Description: Safety News 01/05/01 BMWE Opposes BNSF Waiver Request.

January 5, 2001

FRARWS
Docket Clerk
DOT Central Docket Management Facility
Room PL-401
Washington, DC 20590-0001

Re: Docket No. FRA-2000-7926

Dear Sir or Madam:

The Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employes (BMWE), a rail labor organization representing 50,000 railroad workers who build, maintain, inspect, and repair railroad track and related structures throughout North America, oppose the granting of a Waiver of Compliance to the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad (BNSF) in the above referenced docket.

BNSF seeks a waiver from the requirements of 49 CFR, Part 213.55, Alignment. Part 213.55 limits the maximum amount that track alignment may deviate from uniformity. BNSF's petition requests a waiver to establish intermediate values for alignment deviations over 2191 BNSF track miles. According to the petitioner, "the intermediate values would be more restrictive than those prescribed for FRA Class 4 track, but less restrictive than those prescribed for FRA Class 5 track."

BMWE opposes the granting of BNSF's waiver request. The Track Safety Standards, 49 CFR Part 213, were extensively reviewed, and revised or amended where necessary, under the auspices of the Rail Safety Advisory Committee (RSAC). The RSAC Track Safety Standards Working Group was comprised of representatives of the railroad industry, including the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad and the Association of American Railroads (AAR), railroad labor, including the BMWE, and a number of interested stakeholder including state government, track equipment manufacturers, and FRA. The Volpe Center, the research and development arm of the Department of Transportation, was also utilized extensively by the Track Working Group to research and model various track alignment scenarios. The extensive research and modeling by Volpe formed the basis for the Working Group's recommendations related to Part 213.55 and Subpart C revisions. The Track Safety Standards Final Rule was published in the Federal Register on June 22, 1998 (Federal Register, Volume 63, No. 119), with an effective date of September 21, 1998. The revisions to Part 213.55 were agreed to by consensus of the Working Group members, including BNSF and AAR, and at no time was the issue of intermediate values for Track Classes raised by BNSF or any other carrier.

Part 213.55 establishes maximum allowable alignment deviations for both tangent track and curved track. After thorough review and analysis by the Working Group, the allowable deviations of the mid-offset from a 62-foot line (tangent track) and the allowable deviations of the mid-offset from a 62-foot cord (curved track) for Track Classes 1-5 were not changed during the recent revisions to Part 213 due to the recognized safety performance of these allowable maximum deviations. The Working Group did, however, introduce a 31-foot chord requirement (in addition to the 62-foot chord requirement) for measuring alignment on curves in Classes 3 through 5 track. The recommendation by the Working Group to introduce a 31-foot cord requirement was adopted in the Final Rule to control transient short wavelength variations in alignment. This control was considered necessary in view of consensus-based revisions to §213.57 which introduced an "averaging" approach for the application of the V-max formula in determining the maximum allowable operating speed for each curve. The Track Working Group recommended, and the Final Rule adopted, that an "average" of the alignment and cross-level measurements through a track segment in the body of a curve be used in the formula to arrive at the maximum authorized speed. Thus, BMWE believes the establishment of intermediate valuesas proposed by BNSF will affect other sections of Part 213-Subpart C, Track Geometry, and will also create significant compliance and enforcement difficulties for BNSF and FRA track inspectors.

The maximum allowable operating speeds established in Section 213.9 for both freight and passenger trains in Track Classes 1-5 have remained consistent and have served the industry and FRA well for decades. BNSF has provided no safety rational for their request to deviate from these time-tested speed ranges and corresponding track maintenance requirements. Simply stated, if the BNSF wishes to operate freight trains within the Track Class 5 speed range, they should be required to maintain the trackage in question to Track Class 5 minimum standards. Should BNSF not desire to maintain their trackage at Track Class 5 minimum standards, then they currently have the option of reducing operating speeds to the next lowest Track Class to which their trackage complies.

BNSF's proposal to rely upon Individual Subdivision Special Instructions and System Special Instructions to assure operational safety under their requested waiver is suspect, especially when one considers the ever increasing burden on train crews to comply with a dizzying array of Special Instructions, bulletin orders, track restrictions, train handling characteristics, work limits, etc. In addition, the Railroad Locomotive Safety Standards, 49 CFR Part 229.117, Speed Indicators, require locomotives operating above 30 MPH to be equipped with a speed indicator which is accurate within +/- five miles per hour. Therefore, a train whose speed indicator reads 70 MPH may actually be operating at 75 MPH due to the allowable +/- five MPH fluctuation between actual speed and the speed indication reading. This +/- five MPH fluctuation in the accuracy of the speed indicator is in conflict with BNSF's argument that "the allowable freight train speeds are at the lower end of the Class 5 speed regime, and the existence of various operating restrictions which closely control freight train speeds within the 61 to 70 mph range" (emphasis added).

Finally, the petitioner also states "there have been no reportable or non-reportable derailments attributed to irregular alinement (FRA Cause Code T108) over these 2191 miles in the past five years." BMWE asserts that the absence of derailments attributed to irregular alignment (FRA Cause Code T108) over these 2191 miles of trackage is a testament to the effectiveness of the requirements of Part 213.55 and the related requirements stipulated in the whole of 213-Subpart C, Track Geometry. Thus, BMWE believes these safety statistics provide further evidence as to why the current requirements of Subpart C should be preserved in total and the waiver should be denied.

For the purposes stated above and in the interest of railroad safety, BMWE respectfully requests the above-referenced waiver petition be denied in its entirety.

Respectfully,

Mac A. Fleming
President
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