congress was asked similarly to grease the skids for regional and short-line railroad abandonments. Congress declined.

In this proceeding before the STB, the UTU and other labor organizations warned the agency that allowing willy-nilly abandonment by regional and short-line railroads could encourage major railroads to bypass more stringent abandonment standards by selling track to short lines with the expectation the track would then be abandoned.

Already, major railroads sell line segments to regional and short-line railroads to escape labor protection provisions -- but there exists with those sales a public-policy expectation that the lines will continue to be operated by the regional and short-line railroads. That expectation would evaporate if the regionals and short lines could bypass having to make an economic case for abandonment.

Had the STB approved the sham petition, the eased abandonment procedure for regional and short-line railroads could have been used by BNSF, CSX, Canadian National, Canadian Pacific, Kansas City Southern, Norfolk Southern and Union Pacific in collaboration with regionals and short lines to facilitate a wholesale subversion of labor protection requirements in the U.S.

“The STB saw through this sham proposal and simply discontinued the proceeding," said UTU Associate General Counsel Dan Elliott, who represented the UTU.