STB Proposes Emergency Amtrak Access to Freight Lines

The Surface Transportation Board is proposing a new regulation that would ensure Amtrak’s intercity passenger train system can keep operating even if an emergency knocks out its normal routes.

The regulation would allow the board to order special access to alternative rail lines, owned by freight railroads, to Amtrak if necessary during an emergency.

The board spells out the plan in a notice of proposed rulemaking, set for publication in the Jan. 6 Federal Register. It says that when the STB requires a freight railroad to take Amtrak trains on an emergency basis the agency also “shall promptly prescribe reasonable terms, including indemnification of the carrier by Amtrak against personal injury risk to which the carrier may be exposed.”

The STB says it already has statutory power to require other railroads to immediately carry Amtrak trains, when the passenger service’s normal rail routes might be disrupted by events such as weather outages, derailments, track maintenance or some other emergency.

But up until now it has operated under an STB order issued in 1996, which vested that authority in an individual agent of the board, who last issued an emergency routing order in 1997. That agent has since retired, the STB said, and Amtrak is expanding and upgrading its intercity passenger system under the Obama administration’s push to get more people into trains and off the nation’s crowded highways.

Keeping the trains moving on a reliable time schedule is seen as key to making sure riders will use those trains instead of taking their cars between cities.

Under its proposed change, the STB would delegate its authority for emergency access orders in the board chairman, followed in turn by the vice chairman and then the remaining board member if the others are not readily available.

Although Amtrak runs passenger trains more than 21,000 miles of track, except for some lanes mainly in the Northeast it does not own the tracks it uses but must negotiate access from freight railroads. Those freight trains usually run at much slower average speeds and the freight tracks may already have a substantial daily train volume, so Amtrak and the freight railroads work out detailed agreements to try to keep both operating smoothly.