WASHINGTON – A Government Accountability Office report on Precision Scheduled Railroading says the impact of the low-cost operating model on safety and service is unclear.
The Federal Railroad Administration told the GAO that the data are inconclusive about how PSR-related operational changes may have affected safety across the industry. There’s no clear link, for example, between a railroad’s implementation of PSR and its rates of derailments and employee injuries.
Rail worker complaints to the FRA regarding safety issues have increased sharply, however, rising from 200 in 2020 to 500 in 2021 and nearly 400 in 2022 through July.
Railroaders and inspectors told the GAO that the combination of fewer maintenance employees and a focus on moving trains out of yards as quickly as possible has resulted in railroads deferring maintenance on track and equipment, the report says.
“Some FRA and state inspectors said that as a result of this deferred maintenance, in some locations, they have seen an increase in certain types of defects in equipment and track, such as broken wheels, which could lead to accidents and injuries,” according to the report, which was sent to Congress last month.
The Surface Transportation Board told the GAO that “the extent to which PSR-associated changes have affected freight rail service is unclear,” the report says. But shippers told the GAO that they had concerns about paying more for service that’s less frequent and less reliable.
“A shipper that used to receive service from a railroad five days a week may now receive service two days a week, with potentially more railcars at one time,” the report says. “Four of the seven Class I railroads told us that they chose to reduce the frequency of service to some smaller customers when the railroad could deliver all of the customer’s cars in fewer days of service.”
A lack of sufficient crew and locomotives has hindered railroads’ ability to recover from disruptions, one railroad and “other stakeholders” told the GAO.
“Most stakeholders we interviewed stated that—by reducing the number of staff and locomotives to increase asset use—railroads may have reduced the resilience of the rail network to respond to unexpected events such as extreme weather and the COVID-19 pandemic,” the report says.
The report, which looked at rail data from 2011 to 2022, was requested by Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., Rep. Donald Payne Jr., D-N.J., and Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis.
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