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34–779 PDF 2007

FATIGUE IN THE RAIL INDUSTRY

(110–8)

HEARINGS

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON

RAILROADS, PIPELINES, AND HAZARDOUS 

MATERIALS 

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON 

TRANSPORTATION AND 

INFRASTRUCTURE 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

FEBRUARY 13, 2007

Printed for the use of the 

Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure

(

COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE 

JAMES L. OBERSTAR, Minnesota, Chairman 

NICK J. RAHALL, II, West Virginia 

PETER A. DEFAZIO, Oregon 

JERRY F. COSTELLO, Illinois 

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of 

Columbia 

JERROLD NADLER, New York 

CORRINE BROWN, Florida 

BOB FILNER, California 

EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas 

GENE TAYLOR, Mississippi 

JUANITA MILLENDER-MCDONALD, 

California 

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland 

ELLEN O. TAUSCHER, California 

LEONARD L. BOSWELL, Iowa 

TIM HOLDEN, Pennsylvania 

BRIAN BAIRD, Washington 

RICK LARSEN, Washington 

MICHAEL E. CAPUANO, Massachusetts 

JULIA CARSON, Indiana 

TIMOTHY H. BISHOP, New York 

MICHAEL H. MICHAUD, Maine 

BRIAN HIGGINS, New York 

RUSS CARNAHAN, Missouri 

JOHN T. SALAZAR, Colorado 

GRACE F. NAPOLITANO, California 

DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois 

DORIS O. MATSUI, California 

NICK LAMPSON, Texas 

ZACHARY T. SPACE, Ohio 

MAZIE K. HIRONO, Hawaii 

BRUCE L. BRALEY, Iowa 

JASON ALTMIRE, Pennsylvania 

TIMOTHY J. WALZ, Minnesota 

HEATH SHULER, North Carolina 

MICHAEL A. ACURI, New York 

HARRY E. MITCHELL, Arizona 

CHRISTOPHER P. CARNEY, Pennsylvania 

JOHN J. HALL, New York 

STEVE KAGEN, Wisconsin 

STEVE COHEN, Tennessee 

JERRY MCNERNEY, California 

JOHN L. MICA, Florida 

DON YOUNG, Alaska 

THOMAS E. PETRI, Wisconsin 

HOWARD COBLE, North Carolina 

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee 

WAYNE T. GILCHREST, Maryland 

VERNON J. EHLERS, Michigan 

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio 

RICHARD H. BAKER, Louisiana 

FRANK A. LOBIONDO, New Jersey 

JERRY MORAN, Kansas 

GARY G. MILLER, California 

ROBIN HAYES, North Carolina 

HENRY E. BROWN, JR., South Carolina 

TIMOTHY V. JOHNSON, Illinois 

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania 

SAM GRAVES, Missouri 

BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania 

JOHN BOOZMAN, Arkansas 

SHELLEY MOORE CAPITO, West Virginia 

JIM GERLACH, Pennsylvania 

MARIO DIAZ-BALART, Florida 

CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania 

TED POE, Texas 

DAVID G. REICHERT, Washington 

CONNIE MACK, Florida 

JOHN R. ‘RANDY’ KUHL, JR., New York 

LYNN A WESTMORELAND, Georgia 

CHARLES W. BOUSTANY, JR., Louisiana 

JEAN SCHMIDT, Ohio 

CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan 

THELMA D. DRAKE, Virginia 

MARY FALLIN, Oklahoma 

VERN BUCHANAN, Florida 

(II)

SUBCOMMITTEE ON RAILROADS, PIPELINES, AND HAZARDOUS 

MATERIALS 

CORRINE BROWN, Florida Chairwoman 

JERROLD NADLER, New York 

LEONARD L. BOSWELL, Iowa 

JULIA CARSON, Indiana 

GRACE F. NAPOLITANO, California 

NICK LAMPSON, Texas 

ZACHARY T. SPACE, Ohio 

BRUCE L. BRALEY, Iowa 

TIMOTHY J. WALZ, Minnesota 

NICK J. RAHALL II, West Virginia 

PETER A. DEFAZIO, Oregon 

JERRY F. COSTELLO, Illinois 

EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas 

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland 

MICHAEL H. MICHAUD, Maine 

DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois 

JAMES L. OBERSTAR, Minnesota 

(ex officio) 

BILL SHUSTER, Pennylvania 

THOMAS E. PETRI, Wisconsin 

WAYNE T. GILCHREST, Maryland 

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio 

JERRY MORAN, Kansas 

GARY G. MILLER, California 

HENRY E. BROWN, JR., South Carolina 

TIMOTHY V. JOHNSON, Illinois 

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania 

SAM GRAVES, Missouri 

JIM GERLACH, Pennsylvania 

MARIO DIAZ-BALART, Florida 

LYNN A. WESTMORELND, Georgia 

JOHN L. MICA, Florida 

(ex officio) 

(III)

(V)

CONTENTS Page 

Summary of Subject Matter .................................................................................... vii

TESTIMONY 

Boardman, Hon. Joseph H., Administrator, Federal Railroad Administration, 

accompanied by Grady C. Cothen, Jr., Deputy Associate Administrator for 

Safety Standards and Program Development, Federal Railroad Administration; ....................................................................................................................... 3

Brunkenhoefer, James, National Legislative Director, United Transportation 

Union ..................................................................................................................... 26

Dealy, David, Vice President, Transportation, BNSF Railway ............................ 26

Hamberger, Edward R., President and Chief Executive Officer, Association 

of American Railroads ......................................................................................... 26

Hursh, Steven R., President, Institutes for Behavior Resources ......................... 11

Parker, Leonard, Legislative Director, Brotherhood of Railroad Signalmen ...... 26

Pontolillo, Thomas A., Director of Regulatory Affairs, Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen ........................................................................ 26

Rosenker, Hon. Mark V., Chairman, National Transportation Safety Board .... 3

Sherry, Patrick, Ph.D., Professor, University of Denver ...................................... 11

PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS 

Brown, Hon. Corrine, of Florida ............................................................................. 196

Costello, Hon. Jerry F., of Illinois .......................................................................... 230

Mica, Hon. John L., of Florida ................................................................................ 272

Oberstar, Hon. James L., of Minnesota ................................................................. 275

PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED BY WITNESSES 

Boardman, Hon. Joseph H ...................................................................................... 48

Brunkenhoefer, James ............................................................................................. 201

Dealy, David ............................................................................................................. 232

Hamberger, Edward R. ........................................................................................... 243

Hursh, Steven R. ..................................................................................................... 261

Parker, Leonard ....................................................................................................... 278

Pontolillo, Thomas A. .............................................................................................. 287

Rosenker, Mark V. ................................................................................................... 302

Sherry, Patrick ......................................................................................................... 311

SUBMISSIONS FOR THE RECORD 

Boardman, Hon. Joseph H., Administrator, Federal Railroad Administration:

Responses to questions ........................................................................................ 57 

Responses to questions and attachments concerning fatigue ........................... 65

Report, Current Status of Fatigue Management in the Railroad Industry, 

Patrick Sherry, Ph.D, Associate Professor, Director, National Center for 

Intermodal Transportation, Intermodal Transportation Institute, University of Denver, July 25, 2006 ........................................................................... 69

Fax from BNSF Railway Company, description of computer-based training 

courses offered by the National Academy of Railroad Sciences, Overland 

Park, Kansas ..................................................................................................... 176

Canadian National Railway, summary of fatigue training program and 

three CN brochures .......................................................................................... 180

CSX Transportation, Inc., email ......................................................................... 187

Norfolk Southern Corp., email and attachment listing Norfolk Southern 

initiatives on work/rest education and training ............................................. 188

Union Pacific Railroad company, email and attachment listing Union Pacific videos and brochures on various subjects, including alertness ............. 190

Page

VI

Hamberger, Edward R., President and Chief Executive Officer, Association 

of American Railroads, response on Norfolk Southern’s use of camp cars ...... 46

Rosenker, Hon. Mark V., Chairman, National Transportation Safety Board, 

responses to questions ......................................................................................... 307

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(1)

FATIGUE IN THE RAIL INDUSTRY 

Tuesday, February 13, 2007

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 

COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE, 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON RAILROADS, PIPELINES AND HAZARDOUS

MATERIALS, 

Washington, DC. 

The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 2:00 p.m., in room 

2167, Rayburn House Office Building, the Honorable Corrine 

Brown [chairwoman of the subcommittee] presiding. 

Ms. BROWN. Will the Subcommittee come to order? 

The Subcommittee is meeting today to hear testimony on fatigue 

in the rail industry. 

Let me just say from the onset because the Federal Government 

is shutting down at 2:00, we are going to try to conduct this hearing within an hour. There is going to be restraint on my part, the 

Ranking Member’s part and the members, and also we are going 

to hold to the five minute rule. 

According to the FRA, human factors are responsible for nearly 

40 percent of all train accidents, and a new study confirms that fatigue plays a role in approximately one out of four of these accidents. Research analysis of the 30 day work schedule of locomotive 

crews represent 1.40 train accidents and not surprisingly found a 

strong correlation between the crew levels of alertness and the likelihood that they would be involved in an accident. The NTSB investigators have reached similar conclusions. 

The Hours of Service Law which was originally enacted in 1907, 

amended in 1969, is outdated. It deals only with acute fatigue, not 

cumulative fatigue. Since the rail industry is remarkably different 

today compared to 40 or 100 years, there are some significant 

shortcomings in the law. 

For example, the law does not properly address limbo time which 

is a time when crew workers’ assignment is finished and they are 

waiting for transportation back to their homes. During limbo time, 

crew members are required to stay awake, alert and able to respond to any situation which means the crew can be on the job for 

as long as 15 to 20 hours at a time. 

In the case of the Texas accident which the NTSB will mention 

this afternoon, the engineer worked longer than 14 hours on 11 

days prior to the accident. On one of those days, he worked a total 

of 22 hours, 12 hours and 10 hours in limbo time. The Texas accident raised some longstanding concerns with the Hours of Service 

Law and railroad operation procedures. 

2

Although the NTSB has repeatedly asked the FRA to make improvements to Hours of Service and address fatigue, the FRA singly does not have the regulatory authority to do so. So it is up to 

Congress to take action. I understand the railroads are busier than 

ever and need all of the manpower they can get, and I understand 

that the railroad workers are happy to work long and hard just to 

make ends meet, but these hearings are about safety, and we have 

an opportunity to stop a large percentage of accidents if we use 

sound science to determine a safe and productive work schedule. 

I want to welcome our distinguished panelists today, and I am 

looking forward to working with you in the hearing and to hearing 

your ideas on reducing fatigue in the railroad industry and 

strengthening the overall safety environment. 

Before I recognize Mr. Shuster for his opening remarks, I ask 

unanimous consent to allow 30 days for all members to revise and 

extend their remarks and to permit the submission of additional 

statements and material by members and witnesses, without objection. 

Mr. Shuster? 

Mr. SHUSTER. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. I want to thank 

you for putting together this hearing today on fatigue in the railroad industry. 

As we have heard over the last two weeks from several people, 

fatigue has been identified as a contributing factor in several serious accidents. If reducing worker fatigue equals reducing accidents, 

then I am all for it. 

However, when examining this issue, we must also keep in mind 

that our existing rail safety laws have been a remarkable success. 

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the rail industry is 

rated safer than manufacturing, aviation and trucking and from 

the figures I have seen, statistically, working on the rails is safer 

than working in a grocery store. According to testimony delivered 

at our last hearing, there have been a 71 percent decline in train 

accidents since 1978. Total rail-related fatalities declined 46 percent while total employee deaths have dropped 80 percent. 

Worker fatigue is certainly an important issue, and we need to 

ensure that railroad workers receive adequate rest. When addressing these issues, we must also remember that even well rested humans sometimes make mistakes. One of the best ways to combat 

human error is through advanced technology. Positive train control 

can stop a train if an engineer mistakenly runs a red light, new 

tank car designs can prevent the accidental hazmat releases, and 

advanced track inspection cars can detect track flaws invisible to 

the human eye. We must continue to look forward and explore new 

technologies to keep our railroads safe. 

In closing, Madam Chairwoman, I would like to thank you again 

for holding these hearings on fatigue and thank all of the witnesses 

that are here today to testify before us. I am looking forward to a 

most informative hearing today. 

Thank you and I yield back. 

Ms. BROWN. Thank you. 

The other members will have an opportunity to submit their 

opening remarks and questions. 

3

Now I want to welcome the Honorable Joseph Boardman who is 

the Administrator for the Federal Railroad Administration. Mr. 

Cothen, who is the Deputy Assistant Administrator of Safety 

Standards and Program Development at the FRA, is joining him 

today. 

TESTIMONY OF THE HONORABLE JOSEPH H. BOARDMAN, ADMINISTRATOR, FEDERAL RAILROAD ADMINISTRATION, ACCOMPANIED BY GRADY C. COTHEN, JR., DEPUTY ASSOCIATE 

ADMINISTRATOR FOR SAFETY STANDARDS AND PROGRAM 

DEVELOPMENT, FEDERAL RAILROAD ADMINISTRATION; 

THE HONORABLE MARK V. ROSENKER, CHAIRMAN, NATIONAL TRANSPORTATION SAFETY BOARD 

Mr. BOARDMAN. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman and Mr. Shuster. 

In an effort to get underway quickly, I am very pleased to be 

here today for Secretary Peters to testify regarding the issue of fatigue and its relationship to the safety of railroad operations. 

In any given year, approximately 35 to 40 percent of train accidents, and very likely the majority of railroad employee fatalities 

and personal injuries, involve what the safety community refers to 

as human factors. As I testified before this Subcommittee last July, 

we are here to maximize safety. We need to make sure that we 

have good rules and procedures, effective training, system accountability, and positive safety culture. 

I also called attention to the need for employees to be fit for duty, 

well rested, free of alcohol and other impairing drugs, and free of 

medical conditions that could compromise performance. In the 

1980’s, the FRA led the way in targeting alcohol and drug use, and 

the Railroad Safety Advisory Committee is currently exploring the 

establishment of medical standards for safety-critical railroad employees. This effort includes a sharp focus on sleep disorders which 

can contribute to fatigue. 

My written testimony addresses the broad range of fatigue initiatives we have underway; but, in the few minutes that I have here 

today, I would like to focus particularly on the providing of employees with the opportunity to get needed rest. 

As you stated, we are approaching the 100th anniversary of the 

Hours of Service Act on March 4th of this year, and its substance 

as applied to train crews has not been amended for over 37 years. 

For the last 25 years the National Transportation Safety Board has 

been calling attention to the apparent role of fatigue in major train 

accidents. For much of that time, FRA, labor, and management 

have worked together to get a better understanding of this problem 

and to develop effective responses. 

This past November, I had the pleasure of releasing a study that 

reported the largest body of fatigue-related data from the railroad 

industry ever made public. The study documented successful validation and calibration of a fatigue model that may be used to 

evaluate the scheduling of railroad operating personnel. The underlying data also confirmed what we inferred in other studies, that 

is, that a significant number of the most serious accidents involve 

employees whose performance is adversely affected by fatigue. 

4

Today I am here asking for your support for legislation that will 

permit us to put into action what we have learned. We propose to 

sunset the hours of service laws but retain its protections as interim regulations. Then we would convene the Railroad Safety Advisory Committee to develop new science-based requirements that 

can help to reduce human factor accidents and casualties. 

We will need revised benchmark limits on work hours and requirements for rest periods to provide simple guidance for fixed 

schedules where that will suffice, but with the tools now available, 

we will be also able to recognize fatigue management approaches 

that include careful evaluation of a wide variety of more flexible 

work schedules by validated techniques. 

Madam Chairwoman, some will tell you that statutory hours of 

service should live on because, although that Boardman fellow can 

be trusted for now, who knows who will follow him? I understand 

the concern that hard-won gains might be lost, but one thing I 

have learned at the FRA is that we are subject to an incredible 

amount of oversight and public scrutiny, and we wouldn’t and 

couldn’t go far wrong even if we wanted. We are a part of the U.S. 

Department of Transportation, and FRA as an institution can be 

trusted to take this on just like the FAA or the FMCSA, and we 

have prepared ourselves to do it. 

Others will tell you that the days of excessively long hours are 

over. They will say that a variety of improved practices are in 

place. The situation is under control. In fact, we are gratified that 

many employees are better off from the point of view of adequate 

rest than they were in 2004 and 2005. But history teaches us that 

unexpected forces can sweep rapidly through this industry and that 

when the spotlight is not on, safety can suffer. 

As I pointed out in my prepared remarks, the solution to this 

problem should not break the bank. Even during the worst of 

times, employees have received adequate opportunity for rest most 

of the time, and most employees take advantage of those opportunities. Let us close this remaining gap, and let us ensure the solution 

holds. I believe that is done by giving the FRA the ability to apply 

scientifically-based fatigue management through RSAC, advised by 

RSAC, and with regulation-based hours of service. 

Madam Chairwoman, thanks for the opportunity to talk about 

the problem of fatigue, which affects all of us in every walk of life 

but which looms largest when life is itself at stake. FRA looks forward to working with this Subcommittee as you move forward with 

rail safety reauthorization, and our bill will be delivered to Congress tonight. 

Ms. BROWN. I ask unanimous consent to permit the gentleman 

from New York, Mr. Kuhl, to sit with the Subcommittee and ask 

questions throughout the course of the hearing. Without objection, 

so ordered. 

I welcome the Honorable Mark Rosenker who is Chairman of the 

National Transportation Safety Board. 

Let me remind the witnesses to try to limit their oral statements 

to five minutes. Your entire statement will appear in the record. 

Mr. ROSENKER. Thank you, Chairwoman Brown, Ranking Member Shuster and distinguished members of the Subcommittee. I 

have submitted my written testimony for the record, and I wish to 

5

thank you for the opportunity to testify on this important safety 

issue: fatigue in the rail industry. 

I plan to discuss three areas of concern today: first, the decades 

long history of fatigue-caused railroad accidents that the Safety 

Board has investigated; secondly, the equally long history of safety 

recommendations that we have made to address the problem; and 

finally, the frustration we share with the Federal Railroad Administration regarding its lack of legislative authority to address the 

root causes of fatigue through scientifically-based principles of 

work load and fatigue management. 

Since 1984, fatigue-related train accidents have continued until 

the most recent collision between two freight trains at Macdona, 

Texas in June of 2004. Both crew members failed to obtain sufficient restorative rest before reporting for duty because of their ineffective use of off duty time and the railroad’s train crew scheduling 

practices. Work as a train crew member often entails an unpredictable work schedule. That unpredictability may have encouraged 

this crew to delay obtaining rest. 

The work schedules of rail crew members permit repetitive 12 

hour duty days that we know lead to cumulative fatigue. When the 

workers commute, limbo time and family responsibilities are added 

to those 12 hour daily schedules. The conditions for exceedingly 

long delays that lead to acute fatigue are quite evident. Further, 

the relatively short mandatory periods of time off may not afford 

the opportunity for fully restorative sleep. 

In the past two decades, the Safety Board has issued 33 recommendations specific to railroad employee fatigue. The FRA received eight, and others have gone to rail carriers and operating 

unions. Just as our accident history traces the problem of fatigue 

in railroad accidents, the Safety Board’s recommendation history 

defines the actions that we think could address the problem including enhanced nighttime supervision, crew alerters, actions to reduce the irregularity and unpredictability of crew members’ workrest schedules, education and counseling to help crew members 

avoid sleep deprivation and finally the establishment of rail carrier 

policies that would allow an employee to report off duty when they 

are impaired by lack of sleep. 

Recommendations to address the issue of operator fatigue were 

placed on the Board’s most wanted list in 1990. One recommendation in 1999 asked the FRA to establish scientifically based Hours 

of Service regulations that set limits on hours of service, provide 

predictable work and rest schedules and consider circadian 

rhythms in human sleep and rest requirements. The FRA acknowledged the seriousness of the effects of fatigue on safety, but it stated it did not possess the authority to change Federal Hours of 

Service. The FRA also stated that the DOT had attempted to seek 

Congressional authority in 1991 to bring about modernization of 

Federal Hours of Service laws in a bill submitted to Congress. 

However, according to the FRA, the bill was not supported by rail 

labor and rail management, and unfortunately it was not enacted 

in the 102nd Congress. Therefore, our 1999 safety recommendation 

was classified ′′closed, reconsidered′′ in recognition of the FRA’s 

lack of authority to be responsive to the recommendation. 

6

However, after more railroad accidents were attributed to fatigue 

including the accident in Macdona, Texas, the Safety Board last 

year recommended that the FRA require railroads to use scientifically based principles when assigning work schedules and establish requirements that limit train crew members’ limbo time. The 

FRA in October, 2006 again responded by saying that the FRA 

lacked rulemaking authority over duty hours which the FRA says 

precludes it from making use of almost a century of scientific learning on the issue of sleep-wake cycles and fatigue-induced performance failures. 

We believe the FRA needs the authority to regulate crew member 

work schedule practices and work limits and continue to support 

changes that would provide the FRA that authority. 

Madam Chairwoman, that completes my statement, and I will be 

happy to respond to your questions. 

Ms. BROWN. Thank you. 

Mr. Boardman, my questions mainly go to you. You are working 

on a bill, and you mentioned a need for legislation to address fatigue. Why not leave this up to labor and management to negotiate 

this? 

Mr. BOARDMAN. Yes, Madam Chairwoman, you will have the bill 

this evening. 

Basically, because the public is really not represented in labor 

and management negotiations and at the collective bargaining 

table, yet the public is the one that is at risk along the tracks when 

the workers are not rested and an accident occurs. Companies and 

labor organizations have their own agendas to deal with, and to 

place this additional agenda on them at the collective bargaining 

table, we don’t think is the right approach. 

Ms. BROWN. Can you give us the five main points of the bill that 

you all are going to be bringing forth? 

Mr. BOARDMAN. Certainly, one of them is the hours of service 

regulation, in and of itself. In addressing limbo time, for example, 

we may be asking for a performance-based approach that will take 

into consideration any prior sleep deficit, the ability to plan rest, 

the duration of the covered service period, time spent awaiting 

transportation, time, in transportation, of the day with the circadian rhythms, as the Chairman talked about, and any other factors 

that may be important. 

In terms of saving you time on this particular Committee, I can 

list each of the elements and get back to you on the major parts 

of the safety bill itself, but it includes grade crossings, and it includes some clarifications, several areas that I would rather not go 

into now to save you time. 

Ms. BROWN. Thank you. 

Did you want to respond? 

Mr. ROSENKER. I am in support of what the Administrator is trying to do. We are quite supportive of the action of trying to get the 

Congress to change the way the legislation is written. It is the only 

mode of transportation that the Hours of Service are dictated by 

statute rather than regulatory action. 

Ms. BROWN. Mr. Shuster? 

Mr. SHUSTER. Thank you. 

7

Mr. Boardman, I think you just mentioned you did not have 

management or labor consulting when you were drafting what you 

are going to propose here, is that correct? 

Ms. BROWN. In terms of the bill itself. For the regulations, 

though, the way that will be handled is we will go into the RSAC 

Committee which is the Rail Safety Advisory Committee where 

both labor and management are represented. 

Mr. SHUSTER. But on the legislation, though, you have put something forward. Did you consult with management and labor? 

Mr. BOARDMAN. We have consulted on a regular basis and understand what labor and management believe or think about many of 

these things, but in the clearance process of the Federal Government, they are not in that clearance process. 

Mr. SHUSTER. But you feel confident of their views because obviously if we start to draft legislation, before we put something 

through, management and labor are certainly going to want to 

weight in and make sure that they are heard. 

Mr. BOARDMAN. We believe it is absolutely critical that management and labor are heard in whatever it is that we develop in 

terms of a performance approach on the regulations, yes. 

Mr. SHUSTER. You testified about FRA’s development of a new 

mathematical model that is going to be helpful in putting forth 

guidelines in rail’s future fatigue management. Have you put that 

out into the scientific community? Have they reviewed it and what 

were their findings on that new mathematical model? 

Mr. BOARDMAN. I think one of the reasons I brought Mr. Cothen 

with me today is the history and the amount of detail that have 

been involved in this whole scientific analysis. So, if it is OK with 

you, I would ask him to answer that. 

Mr. SHUSTER. Sure, absolutely. 

Mr. COTHEN. The underlying model, the scientific model———

Mr. SHUSTER. Can you pull the microphone closer? 

Mr. COTHEN. Yes, sir. 

Mr. SHUSTER. Thank you. 

Mr. COTHEN. The scientific model which is embodied in the tool 

which we are using at the Federal Railroad Administration has 

been developed by the U.S. Department of Defense and has been 

peer-reviewed in a major conference in which sleep models were reviewed by established experts in the field. In that review, it was 

concluded to be the most nearly accurate model available currently. 

What we have then done is we have taken the model, and we 

have applied it to real life railroad data, 400 human-factor train accidents and 1,000 non-human-factor accidents, and we have looked 

for correspondence to see if what one would think it would predict 

is in fact predicted. It satisfied that test with a high degree of statistical significance. I am sure that there will be additional peer review of the model as time goes forward. 

Mr. SHUSTER. Thank you. 

As we move forward on this issue, I know Mr. Boardman has already said that he doesn’t have the statutory ability to change the 

law, but from what I have seen and what I have read is that the 

average worker in the rail industry is working about 250 hours as 

opposed to a trucker who works about 240 hours and then down 

from there, an airline pilot, around 100 hours a month. As we start 

8

to look at this and if we are going to pass laws and enforce the 

time standards onto railroad companies and into labor, how are we 

going to enforce that with the individual? 

I know myself, I go home with good intentions of going home and 

having eight hours of sleep, but then my son has homework, a 

project and I stay up later than I want to. How are we going to 

make certain that the worker, that the engineer, that the conductor 

is going to abide by those laws when those things come up in life? 

That is of great concern, and I would certainly be opposed to forcing an engineer or anybody to say you have to have eight hours of 

sleep, and in fact how do we enforce that? 

What are your thoughts on those types of situations? 

Mr. BOARDMAN. I think, first of all, 250 hours, when you think 

about it, is 3,000 hours a year. That is 60 hours a week. So that 

is six ten-hour days a week on average, and that really is only an 

average. It is not clear, when that is talked about, as to whether 

or not that includes or doesn’t include limbo time, and limbo time 

is neither time worked nor time off, and you are going to hear more 

about that as we go forward. So it could be a lot more than the 

250 hours, or perhaps it is less. 

We are not actually saying that, and we know in the industry 

they want rested workers, and certainly workers want to be rested. 

I think one of the things that the model really shows and the scientific work shows is that if you have more time to rest, you will 

rest more. In some cases, because of the push that is out there 

today or has been out there in the past, there has been an inability 

to provide that kind of rest. 

But, again, our intent is to have a fatigue management mode or 

model, or part of what it is that we want to do in terms of regulation, doing something very different than FMCSA or FAA or others 

have done in the past. With the history that we have here, with 

over 100 years, with the scientific knowledge that we have today, 

and with the ability for us hopefully to come to an agreement 

where we know many progressive issues with railroads and unions 

have looked at how they might solve this, we can come together 

with a performance-based fatigue management plan. 

Mr. SHUSTER. I know if my time has expired, but I wonder if Mr. 

Rosenker could just respond to that. 

Mr. ROSENKER. There has to be a bit of personal accountability 

in this too. No one is in your home, making sure that if you have 

the appropriate 10 hours or 8 hours of rest that has been guaranteed to you by the Hours of Service rules and that you are going 

to take advantage of that. But for the most part what you must be 

able to do is create at least that environment. The way the rules 

are right now in the railroad industry, that may not be accomplished. That may not be possible with this use of the limbo time. 

But I would like, if you will give me the opportunity, to compliment you, Mr. Shuster, and also my colleague at the FRA, the 

Administrator, on the recognition of the importance of a tool that 

we believe is the beginning of prevention of accidents in the railroad industry, and that is positive train control. We have seen 

some tremendous progress being made by the FRA and by the industry itself which will be a device ultimately in the event an engineer does, by accident, miss a signal or perhaps does something 

9

that may well be wrong in his locomotive. This device will help 

bring that locomotive to a stop and prevent a collision or an accident. So we are very, very pleased that we have seen this recognition and seen the progress by the Administrator. 

Mr. SHUSTER. Thank you. 

I have a number of questions. I will submit them for the record 

because I know the time constraints. Thank you. 

Ms. BROWN. Thank you. 

I just have one follow-up question. Mr. Boardman, how will the 

Administration be able to deal with limbo time? I guess the followup question is: Is limbo time paid for by all of the railroads or how 

is it handled? 

Mr. BOARDMAN. Limbo time is right now handled in that anybody who has limbo time is paid, but the interesting part of it is 

it is neither on-duty time nor is it off-duty time. It comes at the 

end of the hours of work schedule for the train crew, and it exists 

until their final relief point. 

What we are really looking for is really to have a performancebased approach, as I said, that can take into consideration any 

prior sleep deficit, the ability to plan rest, and the duration of the 

covered service period itself, and try to really work limbo time into 

an integral part of that analysis. 

Ms. BROWN. Thank you. 

Mrs. Napolitano? 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. Thank you. I will submit something for the 

record, but I will keep mine to a minimum. 

One of the things that, Mr. Rosenker, you indicated that the FRA 

does not have the authority to do certain things. If they don’t, who 

does? 

Mr. ROSENKER. In Hours of Service, Congress. In the 1907 legislation, it was created at 16 hours in the Hours of Service and 

changed later to 12 hours back in 1969. Although the FRA is in 

agreement with us philosophically, they don’t have the statutory 

responsibility or capability to make those amendments. That is 

what I believe they are asking for in their reauthorization. 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. Can you tell me if any of those long hours, 

what portion of that might be attributed to the lack of trained personnel to be able to step in and take over some of those jobs? 

Mr. ROSENKER. As far as the Hours of Service, I think both the 

operators and the companies wish to take advantage of as much 

operating time as they possibly can. I think that is the issue rather 

than lack of trained personnel at this time. 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. Then there is another one, that there have 

been fatigue training programs. Mr. Boardman, you have written 

in your testimony that railroads and labor organizations make significant efforts to deliver fatigue training programs and ensure ongoing awareness. Could you elaborate how effective these have 

been to reduce fatigue and improve safety? 

Mr. BOARDMAN. Congresswoman, education and training of the 

railroad employees themselves is really an important factor in fatigue countermeasures that the FRA would continue to evaluate. 

Fatigue is a complex issue, as you well know. 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. Sir, may I interrupt? 

Mr. BOARDMAN. Certainly. 

10

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. There is an issue here that is not answered 

and that is under the training programs, somebody gets a slide 

presentation and that is it or a pamphlet to read and that is supposed to be training. Am I correct? 

Mr. BOARDMAN. No. Actually, I think the industry has some Web 

sites now that people can go to, to talk about sleep hygiene. There 

has been a lot of study and work done to try to educate and train 

employees on what fatigue means. 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. Well, yes, true, but if they don’t have a computer, then whose time is it on that they have to go on a computer, 

say, in a board room? 

Mr. BOARDMAN. I don’t know the answer to that. 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. Well, that would go to the core of my question 

which is: How do you get these individuals educated on the programs that you have and could we have possibly a copy so that we 

can see what programs you have in effect? 

Mr. BOARDMAN. I think that with some of the work that Grady 

has done on the RSAC Committee, he can probably give you some 

real facts on that. 

Mr. COTHEN. Congresswoman, the National Rail Alertness Partnership and the Work-Rest Taskforce, which is a labor-management group, have talked about this and worked on this issue for 

a considerable amount of time, and I think that you will find that, 

in union publications which come to the homes of most of the employees and in railroad training programs, there is significant emphasis on the issue of fatigue and the importance of taking advantage of rest. 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. We are talking about training programs, sir, 

not the significance of getting rest. I am talking about training programs themselves, the actual training of the signalmen, of the locomotive engineers, of all the people that are involved. What training? To what extent do they have access to it? How many hours 

are required? When are they given the training? 

I have heard from a couple, and they say they do a slide presentation, and that is it. That is your training, kids. 

Mr. COTHEN. I think awareness and education in this area are 

something we need to continue to work on. 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. You are not answering my question, sir. What 

programs are there? 

Mr. BOARDMAN. Congresswoman, if you would like, I think it is 

best if what we did was give you a written response to your question. 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. If you would please with a copy of those programs for the record. 

Mr. BOARDMAN. Certainly, I will do that. 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. Thank you, Madam Chair. I yield back. 

[The information received may be found on page :]

Ms. BROWN. Mr. Space? 

Mr. SPACE. Thank you, Madam Chair. I have no questions at this 

time. 

Ms. BROWN. Mr. Lipinski? 

Mr. LIPINSKI. Thank you for your testimony. Right now, I just 

want to say I look forward to seeing tonight your recommendations, 

11

and I am sure that in the future we will have more to talk about 

on this issue. 

Thank you. 

Ms. BROWN. Mr. Walz? 

Mr. WALZ. No questions. 

Ms. BROWN. No questions, OK. 

I guess the last question. Do you have additional questions? 

Mr. Boardman, you mentioned that signal maintenance could be 

adversely affected by unscheduled trouble calls on top of the normal eight hour day. What does that mean and how would the Administration bill address this issue? 

Mr. BOARDMAN. Congresswoman, Madam Chairwoman, the signal employees can work up to 12 hours, but that can be increased 

by an additional 4 hours in case of an emergency. It was generally 

understood at the time the statute was passed that this could include one or more trouble calls due to a signal stuck on a red or 

a grade crossing warning system that either is continuously operating or failed to operate. This happens somewhat often, and if it 

is not followed by adequate rest, that can become a problem for the 

signal maintainer. 

Our bill would permit us to look at the whole picture and give 

them an opportunity for rest, give them an opportunity for rest 

prior to their tour of duty and the duration of their regular tour. 

We don’t want to set up restrictions that keep signal employees 

from responding to emergencies, but we do want to make sure that 

they are rested and able to handle them well. 

Ms. BROWN. Thank you. 

I want to thank the witnesses for their valuable testimony and 

members for their questions. 

The members of this Subcommittee may have some additional 

questions for the witnesses, and we will ask you to respond to them 

in writing. The hearing record will be held open for additional response. 

Thank you very much. 

Mr. BOARDMAN. Thank you, Madam Chair. 

Ms. BROWN. The second panel, please. 

The second panel is Dr. Hursh and Dr. Sherry. Is that correct? 

I want to welcome the second panel of witnesses, and I want to 

thank Dr. Hursh who serves as President of the Institutes for Behavior Resources in Baltimore, Maryland. He also serves as a professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. 

Next we have with us, Dr. Sherry who is a professor at the University of Denver’s Intermodal Transportation Institute. 

We are please to have you here with us this afternoon. Your full 

statement will be placed in the record. We would ask you to limit 

your testimony to five oral minutes and summarize it and then we 

will have some questions. I want to thank you and welcome you for 

coming out today. 

TESTIMONY OF STEVEN R. HURSH, Ph.D., PRESIDENT, INSTITUTES FOR BEHAVIOR RESOURCES; PATRICK SHERRY, 

PH.D., PROFESSOR, UNIVERSITY OF DENVER 

Dr. HURSH. Good afternoon, Madam Chairwoman and Ranking 

Member Shuster and other members of the Subcommittee. Thank 

12

you for inviting me to testify before you on the important subject 

of fatigue in the rail industry. 

The work I support was supported by the Federal Railroad Administration, but the remarks are my own perspective. 

By way of background, I am the former Director of Neuro Psychiatry of the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, home of the 

largest DOD sleep laboratory and the technology I report is the result of over 12 years of research to develop a fatigue model for the 

Defense Department and six years of investment by the FRA to 

adapt it for use by the railroads. The model has been independently reviewed by the scientific community and has been adopted 

as the Defense Department war fighter fatigue model. 

Today I report that this model has now been validated as a 

measure of fatigue in the rail industry that can predict accident 

risk in rail operations. The development opens the way for the rail 

industry to use fatigue models as part of effective fatigue risk management programs. I will suggest some actions that can be taken 

now as a result of this new development. 

Fatigue is a complex physiological state characterized by lack of 

alertness and reduced mental performance often accompanied by 

drowsiness. Fatigue is clearly more than falling asleep at the 

switch. Fatigue causes a range of performance changes, often without self-awareness. The factors that cause fatigue, inadequate sleep 

and the body clock, have been extensively studied and are well understood, but there is no biological marker like a breathalyzer for 

alcohol. In the absence of a biological marker, a predictive mathematical model of fatigue based on work schedule information can 

give the organization an objective fatigue risk measure. 

To test the validity of this technology, an FRA-sponsored study 

was just completed, conducted with the cooperation of five railroads 

and the labor unions which examined 1,400 accidents over 2 and 

a half years. The results I report today show the ability of a fatigue 

model to predict accidents caused by fatigue-induced human error. 

Chart 1 indicates that as predicted performance effectiveness 

scores decreased and fatigue increased, the risk of having a human 

factors accident increased, the blue dots. The results indicated a 

maximum increase risk of 65 percent at the highest level of fatigue 

and lowest effectiveness and a meaningful increase in risk when effectiveness scores were below 70. The fatigue model study that fatigue as measured by a fatigue model increases the risk of rail accidents. 

The question is how to respond to this information, and I shall 

offer several concepts for your consideration. First, fatigue cannot 

be totally eliminated. Approximately 22 percent of over the road 

rail operations occur between midnight and 6:00 a.m. when people 

are naturally less alert and risk is elevated by 10 to 20 percent. 

So the goal of fatigue management cannot be to eliminate risk but 

rather to minimize unnecessary fatigue and manage the consequences of fatigue. 

Within the necessary boundaries of Hours of Service rules, whatever they may be, effective evidence-based or performance-based fatigue risk management can effectively limit fatigue. Evidence of excessive fatigue shapes operating practices and individual lifestyle 

decisions towards reduced fatigue and better performance. 

13

The approach is based on four Ms: measurement, modeling, 

modification of practices and monitoring of results. At the center of 

the process, all the constituents—labor management, government—

supported by the scientific community are at the table to formulate 

solutions. The process is driven by evidence of success and provides 

for continuous performance improvement. 

I would encourage the adoption of such programs as a complement to Hours of Service regulations. There are a number of enabling practices that can facilitate the processes assessed in my 

testimony. 

Beyond the current initiatives, the FRA could play a key role in 

advancing the development of fatigue risk management programs 

under Hours of Service regulatory authority comparable to the 

other modes of transportation. The FRA could set standards for acceptable programs and, more importantly, exercise regulatory function to examine the objective evidence of program effectiveness. As 

a scientist, I endorse that approach as the best prospect to minimize fatigue and improve rail safety. 

I would be glad to accept any questions. Thank you very much. 

Ms. BROWN. How much additional time did you need, a couple 

more minutes? 

Dr. HURSH. No. I am fine, ma’am. 

Ms. BROWN. OK. 

All right, Dr. Sherry? 

Mr. SHERRY. Good afternoon, Chairwoman Brown and Ranking 

Member Shuster and other distinguished guests. It is my pleasure 

to testify before the Committee on this very important topic. 

Ensuring the safe and efficient movement of goods is key to our 

Nation’s economic security and continued economic viability. 

Today I hope to make three main points. First, simply changing 

the Hours of Service laws such as decreasing hours on duty or 

lengthening time off will not necessarily reduce fatigue. Second, 

railroads should be required to establish fatigue countermeasure 

plans, evaluated by independent scientific panels and then be held 

accountable for those plans. Third, providing funding to a consortium of research universities for the continued study of fatigue 

countermeasures and measurement tools would expedite the identification of successful fatigue management programs. 

Over the past 12 years at the Intermodal Transportation Institute and the National Center for Intermodal Transportation, we 

have in over a dozen studies of over 3,500 railroad employees who 

have completed fatigue surveys or worn actigraphs or other research measures. Their support has helped us to determine that 

there is no one single approach that is going to solve the problem 

and eliminate the risk of fatigue. I should point out that if it was 

that simple, labor and management would have agreed on it by 

now and we wouldn’t be here. 

Fatigue is caused both by a lack of sleep and by the circadian 

rhythms of the human body. The longer one is awake, the less alert 

one becomes, thereby decreasing cognitive effectiveness. So if the 

Hours of Service law were changed to give people 10 hours off between shifts, this would be helpful, but individuals would still experience lowered levels of alertness when working between 4:00 

and 5:00 in the morning. Plus, fatigue would still need to be manVerDate 0ct 09 2002 13:46 Aug 20, 2007 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00027 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\34779 HTRANS1 PsN: JASON
14

aged with additional with additional countermeasures suggesting 

the need then for a more comprehensive plan. Let us see here. 

Sleep length varies according to the time of day. Looking at this 

graph, we see that if an employee works a midnight shift and tries 

to go to sleep at 7:00 a.m. or 8:00 a.m., there is a strong likelihood 

that this individual will obtain only four and a half hours of sleep. 

Fatigue is a function of the combination of hours asleep, hours 

awake and time of day relative to the circadian rhythms, and this 

needs to be taken into consideration when managing fatigue. 

In a recent study, 30 railroad employees wore actigraphs for one 

month. The average amount of sleep for the total group was six 

and a half hours of sleep for each 24 hour period which is equivalent to the National average for shift workers as reported by the 

National Sleep Foundation. 

Inspecting the individual data, we found that a typical pool engineer had a schedule that demonstrated an acceptable overall average of sleep but masked the fact that individual sleep episodes 

were very low on particular days as evidenced by this graph, the 

little short bars. 

Notice the spikes in the profile where the individual slept long 

periods following shorter sleep periods. This is likely the result of 

an accumulated sleep debt which occurs when an individual obtains less than seven or eight hours of sleep per night over consecutive nights. 

The best research available suggest that a person’s reaction time 

decreases as cumulative sleep debt builds. Reaction times are 

thought to be related to unsafe acts. Thus, persons in this study 

appear to have developed sleep debt. In our sample, we found that 

people were working after having obtained less than five hours or 

more of sleep almost 50 percent of the time. 

This leads to my second point which is that due to the great variability in conditions and circumstances involved, it is recommended 

that railroads be required to develop and be held accountable for 

comprehensive fatigue management plans. This non-prescriptive 

approach is currently being used in Canada and Australia and 

would provide for the most comprehensive and most flexible application of scientific principles to the management of fatigue in the 

railroad industry. U.S.-based railroads with Canadian operations 

have already complied with this approach and have filed FMPs, fatigue management plans, with Transport Canada. 

The Union Pacific has begun to use this approach. A short time 

ago, I served as a member of an independent scientific panel commissioned to review the UP fatigue management plan. The independent panel, without the involvement of the regulators, was able 

to review the plan and make recommendations to improve it. 

Given that it is nearly impossible to come up with a rule that 

covers all possible scenarios, FMPs should be implemented that 

utilize the principles that I have outlined in my submitted written 

testimony along with the supporting documents to address fatigue 

problems. 

My final point is to call for the allocation of more research funding. Just as we rely on more than one research university to search 

for the cure for cancer, this process could be faster and more expeditious if more scientists and researchers were involved. Currently, 

15

the FRA is funding the research and regulating as well. Collaboration and cooperation from railroad and labor would increase if the 

fear of regulation or punitive fines as a result of participation in 

research were removed. While the one study that the FRA had 

cited is significant and Dr. Hursh should be congratulated for his 

efforts, additional work is needed to prepare the model for utilization in the operational environment. 

In summary, in my opinion, the development of the FMP is the 

most viable way to ensure that the complex problem of fatigue is 

addressed, using the best scientific available knowledge. While 

changes or alterations to the existing Hours of Service would make 

some specific improvements, a mechanism for addressing the overall risk of working fatigue would not have been addressed. 

I would like to thank the Committee for inviting me to testify on 

this topic. I look forward to hearing and answering your questions. 

Thank you very much. 

Ms. BROWN. Thank you. 

I am pleased that our distinguished full Committee Chair has 

joined us today, and I recognize him for any remarks he may care 

to make. 

Mr. Chairman? 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Thank you, Madam Chair. I thank you for holding this hearing and Mr. Shuster for his participation. He has a 

very keen interest in railroading with a major rail facility in his 

district. I know of your very keen attention to these issues, and I 

thank you, Madam Chair, for the splendid work you have put in 

over a period of several years. 

I have a statement of general observation about safety and fatigue that I will include in the record. 

I do want to ask, though, the panelists. You are measuring sleep. 

You are not measuring quality time between shifts. Could you address the broader question? 

I have done shift work when I was in high school and college, 

high school during summer months, working in college during the 

summer months. I watched my father in the underground mine, 

work 7:00 to 3:00, 3:00 to 11:00, 11:00 to 7 and on the changeover 

shift which was always so difficult. 

It is not just how much time you are spending in bed, but it is 

how much quality time off that the worker has between shift. Rehabilitation is not just one aspect, not sleep alone. It is the entire 

rest time. You also have to have good quality of sleep. 

I have read much of the literature in the field on sleep, adequate 

rest. I understand that the issue is not only in railroading but for 

air traffic controllers, for pilots with whom I was just meeting—incidently, Madam Chair and Mr. Shuster, on Age 60 Rule which is 

something we will be visiting in another subcommittee—pilots on 

tugboats, on maritime vessels, and the Great lakes fleet. 

The commonality, as you described it well, the circadian rhythm, 

interrupted, does not recover quickly. So could you address the 

total cycle of time between shifts and the effect on the body and 

responsiveness and clarity of action and reaction time? 

Dr. HURSH. Mr. Chairman, I would be glad to try and address 

your question. You are right on the mark. 

16

Fatigue models, as they have been developed, take into consideration a number of factors other than the total amount of time 

available to sleep. Ten hours of rest time or available time to sleep 

during the day time hours is not equivalent to ten hours opportunity to sleep at night, and the model takes that into consideration. It is not given the same amount of weight because your sleep 

during the day simply isn’t as restorative. 

The model also considers disruptions in your circadian rhythm as 

you switch from working days to working nights and back and 

forth, your circadian clock becomes out of sync with your work demands, and the model takes that into account as well. 

There are issues that no model can take into account—the quality of the time that you have and some of the activities that you 

engage in, your quality of your health and so forth—but to the extent possible, the models that we have take into account most of 

the documented factors that determine the ability of sleep to restore your functioning. I think it is a great step ahead to be able 

to use those to evaluate opportunity to sleep and determine how 

well they contribute to restoring performance. 

Dr. SHERRY. Let me just add a couple of points. I think you are 

absolutely right. The issue of time in bed is one of the many factors, and I understand that Dr. Hursh’s model does take that into 

account. 

I think the overriding concern is making sure that people have 

adequate time so that they are not put in the position of making 

choices between spending time with their family, going to the doctor, engaging in leisure activities that would contribute to quality 

of life. I think what happens if you address just the hours on duty 

or off duty is that that narrows the options that people have. So 

in terms of improving quality of life and reducing job stress and 

most likely the other associated health concerns related to shift 

work, I think a more comprehensive approach needs to take place. 

That is why I recommend that the use of fatigue management 

plans be developed as opposed to a simple number of hours type 

of solution that might be thought of. 

Thank you. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Thank you both for your response. Thank you 

very much. 

Does better scheduling or a different kind of scheduling make a 

difference in the responsiveness of workers? 

I have in mind testimony or at least conversations that we had 

with over the road bus drivers. Some of the Greyhound Fleet have 

drivers who work only, as I call it, we call it in the mines, the 

graveyard shift, 11:00 to 7:00. They do it every day, though, every 

week. They have their time off, but that is their shift. They know 

it. Their body, they say, drivers say, adapts to it. Others will work 

just 7:00 to 3:00. Others will work just the 3:00 to 11:00 shift. 

There is a railroad that described for me a process where their 

outbound train, for want of a better term, the locomotive engineer 

operates for half of the shift, stops, gets on an inbound train and 

works the other half of the shift going home and is able to be at 

home for the rest period that he needs. Do those changes in shifts 

and more predictability in shift work make a difference? 

17

Dr. SHERRY. Yes, I think you are describing the Illinois Central 

CN approach. They call it the mid-trip switching where the crews 

operate the equipment halfway and then turn around, switch 

trains and come back to their home terminal. That is a very desirable scheduling plan, and many people are very satisfied with it. 

I think it does improve a person’s restiveness, their feelings of 

restiveness, and in addition it also improves their overall feeling of 

positive control over their life that they are able to return to their 

home terminal, sleep in their bed and become better rested. 

I think the other piece of that, however, is that you shouldn’t lose 

sight of the fact in this that it is still important to have an adequate numbers of hours of sleep and that a schedule that is devised 

in that way could in fact provide that. 

Having said that, that might not work in some other locations. 

The Illinois Central CN region, as I understand it, is nicely suited 

to that kind of an operation, whereas for example in Northern Canada, for example, the Northern Manitoba line, it is difficult to get 

more than one train over a certain segment of territory in under 

13 hours. 

So there needs to be flexibility. There needs to be the opportunity 

to create many different types of solutions. No one schedule is 

going to solve the problem. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Dr. Hursh? 

Dr. HURSH. Mr. Chairman, I agree with Dr. Sherry’s analysis 

that it would be dangerous to think that there is one single solution that is going to fit every railroad’s operating demands, and 

that is why I think the consensus is that a flexible fatigue risk 

management program is the best approach, taking advantage of opportunities to apply wisdom from different railroads that might 

work in one particular situation. 

But the most important thing is that we build into that kind of 

a system, the ability to monitor the outcome and make sure that 

what happens, that the result of that process, whatever it is, creates an improvement in performance and a reduction in fatigue. 

Without that kind of monitoring to ensure success, this kind of a 

program will lack accountability. I think that if given the appropriate authority, the FRA can invest in having these sorts of programs and exercise authority to ensure that performance is measured that evidences success. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Thank you very much for your contribution, very 

substantial. 

Thank you, Madam Chair. 

Ms. BROWN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. Shuster? 

Mr. SHUSTER. Thank you. 

I am having technical difficulties. 

Ms. BROWN. OK. 

Mr. SHUSTER. Sorry about that. 

The question that I have is, first of all, I believe it was Professor 

Sherry, you mentioned that it was the Canadian and Australian 

rail companies already have instituted a fatigue management plan? 

Dr. SHERRY. That is my understanding, yes. In fact, I was invited 

to review the Canadian program. 

18

Mr. SHUSTER. Do you have any statistics since it has been in 

place? Have the accident rates gone up, gone down, stayed the 

same, injury rates? 

Dr. SHERRY. I am sorry. I don’t have that information. 

Mr. SHUSTER. You don’t have that. Do you have any idea how 

long it has been in place? 

Dr. SHERRY. It has been in place a couple of years. 

Mr. SHUSTER. A couple of years, OK. 

Dr. SHERRY. I have it somewhere, but I don’t have it right with 

me. 

Mr. SHUSTER. I will come back to a question that I asked the 

first panel, and I am going to continue to ask this, and I am not 

advocating forcing people who work on the rail to have eight hours 

of sleep because I don’t think that is possible for us to enforce. I 

think it was Mr. Rosenker who mentioned that when people have 

more time off, they tend to have more rest. Is that your feeling? 

My concern is—I don’t know if you were in the room when I 

asked the question before—if we mandate that people can only 

work certain hours and have to have a certain amount of time off, 

there is no guarantee that you are going to go home and go to sleep 

for eight hours. You are going to go home, more than likely like 

most Americans, and it is snowing out today, I am going to shovel 

the walk. The first thing in the morning I am going to get up to 

help my child with homework. Can you comment on that, especially 

the comment that was made that the more time off people have, 

generally the more rest they get? 

Dr. HURSH. I think you are quite right. There is no way we can 

legislate responsibility on the part of the employee. All we can do 

is provide an opportunity for them to get the adequate sleep that 

they need. Training is certainly an important element of this to inform them of the importance of getting rest, so that they can be 

competent and fit for duty when their time is called. 

What is important here is that we recognize that when they have 

that opportunity to sleep, they also have predictability of the schedule so that they can use that opportunity effectively to get naps 

prior to work so that they are well rested when they are called. I 

think the only responsibility, the only power that we have here is 

to ensure that those opportunities are available. 

But I do think it is a shared responsibility. This is not just a 

problem of the railroads providing opportunities. It is also a responsibility of the employees to take that opportunity and use it effectively to get adequate sleep. I don’t think anyone is suggested 

that this responsibility falls on the shoulders of any one constituent. 

Dr. SHERRY. January, 2005, that is when I think the Canadian 

law went into effect. 

Mr. SHUSTER. Thank you. 

Dr. SHERRY. You are welcome. 

My comment about that is I think there is some truth to the idea 

that more time off, the more likely you are to get rest. 

But the other side of the problem is that, as I mentioned in my 

remarks just a couple of moments ago, that doesn’t prevent a person who has been ‘‘well rested,’’ showing up and having to go to 

work at 3:00 in the morning, and if they have been sleeping at that 

19

time normally, they are still going to be tired. Now they can learn 

to kind of cope with it. As one of the Congress persons earlier mentioned, they can learn to deal with that and to learn to apply specific countermeasures, but that is why a more comprehensive, holistic approach needs to be applied. 

Mr. SHUSTER. Then the next question I have to follow that up is 

I understand that fatigue-related accidents are more common after 

an employee comes back after vacation. So how does that square 

up if you have taken a week off? 

I know when I come back to work, I am generally more rested. 

How does that square with if you are given a week off or you are 

taking a week off or a couple days off? 

Dr. HURSH. Obviously, the conditions that would occur would 

have to be looked at on an individual basis. One of the conditions 

that often occurs that can conspire against you, even after you have 

been on a vacation, is that you come back. You are available for 

duty at 8:00 in the morning. You have gotten up at 7:00 and you 

are ready to go. You are well rested. But you don’t know when you 

are going to be called. Then what happens is 10:00 that night, you 

get called to come work, and you may have been up all day because 

you have been on the rhythm of sleeping all night and being up all 

day. That is what you do when you are on vacation. 

You report to work at 10:00 at night, and you have been awake 

since 7:00 that morning. So you go to work fatigued, and that kind 

of a pattern can conspire against you even under the best of circumstances. 

Mr. SHUSTER. So, disrupting sleep patterns? 

Dr. HURSH. Well, you are disrupting sleep patterns and having 

lack of forewarning that you are going to have to take an afternoon 

nap to be prepared to go to work. 

Dr. SHERRY. May I comment on that? 

Mr. SHUSTER. Sure. 

Dr. SHERRY. The other piece of that, and this is I think why the 

railroads, a lot of them, went to what is called the 8:00 a.m. markup. It used to be you would mark up at 12:01 after vacation, so you 

would be eligible to be called immediately after midnight. 

You have been off for a week, and you have been going to bed 

at, let us say, 11:00 at night and getting up at 7:00 in the morning. 

If you are called at 2:00 in the morning or if you are called at 1:00 

in the morning and you need to go to work at 3:00 in the morning, 

once again you are going to be working against your circadian 

rhythm. The having a week of rest is no guarantee that you are 

going to show up and be absolutely rested if you are called for an 

early start time, for example. 

Mr. SHUSTER. Thank you. 

Ms. BROWN. There have been significant changes in the rail industry since the Hours of Service Act was enacted in 1907 which 

was 99 years ago. I know that because that is the year my grandmother was born. 

Do you believe that an increased growth in the rail industry and 

the decreased number of train crews have an impact on fatigue and 

fatigue-related accidents? That is to both of you. 

Dr. HURSH. Madam Chairwoman, shortages of personnel are certainly one of the drivers of fatigue in the rail industry as in any 

20

industry. If the industry does not begin to manage fatigue more 

proactively, the problem promises to get worse. Over the next five 

years, the industry will experience the exodus of the baby boomers, 

and I am included in that group. They will be retiring. The railroading industry is going to have to make jobs on the railroads 

more palatable for the current generation if they are going to fill 

those openings. If they don’t adopt fatigue management plans to 

manage the stresses that create fatigue, it is going to be hard to 

fill all those vacancies, and that is simply going to put additional 

stress and increased fatigue on those that remain. 

So I believe that the adoption of fatigue risk management plans 

will ultimately help to improve the retention of employees, improve 

their morale, improve the recruiting of new employees and, in 

short, will serve to pay back dividends for the investment in those 

plans. 

Dr. SHERRY. That is a very complex question that you have 

asked, Madam Chairwoman, about the relationship between the 

number of employees and changes in the work practices. Certainly, 

we have seen a number of improvements in technology which have 

contributed to the overall productivity of the railroads. In my work 

with other countries, I know that the U.S. railroad industry, the 

freight industry in particular, is the envy of the rest of the world. 

I am not sure if this particular change that you have identified 

is statistically related to an increase in fatigue-related accidents. I 

think it is important to recognize that fatigue-related accidents are 

the result of individual actions and the capacity of the individual 

to safely perform the act is related to the amount of sleep and the 

amount of time off. So I am not sure what the exact statistics are 

in terms of the changes. The other thing is it is only recently that 

we began to consider looking at the contribution of fatigue as a factor. 

It is a complex question. I think there may be some additional 

research that needs to look into that, but it is certainly something 

that can be significantly addressed by fatigue management plans. 

Ms. BROWN. Mrs. Napolitano, do you have a question? 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. Thank you, Madam Chair.

To that same question, Professor, one of the questions I had 

asked previously in regard to the lack of trained employees because 

right after 9/11 my area was suffering from lack of personnel to 

carry some of the freight increase in the two ports of Los Angeles 

and Long Beach, very well documented. To me, that would have 

caused fatigue because you are calling in employees to come in and 

fill in or work longer hours which then leads me to the question 

of overtime. 

If you ask an employee, can you work overtime, they are going 

to jump on it if they are the kind of employee who I would assume 

would want to work the overtime. Did you take into consideration 

any of those factors? 

Dr. HURSH. Well, the study that I reported on today really was 

an investigation of five railroads and samples of work histories 

from those five railroads, and we didn’t drill down to see specifically what kind of manpower decisions resulted in the schedules 

that we analyzed. I am not an expert on the manpower decisions 

that have been made that might have created the schedules that 

21

I evaluated nor am I an expert on the training programs that are 

utilized by the railroad industry. 

I do know that one of the factors that can be used to manipulate 

fatigue in any industry, but in particular in the railroad industry, 

is how many people you put on the system to drive the trains. The 

fewer the individuals available, the more work is going to have to 

be performed by the ones that are available. Obviously, they need 

to be well trained if they are going to fulfill their function. A fatigued employee that is, in addition, poorly trained is not a very 

safe employee. 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. Thank you, sir. That is one of the things that 

was a question in the derailments in my area. There were five 

derailments in less than a year that were questionable. Thankfully, 

none of them resulted in personal injury. We were never able to get 

information specific to the causes other than failure of a rail tie, 

a joint bar, if you will. 

It is very, very critical because there is going to be increased 

traffic in our area specifically and I am sure in other parts of the 

Nation, that if we don’t work and continue to provide the training, 

be able to have the work hours, the rest in between to be able to 

ensure that they are not as fatigued because they will be fatigued, 

working. Everybody gets fatigued. We will be putting people at 

jeopardy, and that is something I think that people don’t want us 

to go over lightly, if you will, but address it to the greatest extent 

that we can. 

Professor, the findings in the 3,500 employee survey, have you 

reported on those? 

Dr. SHERRY. Those are described in my book entitled Managing 

Fatigue in the Transportation Industry. I have a copy that I can 

make available. Many of the studies involving training and with 

the over 3,500 employees are summarized in that. There is also a 

summary report of those in the monograph that I provided to the 

Committee as well. 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. Dr. Hursh, I am very interested in the fact 

that you are a psychologist because I have a very great interest in 

mental health issues. When you do fatigue research, and I know 

you stated something to the effect that you have other issues, drug 

and alcohol use as regards the impact it might have on the ability 

to react or be able to carry forth. 

Fourteen hundred accidents, was that the quote, the figure you 

gave? 

Dr. HURSH. Yes, ma’am, 1,400 accidents were submitted for analysis in that study. 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. What were the minor accidents? In other 

words, what were the major accidents and the minor accidents actually reported on? Were they the kinds where somebody forgot to 

put a lock on and their locomotive went on its own because some 

of those are not reportable? In other words, the railroad does not 

report them to the FRA. 

Dr. HURSH. Congresswoman, these were 1,400 reportable accidents, so they were the kinds of accidents which would have 

reached the threshold of sufficient damage or loss of life or injury 

that would have required it to be reported to the FRA. 

22

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. Do we or does the FRA or does anybody record 

any of the accidents that do not result in major damage but again 

are accidents that could contribute to serious accidents? 

Dr. HURSH. I don’t know. Neither of us know the answer to that, 

ma’am. The one initiative that I know the FRA has undertaken is 

a close call study to look at changes in performance or close calls 

that would be short of a serious accident. This is a confidential 

non-punitive way to collect information on close calls. I think it is 

an extraordinarily important study or initiative. I am not intimately involved with it, but it certainly would contribute information that could help us understand better some of the factors that 

contribute to close calls that are forewarnings of the potential for 

an accident if the factors aren’t addressed. 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. But you have no access to those? 

Dr. HURSH. Well, that whole process is confidential, and I have 

no access to it. 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. Madam Chair, may I request that this Committee specifically ask for some kind of report on that because that 

should be part of the investigation that we should be looking at to 

determine whether or not, as he states, it could contribute to a 

major accident in the future. 

Ms. BROWN. Without objection. 

Mr. Lipinski? 

Mr. LIPINSKI. Thank you, Madam Chairman. 

As a trained engineer although not a train engineer and as a social scientist, I appreciate the research you have done. It certainly 

will be helpful as we work on legislation on this issue on fatigue, 

certainly a very critical issue when we are dealing with safety on 

the rails. I just hope maybe also you could do some research on fatigue among public officials and figure out any tricks that we can 

use so we can suffer from less fatigue. 

Thank you very much for your testimony and for your work. 

That is all, Madam Chairwoman. 

Ms. BROWN. Thank you. 

Dr. Sherry, in an article entitled Hours of Service Regulation in 

the U.S. Railroad Industry: Time for a Change, you made a number 

of suggested improvements for hours on duty. Can you talk about 

those suggestions a little more, and in your answers, can you tell 

us whether you believe something should be done to address limbo 

time? It seems to be a significant contributor to fatigue. 

Dr. SHERRY. Yes, I would be happy to discuss that. In the article, 

I made a number of, I discussed a number of different scenarios 

that might be considered and talked about the importance of the 

need for anchor sleep especially after long duty periods. I talked 

about the needs for the use of napping as an appropriate countermeasure. I talked about the importance of understanding that the 

cumulative effects of sleep debt can in fact be related to the occurrence of delayed reaction time. All of those factors are detailed in 

the article, and I would urge the Committee to look at those more 

carefully. 

However, I wanted to be cautious in simply coming up with a list 

of do this, do this, do this because I don’t think that is the way to 

go. I think it is important to create a mechanism, to create a process that everyone is able to utilize these particular principles. 

23

Having said that, the comment about a limbo time is a significant one. I read over the testimony of the gentleman from the 

BLET, and I share people’s concern about the length of limbo time 

and the away time that a person spend on duty in that way. However, I think the important thing to keep in mind is the cumulative 

number of hours is the factor, is one side of the equation. The other 

side of it is the amount of recovery time that a person has after 

that lengthy work period. 

I am not sure I would create a rule—I will leave that to you, 

where to draw the line, but I would put both together. If there is 

going to be long work hours, there needs to be sufficient recovery 

time. 

Thank you. 

Ms. BROWN. Mr. Shuster? 

Mr. SHUSTER. Nothing further. 

Ms. BROWN. Mr. Oberstar? 

Mr. OBERSTAR. I would like to have the panel’s view about backward rotating shifts. It is a matter that was of some extensive discussion in the course of our consideration of the Hours of Service 

rule about six years ago or so when we went through that process 

in the Committee and became quite a point of dispute in the trucking sector of power companies who have their crews working out 

on outages due to storms. We had quite an extensive discussion 

about backward rotating shifts and the effect on alertness and response readiness of crews. Give me your thoughts about those matters. 

Dr. HURSH. Mr. Chairman, the scientific consensus, I believe, on 

this process is that you really need to look at the details of how 

the backward rotating shift is implemented and how much time for 

recovery sleep there is between shifts and so forth. If you analyze 

backward rotating shifts with a fatigue model, sometimes they can 

be detrimental to performance, sometimes they can be fine. It depends on how they are implemented, how many off duty days there 

are between on duty days and so forth. 

The reason that it is controversial, I think is there is no single 

rule of thumb that can determine whether a particular backward 

rotating shift is good or bad. You need to submit it to analysis by 

a fatigue model or some other kind of sophisticated approach. 

Dr. SHERRY. I agree. I have run backward rotating shifts through 

Steve’s model, and they come out looking very, very good, some of 

them. It is really a very popular solution, though, I think from a 

quality of life standpoint, and so I think that needs to be taken into 

consideration. 

Going back to the Congresswoman’s point about training, how 

people use appropriate fatigue countermeasures, how people prepare themselves for those types of work and duty periods. I have 

looked at very compressed and extended schedules and people, if 

they are prepared, can work them very effectively, but they have 

to kind of really focus. They have to give up a lot of social activities 

and focus primarily on that kind of an operation. I think it is a controversial topic because people like it, but it may or may not be the 

most advantageous. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Dr. Hursh? 

24

Dr. HURSH. Mr. Chairman, at the risk of sounding like a broken 

record, I think that this speaks, though, to the need for a flexible 

approach where we submit the practices of any particular railroad 

or practices of any particular location to a fatigue risk analysis that 

would include understanding the particular schedules that are in 

force, modeling the effects of those schedules and modeling the impact on fatigue. Only in that way where we have a performancebased, evidence-based approach are we going to be able to get to 

solutions which are truly effective. 

Trying to make rule of thumbs judgments about whether this is 

a golden schedule or that is a terrible schedule is probably not the 

way to solve the problem. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. There is a practice in railroading called limbo 

time, the time when trains’ hours of service are expired but they 

are not yet at their final destination, final relief point. The crew 

is expected to be awake and alert and able to respond to situations, 

follow the operating rules. What experience do you have with limbo 

time? 

Dr. HURSH. The current Hours of Service rules, as you know, at 

minimum require eight hours of rest between shifts, but we know 

that eight hours rest does not really afford the employee eight 

hours of sleep opportunity when you factor in things like commute 

time, limbo time which doesn’t count as on duty time and call time, 

the time between when they are called and when they report for 

work. So as a practice, the eight hour rest rule does not really provide an eight hour sleep opportunity. 

But before we jump to some single solution, I really would still 

prefer to see any change in the regulations, whatever they might 

be, to be enacted as part of an overall regulatory authority conferred on the FRA similar to all the other modes of transportation 

and that those rules, whatever they may be, be designed within 

that kind of framework. Ultimately, though, I think new rules, 

whether they be to compensate for limbo time or to give defined 

days off or whatever the solution might be, that they be tried and 

enacted at the grassroots level within evidence-based programs 

similar to the 4 Ms that I was describing earlier. It is only in that 

kind of a framework that we can assure that the solution will fit 

the problem and will be compatible with the work demands and the 

operating demands that are placed both on the employee and on 

the operator. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Not all modes are comparable. You can’t just say 

compare practice in one mode of transportation to another. In aviation, there is duty time and flight time, and they are two different 

items. When I chaired the Aviation Subcommittee, it took a very 

long time and many hours of hearings and meetings in camera—

as we say in Latin in my office when we hammer out a few items—

to get a definition of what is flight time, and it finally came down 

to when the brake is released at the gate and the aircraft backs 

away. When does it end? When the brake is applied at the gate of 

the destination flight. 

Then you have duty. You may be on duty for a much longer time 

than you are actually flying. All of that factors into fatigue, and the 

same with flight attendants. The 14 hour rule, it took the FAA 15 

25

years with a lot of prodding from the Committee and finally legislation to implement a rule. 

Now you say you want flexibility but the Hours of Service rules 

were first established in 1907. There are a couple of amendments 

to it, and yet we still have problems serious enough for the NTSB 

to have repeatedly chided this industry and the FRA and asked 

them to take more vigorous action on Hours of Service for railroad 

employees. 

Dr. SHERRY. If I might respond to this point here about limbo 

time, I think it is complicated. You are talking about when you say 

the gate. We have done a study with flight attendants, the amount 

of time that they are working versus when they are not working. 

Frankly, the bottom line is if you are awake and you are not sleeping, in terms of fatigue, that is what we should be talking about. 

That is why I keep saying it is about the amount of time you are 

awake and the amount of recovery time available. 

My understanding of the FRA rules is that when people are ‘‘in 

limbo time’’ they are not technically responsible for any operating 

or safe practices. So that is great in terms of protecting the public 

and the operation of the equipment, but from the point of the individual, they are still awake and not in their bed. So the question 

is: How do you take that into account? What do you do with it? 

I would argue that you need to look at it from a recovery time 

point of view to make sure that you have protected the individual 

and in their next duty period in order to be able to operate safely. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Dr. Hursh, we need to get on to the next panel, 

but please I want your contribution. 

Dr. HURSH. I simply wanted to add, though, that I don’t want 

this comment about flexible fatigue management plans to be interpreted as there would be a total elimination of Hours of Service 

rules. I am not sure that that is the approach that we are suggesting. 

What we are saying is that within the boundaries of Hours of 

Service rules, there needs to be additional barriers to fatigue, and 

it is only with those additional barriers that themselves would be 

flexible, that we are going to reach a solution. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Thank you very much for your very valuable contribution and for your writings on the subject matter. You make a 

great contribution to safety. 

Dr. SHERRY. Thank you. 

Dr. HURSH. Thank you, sir. 

Ms. BROWN. I personally want to thank you all for your valuable 

testimony and the members for their questions. I want to thank 

you again. We will be submitting additional questions in writing. 

Thank you. 

Dr. HURSH. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. 

Dr. SHERRY. Thank you. 

Ms. BROWN. And for the last panel, I know that we have expedited this afternoon, and I want to thank you all for that also. 

I want to welcome the final panel of witnesses. I know this is a 

very difficult afternoon, but we have already scheduled this meeting, and this is such an important issue. I want to say right up 

front that I appreciate you all for being here today. 

26

Mr. Hamberger who serves as the President of the Association of 

American Railroads, welcome. 

Next, Mr. Dealy who is Vice President of Transportation for the 

BNSF Railroad, thank you for being here, sir. 

Mr. Pontolillo, who is the Director of the Regulatory Affairs for 

the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainsmen, he is 

representing the entire Rail Conference Division of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, thank you, sir, for being here. 

Mr. Brunkenhoefer, who is the National Legislative Director for 

the United Transportation Union and Mr. Mann who is joining him 

today and Mr. Parker who is the Legislative Director of the Brotherhood of Railroad Signalmen, we are please to have all of you here 

with us this afternoon. 

I appreciate your patience in waiting to hear the other panel, but 

I think it is very important that you hear what the other panel had 

to say and their conclusions. Your full statements will be placed in 

the record. We ask that all witnesses try to limit their testimony 

to five minutes or a summary of their written statement as a courtesy to the other witnesses and, of course, what is going on in the 

community. 

We will begin with Mr. Hamberger. Please proceed. 

TESTIMONY OF EDWARD R. HAMBERGER, PRESIDENT, ASSOCIATION OF AMERICAN RAILROADS; DAVID DEALY, VICE 

PRESIDENT, TRANSPORTATION, BNSF RAILWAY; THOMAS A. 

PONTOLILLO, DIRECTOR OF REGULATORY AFFAIRS, BROTHERHOOD OF LOCOMOTIVE ENGINEERS AND TRAINMEN; 

JAMES BRUNKENHOEFER, NATIONAL LEGISLATIVE DIRECTOR, UNITED TRANSPORTATION UNION; LEONARD PARKER, 

LEGISLATIVE DIRECTOR, BROTHERHOOD OF RAILROAD SIGNALMEN 

Mr. HAMBERGER. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. I appreciate 

the opportunity to be here on behalf of the Association of American 

Railroads to discuss issues surrounding the Hours of Service Act 

and fatigue management. I share your view that this is an incredibly important topic. 

Before I begin, I would like to, on the record, congratulate Mr. 

Oberstar for his ascendancy to the chairmanship of the full Committee. He was not here when I testified last week. Congratulations and I look forward to working with you, Mr. Chairman. 

I would also like to take this opportunity to pay my respects to 

former FRA Administrator Jolene Molitoris who is with us in the 

audience here today of her own volition. She began the Rail Safety 

Advisory Committee which is a cooperative effort of management, 

labor and the FRA which has made some major contributions to 

improving safety in the industry, and I want to thank her for that 

and all the other efforts that she initiatedd. 

Railroads want properly rested crews. It is not in a railroad’s 

best interest to have employees who are too tired to perform their 

duties properly. That is why railroads have long been working diligently to gain a better understanding of fatigue-related issues and 

finding innovative, effective solutions to fatigue-related problems. 

Properly rested crews are critical to safe, efficient operations. 

27

I want to reiterate my testimony from last week. Overall, our industry safety record is excellent. Between 1980 and 2005, the overall train accident rate dropped by 64 percent, and the employee 

casualty rate fell 79 percent. What is more, data through the end 

of November indicates that 2006 will be the safest year on record 

in terms of the train accident rate, the employee casualty rate and 

the grade crossing incident rate. When using the 2006 data, the 

1994 to 2006 timeframe will actually reflect a 9.2 percent reduction 

in the accident rate. 

Having said that, fatigue issues concern us, and we continually 

search for methods to reduce fatigue in the industry. In the interest of managing fatigue-related issues, the industry has adopted a 

set of principles to guide such efforts. Now let me briefly numerate 

those. 

Principle number one, railroads want fully rested crews. 

Number two, after 12 hours of service, crews in limbo time 

should receive additional rest after that limbo time, and that is 

consistent with what you heard from Dr. Sherry on the previous 

panels that it is the combination of the time on duty and the time 

in limbo time and then the opportunity to rest afterward. 

To the extent practical, fatigue management policy should be 

based upon scientific research. 

Four, railroads are willing to provide more than the statutorily 

required rest time at both home and away terminals to assure that 

crews are fully rested. 

Five, railroads are willing to require employees to take time off 

for rest opportunities. 

Six, fatigue management issues are a joint responsibility of the 

railroad and the individual employees. 

We have already made substantial progress in addressing fatigue 

issues. As my testimony illustrates, 83 percent of employees work 

less than 200 hours a month, and 95 percent work less than 250 

hours a month. 

A variety of fatigue countermeasures have been employed. They 

include increasing the minimum number of hours of rest at both 

home and away terminals, implementing a return to work in the 

morning if time off work is 72 hours or more, evaluation and adoption of a sophisticated fatigue modeling computer program, permitting napping by train crew members under limited circumstances, 

sleep disorder screening and improved standards for lodging in 

away from home facilities that provide blackout curtains, white 

noise and increased soundproofing. 

The importance of education in combating fatigue cannot be overstated. Since the value of fatigue-related initiatives is highly dependent upon the actions of employees while off duty, employees 

must make the proper choices regarding how they utilize their off 

duty time as Mr. Shuster has indicated. Consequently, an educational web site designed solely for railroads and rail employees 

is under development by the railroads and the American Public 

Transit Association to provide general information to employees 

about alertness and to identify possible sleep disorders. The site 

will include a self-assessment tool and an explanatory letter about 

sleep disorders that employees can take to their physicians. 

28

Railroads’ commitment to safety is absolute. Combating fatigue, 

however, is a shared responsibility. Railroads recognize that they 

must ensure employees have sufficient opportunity to rest, and 

they are open to reasonable changes to the Hours of Service Act to 

help assure this outcome. For their part, employees are responsible 

for using a sufficient amount of the time made available for them 

to actually rest. 

The railroad industry looks forward to working with the Committee, the FRA and our employees in developing further approaches to fatigue-related issues. 

Thank you for the opportunity to be here today. 

Mr. DEALY. Good afternoon, Chairwoman Brown, Ranking Member Shuster and members of the Subcommittee. 

In my position as Vice President of Transportation for BNSF 

Railway, I am responsible for the overall transportation operation 

of BNSF’s 34,000 mile rail network and just over 20,000 rail employees. I oversee field operations, train dispatching, crew management and locomotive distribution. 

I am responsible for the safety of these 20,000 plus employees 

which is a responsibility that we at BNSF take very seriously, and 

we believe our track record shows this. Since the year 2000, we 

have reduced our injury rate by 48 percent, meaning 182 fewer injuries in 2006 than in the year 2000. On top of the fact that we 

have had 24 percent more employees. Derailments over that same 

period are down 21 percent on an incident per train mile basis. 

We believe that fatigue can be a serious issue and have addressed it in a combination of improved policies and processes as 

well as changes in labor agreements. In my testimony this afternoon, I would like to outline for you the scope of the problem which 

is knowable and well understood by the railroad industry, detail for 

you some of the steps that BNSF has taken in partnership with our 

employees and unions to manage the fatigue issue down to a very 

narrow set of employees and suggest to you some solutions that are 

achievable. 

I will point to page number one in my handout. Thirty years ago, 

railroads were largely made up of traditional box car type trains 

moving in balanced train flows over relatively short crew distances. 

The normal distance a train crew would operate was between 100 

and 125 miles, and most of our employees would have to work 

every day. A high density corridor at that time would be about 20 

trains each way a day. 

Our business today, however, is driven by a large network of long 

distance trains loaded with double stacked international shipping 

containers, unit coal and grain trains all moving distance of over 

2,000 miles. It is considerably more varied and complex. A great 

majority of our through freight crews now operate over assigned 

crew districts greater than 260 miles with some over 300 miles. We 

pay our train crews by the mile, so compared with the shorter runs 

30 years ago, many of our employees can make the equivalent of 

six days pay in one round trip, allowing them to be at home two 

to three days between trips. Yes, two to three days between trips. 

On these territories, we now run 100 trains a day, quite a change 

from 30 years ago. 

29

On slide four, on our railroad, there are two distinct types of 

work assignments for train service employees, and you can see it 

on the slide in the room. Over 20 percent of our active employees 

work in yards, terminals or perform pick-up and delivery services 

in our industries. They have set on duty times and set days off, and 

many of these employees work a 40 hour work week. 

The other 80 percent of our employees work in over the road 

train service where two person train crews, a conductor and engineer, perform round trip service from their home terminal, traveling to an away from home terminal, getting rest and returning 

home. Because of the long distances our train crews operate, the 

vast majority or 60 percent of these crews, spend over 24 hours off 

at their home terminal. A third of these employees actually get 

more than 48 hours off at their home terminal. 

Employees in this service regularly make between $80,000 and $100,000 a year, and for obvious reasons regarding earnings potential and quality of life, these long runs are preferred jobs that attract employees with the highest seniority. You may hear these employees referred to as mileage hogs, but just remember that they 

are still getting a lot of time at home. As FRA Administrator 

Boardman said earlier this afternoon, if you have more time off, 

you will get more rest. 

The remainder of our through freight employees work in assignments where they do not get at least 24 hours off at their home 

terminal, and we have, for all but a small percentage of these employees, implemented through innovative work agreements with 

the UTU and BLET work schedules that prescribe working seven 

days and then having three days off. These off days are not mandatory for the employee to take, but they are mandatory and irrevocable on behalf of management to allow them. 

Taking all this into account, it is important for the Committee 

to understand that only fewer than 500 of our employees out of our 

entire population of over 17,000 work these short crew districts 

with no scheduled days off. While they have all been offered these 

same scheduled rest days as the other crews, they have opted not 

to accept them. 

Since our merger in 1995, BNSF in working with the UTU and 

BLET, has had a proven track record of innovative and aggressive 

labor agreements to address these work-rest issues and fatigue 

countermeasures, and you can see these on page six of our deck. 

We also tried some things that didn’t work, and one of them was 

to actually schedule our train crews 30 in advance with set days 

they would work and set starting times. Some of these pilot 

projects actually allowed employees to schedule their trips 90 days 

in advance. However, none of these pilot programs were ever ratified because they were actually not popular with the employees. 

They liked the predictability, but they still wanted the flexibility 

that the status quo offered. 

In summary, our operations are complex and to meet customer 

expectations, we have to be able to handle the variability for some 

of which we have no control. What works well in some areas 

doesn’t work in others. We look forward to continued success of 

working with UTU and BLET. 

Thank you. 

30

Mr. PONTOLILLO. Good afternoon, Chairwoman Brown, Ranking 

Member Shuster and members of the Subcommittee. On behalf of 

the more than 70,000 men and women that comprise the Teamsters Rail Conference, I want to thank you for holding today’s hearing and for the opportunity to present you with our views concerning fatigue in the industry. 

A couple of preliminary things, I also want to thank Brother Broken Rail. The BLET and the UTU we worked together on our written testimonies extensively, so we didn’t cover too much of the 

same ground, and we will be splitting up the oral presentation as 

well. We also support and endorse the testimony of the Brotherhood of Railroad Signalman and Brother Parker today. 

In the brief time available to me, I would like to address limbo 

time which arose earlier today and touch on a couple of other factors which impact our BLET members. I also briefly want to comment on fatigue for our BMWED members. Maintenance of Way 

workers are not governed by Hours of Service requirements. Nonetheless their working conditions do create a certain amount of fatigue of which the Subcommittee should be aware, given the safety 

sensitive nature of their work in maintaining and repairing the Nation’s rail infrastructure. 

I do want to start with giving you some data on limbo time because some of what we have collected in the past 18 months is absolutely shocking. One class one railroad which I will call Railroad 

A had nearly 335,000 crews that worked over 14 hours counting 

limbo time between 2001 and 2006. For the last three years, this 

railroad has averaged 205 crews a day over 14 hours every day. 

Ninety-four of those crews worked longer than 15 hours and almost 

a crew a day worked over 20 hours. 

We also have over two full years worth of data covering a single 

terminal on another Class 1 railroad which I will call Railroad B. 

This is one terminal. It has two pools and one extra board and 

about 110 to 115 engineers. In the two year period at this one terminal, there were over 3,100 work tours in excess of 13 hours and 

over 900 in excess of 14 hours. 

We also had, for Railroad B system, two days worth of data from 

consecutive days in mid-September of last year. In those two days 

in late summer, there were over 1,000 crews that worked more 

than 14 hours and over 125 more than 15 hours. In that two day 

period, there were three shifts that were 32 hours long. 

Now many crews do not receive additional pay for these work 

tours. Under our National agreement, a crew in a 250 mile pool 

must accrue almost three and a half hours of limbo time before 

they are entitled to overtime. In a 325 mile pool, it must accrue 

more than eight hours of limbo time before they are entitled to 

overtime. As was previously mentioned, even while in limbo time, 

the crew is responsible for obeying operating rules requiring that 

they remain alert and observant and that they take any action necessary to protect the train against an unanticipated mechanical 

problem or vandalism. 

We believe that the only solution to limbo time is legislative. 

Railroad-imposed attendance policies also contribute to fatigue. 

Typically, these policies require an operating employee to work or 

be available for work 85 percent of the time or face discipline up 

31

to dismissal for a failure to do so. An eighty-five percent standard 

makes sense in a five day, 40 hour work week, but it is absurd in 

a 24/7 setting like the railroad industry where, for example, our divorced members regularly must choose between visiting their children within limits imposed by divorce custody orders or facing discipline for poor attendance records. 

Another contributor is cultural change over the past 30 years, 

and actually that is something that the carriers are victimized as 

much as we have been. Dual income families are the norm in 21st 

Century America, and today’s railroad workers have far more direct domestic responsibility than their predecessors. But the railroad hasn’t met us halfway in responding to these cultural changes 

and indeed demands more work from today’s workforce than the 

past because of these availability policies. 

That said, both AAR and BNSF have testified concerning ongoing 

fatigue mitigation efforts, and we have all worked together very 

hard for a number of years, and they should be congratulated for 

their efforts because they have worked as hard as we have. 

But progress has not been consistent and has not been even 

across the industry. Railroad A, for example, that I referred to before is currently attempting to reduce our members’ ability to combat fatigue. This railroad is attempting to eliminate freight pools 

and replace them with identical pools operating between the same 

terminals, but the railroad says that these pools are new and as 

a result of that, 25 year old agreements that permit engineers to 

take 24 or 36 hours rest when they get back to their home terminal 

no longer apply. 

Like the operating crafts, maintenance of way forces also are affected by fatigue. Causes of MW fatigue and solutions are very different than for operating crafts. In the MW craft, fatigue is most 

often caused by long commutes, inadequate overnight lodging and 

a lack of manpower. Over half of maintenance of way employees 

today have to travel significant distances just to get to work. Twenty-five to 30 percent of them are responsible for covering production 

gangs that cover an entire railroad system, in BNSF’s case, 34,000 

miles. Some of these people have to travel several hundred miles 

or a thousand miles just to be able to report to work. 

We believe a solution to excessive fatigue-inducing conditions for 

MW workers is to reinstate reasonable limits on territorial sizes 

that they have to cover. But those long commutes for maintenance 

of way workers combined with double occupancy lodging or eight 

to ten person camp cars which are decrepit and unclean also contribute to MW fatigue. 

At this time with the permission of the Chair, I would like to 

have a video played that shows the conditions facing our BMWED 

members in camp cars. 

Ms. BROWN. Without objection. 

[Video played.] 

Mr. PONTOLILLO. I don’t believe that noise is very conducive to 

restorative sleep. 

Madam Chair, the Rail Conference believes the evidence establishes that fatigue seriously degrades safety in the rail industry 

among all crafts. Real solutions to the problem need to be formulated and implemented in some cases by legislation, and we imVerDate 0ct 09 2002 13:46 Aug 20, 2007 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00045 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\34779 HTRANS1 PsN: JASON
32

plore you to pass common sense legislation enabling the FRA to affirmatively and aggressively regulate fatigue in our industry. 

Thanks for hearing us, and I will be happy to answer questions 

when the time comes. 

Mr. BRUNKENHOEFER. James Brunkenhoefer, United Transportation Union. First, I would like to thank the Committee for the 

opportunity to be here today, and I also support the testimony of 

the Brotherhood of Railroad Signalmen and the Rail Conference of 

the Teamsters. 

The Hours of Service Act that was passed during your grandmother’s day, I worked under some of the agreements. You had to 

live within a mile of the round house. The people would get on a 

bicycle, pedal to your house and wake you up. Then you could 

walk. You had to be less than a mile. 

Today in the Los Angeles basin, people who work for the railroads have to commute two to two and a half hours. Now they are 

not fatigued at work, but they are deadly on the 405 or the 10 or 

they are deadly in New York on the I–5 as they go from Hobart 

Yard down around to 10 or 210 West to San Bernadino to get a 

train to go Barstow or Winslow, Arizona. 

So the idea of if we look at fatigue and we look at limbo time, 

we are looking at it in isolation. A person can just as easily have 

an accident on the highway, and this presents a public risk just 

like if they were on the job, a public risk. When we hold people in 

limbo time, our membership lives in a jet lag society. Can you 

imagine being in jet lag for 30 to 40 years? 

We don’t know when we are going to go to work. We don’t know 

how long we will work. We don’t know when we are going to get 

off, and we don’t know how long we will be off. In between that, 

we are supposed to put marriages and bar mitzvahs and Little 

League and children on hold, and the result of that lifestyle is 

called divorce, called troubled children. It is terrible for family values. But the carriers say they need this in order to be able to have 

a demand service. 

I appreciate what the carriers are doing today. I went to Mr. 

Dealy one time that I can remember and talked to him about a 

problem involving Phoenix crews. It was taken care of, and we 

never had any other problem. There are many good ideas out there. 

Unfortunately, there is not enough of them. Unfortunately, I have 

a political organization. I can’t get some things ratified that will 

save lives because, as Mr. Dealy said, I got mileage hogs. They 

passed the Hours of Service Act jokingly to keep them from making 

all the money and being on duty 24 hours a day. 

So as we struggle between labor and management to try to 

search for an answer, where we can’t get there, we call on you. We 

call on you to do what has been requested today. 

There is only thing I have disagreed with about Mr. Boardman’s 

testimony, and that is we would hate to see the act completely repealed. We would like to add the rulemaking to it because we are 

just afraid that the number of hours could be raised or the amount 

of rest could be reduced. 

We would like to see that it be science-based. We have tried to 

do it collective bargain-based and I believe the railroads have tried 

to do it operationally-based and sometimes we just can’t get to 

33

where both of us need to be. They can’t do it my way which is unreasonable, and I can’t do it their way which is unreasonable. We 

would like to see it based on science. 

We need to have the limbo time eliminated it. Call limbo time 

what it is. You are on somebody’s property. You are under their supervision. You are under their discipline. You can’t go get a beer. 

And so, to sit down and say that you are not on duty, I think is 

a myth. When I am off duty, I am off duty. When I am on somebody else’s property and they are in control of me, I am not off 

duty, whatever you want to call it. 

We need to address the calling time in relationship to fatigue. 

Some of our people are called multiple times and offered multiple 

jobs and woken up all hours of the day and night. 

We would like to have the correction to allowing sleeping quarters in certain railroad yards. 

We would like to have certification for conductors. We feel like 

that is needed to have qualified, trained people. A member of this 

Committee, I think became aware of our communication problems. 

July the 27th at this table, Mr. Hamberger, Mr. Stem and Mr. 

Boardman all said that we probably need to do something about 

training. I left this committee room and called the President of my 

union and said gee, we have got something on training. We can 

move forward. 

And he said, well, I just met with Mr. Bob Allen in Chicago to 

try to handle it through contract negotiations, and the nicest words 

I can say is he demurred. 

How do we get a deal? We have an instance of where in the State 

of Illinois where a piece of legislation passed through the House 

unanimously. The railroads had concerns about the penalty portion. Rail labor, rail management and the people from the Assembly met and corrected the language. The bill passed the Senate and 

because we had an agreement between rail labor, rail management 

and government, we thought it was over. God Bless their legislative people that are like Mr. Hamberger and those here. Somebody 

forget to tell the legal department. So the rail sued in Federal court 

to overturn their own language and were successful. 

I have in front of me what we call Letter 2 out of the last National contract. It says: This confirms our understanding with respect to Article 4, Service Skills, Document A agreement of this 

date. The parties agree to the earliest opportunity. In the next National round bargaining round, the matter relating to existing service scales in effect on each participating road to training and experience shall be addressed. 

That is 2002. I have been in negotiations two years. We haven’t 

quite got around to talk to that. Now it says it is the first thing 

we are going to talk about. Well, we talked about health and welfare, and we talked about one person train crews, and we talked 

about a lot of other things. At what point can my partner and I 

sit down and make a deal that is a deal? 

When we reach out with our hands and shake hands, I believe 

the person I am shaking hands with I can trust. Unfortunately, 

some of the times within a major corporation, those people in other 

departments don’t recognize or appreciate all that went into make 

that partnership, whether it is the legal department, whether it is 

34

the labor negotiations department or other people. It is very difficult for us to sit here and say, gee, we are really open to being 

disappointed again. 

So as we move forward dealing with fatigue and we move forward dealing with safety overall, we are open. We are ready, but 

we need your help. We can’t get there by ourselves. We have tried. 

There has been progress, and Mr. Dealy has done some wonderful 

things on his railroad, but we can’t get to the solutions, I believe, 

to protect both our members and the public. 

Thank you. 

Mr. PARKER. Thank you, Madam Chair, Mr. Shuster, members of 

the Subcommittee. On behalf of my International President, Dan 

Pickett, it is an honor for me to testify on fatigue in the rail industry. 

I am the Legislative Director for the Brotherhood of Railroad Signalmen and also have 34 years of rail service. We support the testimony from my brothers at the table. 

Our lives depend on qualified trainmen. Signalmen install, maintain and repair the signal system that railroads utilize to direct 

train movements. Signalmen also install and maintain the grade 

crossing signal systems used at highway railroad intersections 

which play a vital role in ensuring the safety of highway travelers. 

The rail industry is moving more freight today than ever before 

with fewer employees. This is a critical point that must be acknowledged. Through mergers and the railroads’ quest to eliminate 

workers, railroad staffing levels are at an all time low. In the past 

years, those numbers have increased as the railroads need to train 

new people to fill the increased vacancies as a result of baby 

boomers retiring. This trend of retirees outnumbering new hires is 

expected to continue for the next 10 years. 

As a result, current railroad workers are working longer hours. 

A 12 to 16 hour day is not unusual for railroad workers and in 

many cases it is the norm. The railroads are abusing their most 

important resource, railroad workers. 

The BRS seeks to amend the Hours of Service Act for signalmen 

by eliminating the four hour emergency provision due to its abuse 

by the railroads. The Hours of Service Act allows individuals performing signal work to work 12 hours in a 24 hour period with an 

emergency clause provision calling for an additional four hours of 

service in a 24 hour period. When the act was expanded to include 

signalmen, it was intended to a 12 hour law. 

This is how the railroads originally applied the law. If a signal 

employee needed additional time to correct a signal problem, he 

would inform his lower level supervisors of the 12 hour limit. The 

supervisor would determine if the employee could finish the work 

within 12 hours or if another signalman employee could be called 

to finish the repair work. This worked for years. 

However, through gradual creep, railroads have mutated the act 

into a 16 hour law. Many railroads now consider any signal problem an emergency. Signal employees are routinely instructed to 

work the 16 hour limit. Many railroads authorize outright violations of the act by ordering signalmen employees to continue working until repair work is completed. That is why it is up to Congress 

to remove the four hour emergency provision. This discretion comVerDate 0ct 09 2002 13:46 Aug 20, 2007 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00048 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\34779 HTRANS1 PsN: JASON
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bined with the railroads’ tendency to push the limits of the law has 

morphed the act and is contrary to the intentions of the 1976 Congress. 

Of greater concern is when a BRS member can work 20 hours 

in a 24 hour period without adequate rest. The cumulative effect 

of the law on the individual is that he is allowed to work a total 

of 20 hours of service within a 32 hour period. While the employee 

has had 12 hours off, he has gotten virtually no sleep. 

This situation is exasperated further when railroads require signalmen personnel to work an additional four hours under the emergency provision. If an emergency occurs at the end of his shift, the 

railroad will require him to work an additional four hours. The cumulative effect of the law on the individual would now be that he 

is allowed to work a total of 24 hours of service within a 40 hour 

period with virtually no sleep. This type of work schedule is a recipe for disaster. 

The BRS asks that the Hours of Service Act be amended to require that employees performing signal work receive at least eight 

hours of extra rest during a 24 hour period. Our request is due to 

the fact that many of the railroads willfully abuse the act. For example, when the railroad receives emergency calls prior to the end 

of eight hours of required rest, they will delay calling signal personnel until eight hours have passed since the end of their scheduled shift. 

Chairman Oberstar has gone on record, calling for legislation 

that strengthens the act, stating: I believe that the safety of railroad workers and the safety of the general public which all too 

often are the victims in these train accidents should not be relegated to a negotiation between management and labor. This Congress has a responsibility to prevent fatigue. 

Madam Chair, I could not agree more with Chairman Oberstar. 

The railroads have manipulated the 12 hour Congressional Hours 

of Service Act into a 16 hour law. 

The situation is even worse in the industry than what I have explained so far. The BRS is currently engaged in National negotiations with the railroads. The railroads want work provisions that 

allow them to subcontract out safety-sensitive signal work to the 

lowest bidder. The reason for that is contractors are not covered 

under the Hours of Service Act. 

Madam Chair, an adequately staffed signal department with well 

trained and well rested signalmen is needed to make the critical 

safety-sensitive decisions that are routinely part of our daily duties. 

Signalmen employees often work alone in the worst weather conditions and some of the most demanding terrain, and it is imperative 

that these workers have the opportunity to perform their duties 

after receiving adequate rest. 

There is much to accomplish to eliminate fatigue for rail signalmen and the rail industry as a whole in order to make the Nation’s 

railroads safer for communities across the Country and rail workers. Experience teaches us that it is Congress, that it is Congress, 

that it is Congress that must provide the leadership to make safety 

a reality. I hope we can work together to see that improved safety 

practices become a reality. 

36

On behalf of rail labor and the Brotherhood of Railroad Signalmen, I appreciate the opportunity to testify before this Committee. 

Thank you. 

Ms. BROWN. Thank you and thank everyone for their testimony. 

Let me just say before I begin with my questioning, to a person, 

I feel very strongly that we would like for, and maybe I am meddling at this point, but we would like to see an agreement between 

the rail and labor. I don’t know what you do. You go into a room, 

you lock the door and failure is not an option. We don’t really want 

to deal with that up here. I am telling you. We would like for you 

all to come up with an agreement, and some of the issues that I 

hear you discuss are things that you need to resolve. 

Now I know all about signalmen. My brother is one for over 30 

years. You have got a rock in a hard place. They want more time, 

they want more flexibility, but they like the money. They want the 

hours. So you have got to work with them and you have got to 

work many of these issues. 

You all are very close to coming up with an agreement. I think 

maybe the last meeting you had was in Las Vegas. Maybe you need 

to go somewhere up here where is rainy and snowy and not a wonderful place to be and lock the door. 

With that, I will get into questions. 

Mr. SHUSTER. Would you yield? 

Ms. BROWN. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. 

Mr. SHUSTER. I couldn’t agree with the Chairwoman more. The 

last thing I think you said was you were meddling. I think that is 

what they are inviting us to do, and I think that is the last thing 

you want is for the Federal Government because it has been my 

experience the Federal Government is going to just screw things up 

worse. 

So I couldn’t agree with the Chairwoman more. Come to an 

agreement amongst yourselves and don’t have us interject. I think 

it is going to be terrible for everybody, not only bad for you folks 

in the rail industry but bad for the American people. It is going to 

mean that we are not going to get shipments on time or get the 

goods to market. 

I couldn’t agree with the Chairwoman. Go lock yourself in a room 

somewhere there is no golf, no beer and no TV and force yourselves 

to work that agreement. 

Ms. BROWN. No sunshine. 

Mr. SHUSTER. I better stop there or we are going to get in trouble. 

I thank you for yielding. 

Mr. BRUNKENHOEFER. In other words, you don’t want us to go to 

Jacksonville in your district. You would prefer that we went up to 

Mr. Oberstar’s district. 

Mr. SHUSTER. I could find a place for you in Central Pennsylvania that there is not much fun going on. 

Ms. BROWN. Anyway, one of the things, the camp cars that you 

showed us in the video, my understanding, Mr. Hamberger, is only 

one railroad continues to use that. 

Mr. Dealy, I don’t understand. It looks like slave quarters to me. 

I hate to use such a strong term. Why is it that is the only railroad 

that is still using those camp cars? 

37

Mr. HAMBERGER. It is my understanding that your understanding is correct, that is, that it is one railroad only still using 

the camp cars. Further, it is my understanding that they are in the 

process of transitioning out of those camp cars over time and they 

will be providing housing in hotels or motels consistent with labor 

agreements. 

Ms. BROWN. Like most of the railroads, is that correct? 

Mr. HAMBERGER. Like all the other Class 1s do, that is correct. 

But I will reiterate what I mentioned last week. There are FRA 

standards, and I would hope that if that camp cars were not in accord the FRA standards, that would have been reported to the 

FRA. 

Ms. BROWN. There has been a lot of discussion about limbo time. 

Is this something that is paid for? 

Explain to me because my understanding in talking to the workers, some of it is maybe manageable and some of it can run up to 

five or twelve hours. While they are there, they have to be alert 

and to be vigil, and so they are really still working. 

Mr. DEALY. I will take that one, first, Chairwoman Brown. 

Ms. BROWN. OK, yes, sir. 

Mr. DEALY. One, they are paid. Two, they are not required to 

perform duties. Three, from a management perspective, speaking 

for BNSF and I set the policy, if we know a train crew is not going 

to make their destination and we know they are not going to make 

their destination, it is our policy to get them off the train and to 

their tie-up point within 12 hours. 

Now there are a lot of times where things happen. In Congressman Lipinski’s territory, I will talk about two brief cases here. One 

of them was in his district over the last two days. In Lisle, Illinois, 

we had a trespasser, not at a road crossing, step in front of one of 

our trains and was killed. That shut the railroad down for about 

five or six hours, and that happened all of sudden, unpreventable, 

unforeseeable. We reacted to it as quick as we can. We had crews 

on duty that couldn’t get into Chicago because all the routes were 

closed, and we couldn’t get them off the train quick enough because 

we couldn’t get to them in traffic. There are situations like that. 

I had one in northern California yesterday. A crew was on a 

train for 18 hours. That is unconscionable. But they were in the 

Feather River Canyon, a rockslide came down, and we got to them 

as quick as we could, and believe me, it was as quick as we could. 

So limbo time comes in a couple of different shapes and sizes. 

The most heinous of them all is when we know a train crew is not 

going to make their destination and we don’t get them off their 

train. We are solidly, from a policy perspective, in agreement that 

that is not the right thing to do and we need to get them off the 

train. But we don’t require employees to do any work while they 

are on the train after 12 hours. 

Ms. BROWN. Would you say that this is how the emergency time 

is being used? 

Mr. DEALY. I am sorry. I don’t understand. 

Ms. BROWN. The emergency time, for example, the two areas that 

you just mentioned. 

Mr. DEALY. Right, they would be under emergency, yes, ma’am. 

Ms. BROWN. I would consider that an emergency. 

38

Mr. DEALY. There is also one other issue in emergency now. 

There is a service law and it generally comes in snowstorms where 

we actually would have a crew work over the 12 hour law and then 

file that as a known violation-exception to the FRA, that is was 

safer to work them over to get them into a point where we could 

get to them rather than let them sit in the snowstorm just because 

the 12 hour law had hit them. 

Ms. BROWN. I would like labor to respond. 

Mr. PONTOLILLO. Briefly, Madam Chair, thank you. 

With respect to the camp cars, what FRA has published actually 

are guidelines, not enforceable regulations where there is any sort 

of penalty if a railroad like the NS did not meet those standards. 

There are merely guidelines. 

On the question of limbo time, Mr. Dealy makes a very good 

point. Our system operates 24/7 in all sorts of climate, in all sorts 

of weather, expected and unexpected, and there are situations. I 

had, I guess, after I had worked about five or six years, I was in 

a situation where I was told in the middle of a snowstorm, you 

have to violate the Hours of Service. That is really not what we are 

talking about here, but it is more the systemic type of issues. 

Railroad A that I mentioned before, which is not BNSF, 334,000 

incidents over a six year period is just more than unexpected 

weather. 

Briefly, also on the pay issue, it is not as simple as the industry 

suggests. Under the National agreement, you get paid the miles of 

the run. If you are on a 325 mile run and you do that in 9 hours, 

you make the same amount of money as you do if you outlaw on 

the line of road and then it takes another 8 hours of limbo time 

to get you back in. You get the pay for the mileage regardless of 

how, and then you only get additional pay or overtime depending 

on the length of the run and how long it takes you to work out the 

over miles. On a 325 mile run, you do not go on overtime until 

after 20 hours. So the crews aren’t losing money out there, but they 

are sitting there basically for nothing until the mileage runs out. 

Now that is in the national agreement. 

It is true that in the last several years, there have been some 

local agreements and there are some system agreements where in 

limbo time situations, the crew will begin to receive additional pay. 

I believe that sort of financial incentive probably does help reduce 

the limbo pay situation if it could be straightened out at the table. 

I agree with you, Ms. Brown and Mr. Shuster. Unfortunately, the 

management guy you would have to lock up is not on this panel 

today in order to get that deal done. 

Mr. PARKER. Madam Chairwoman, I would like to speak. 

Ms. BROWN. I think you are getting the message. 

Mr. PARKER. I would like to speak on the emergency time. There 

are devastating times for signalmen when maintenance away production gang come and we spend days and days and days at a time. 

There are some employees where there is a problem with overtime. 

When it comes to situations like that, when it comes to rest and 

overtime, rest takes precedence. 

There are times when you are working a signal circuit, and your 

time is gone, and the railroads will say, that signal circuit is causVerDate 0ct 09 2002 13:46 Aug 20, 2007 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00052 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\34779 HTRANS1 PsN: JASON
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ing the crossing gate to go down, so now we declare this an emergency for protection of the public. 

As we stated in our testimony, the railroads will use any circumstance and situation to make us work past our 12 hour period. 

It is devastating. Anytime they want to call it an emergency or tell 

us to work past the Hours of Service Law, they do that. 

Ms. BROWN. Mr. Parker, are they paid for the overtime? 

Mr. PARKER. Yes, they are paid for the overtime, but the problem 

is they need more employees to fulfill some of that, some of that 

time. There are some people who all their time is spent on the railroad. 

Ms. BROWN. The question about the camp car video, can labor respond to that? Is this being negotiated? 

Mr. PONTOLILLO. I believe that the BMWED has attempted on 

numerous occasions to negotiate it with Norfolk Southern. I can’t 

speak personally. We can supply greater details, but if it is similar 

to many other rail union negotiations, NS is probably looking for 

something in return. 

Ms. BROWN. Well, Mr. Hamberger, you will give us that response 

in writing. 

Mr. HAMBERGER. Yes, ma’am. 

Ms. BROWN. Mr. Shuster? 

Mr. SHUSTER. Thank you. 

I can go back to the last hearing we had, and I will keep saying 

this over and over again. I am trying to get my hands around and 

my brain around all these issues. For me, it is extremely important 

to have some points of reference, and those become the statistics. 

I was told and I am aware you can make the statistics move a little 

bit, but if I can see how you got your statistics, I can figure out 

how you moved them or what you did. I need that kind of information. 

Mr. Pontolillo, did I pronounce that correctly? 

Mr. PONTOLILLO. Yes, sir. 

Mr. SHUSTER. The numbers that you put forward, they sound 

like big numbers to me, but I have no point of reference so I am 

not sure. Mr. Hamberger in the rail industry comes up here and 

says that 83 percent of the rail workers are on duty less than 200 

hours per month and 95 percent or less are under 250 hours per 

month. Now I can dive into the numbers and figure out how he got 

it. 

If you folks in labor, can give me those kind of numbers so I can 

handle it better, it will help me as we move forward. 

I agree with the Chairwoman, I hope we don’t have to do anything on this because I think it would be much better served if you 

did it. So that is something that I need coming from you folks. 

A question I have about the declaration of emergencies, I understand Mr. Parker brought that up and that has been on the increase. Whoever wants to take it first, management or labor, tell 

me about it. Has there been an increase in emergencies, declaration of emergencies, and why do those occur? 

Mr. HAMBERGER. I am not sure I can answer the delta over time, 

but we have done a little research on the number of such declarations in talking to the railroads. If a signalmen has to work more 

than 12 hours, that has to be filed with the FRA. So there is a reVerDate 0ct 09 2002 13:46 Aug 20, 2007 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00053 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\34779 HTRANS1 PsN: JASON
40

pository at the FRA that keeps track of the number of times that 

a person is asked to exceed the 12 hours of all the crew tours of 

duty, if you will, that are out there. 

I know for a fact with Mr. Dealy’s railroad, that number in 2006 

was .08 percent—.08 percent of the number of times a BRS person 

went out to work that they were asked to spend more than 12 

hours. It is my belief and understanding and we will get those data 

for you, that the other railroads are all less than 1 percent as well. 

So I don’t see that as the widespread abuse of the emergency. 

If I could just make one further point, I am sorry Mr. Kuhl left 

because his area in New York just got 10 feet of snow, and certainly that is going to demand a lot of checking of grade crossings 

and a lot of work on signal work and you can’t staff up to have people sitting around waiting for a 10 foot snowstorm however many 

years they come. Mr. Parker referenced the negotiations about contracting out, and certainly that is one of the reasons that we need 

to have that authority, so that you can put the resources when 

there is a disaster like that and a need, that you can put more resources out there. Anyway, that is one of the issues that is begin 

dealt with at the bargaining table. 

Mr. SHUSTER. Has then been more, a greater number of declarations of emergencies over the past? Is that what you said? 

Mr. HAMBERGER. I don’t have that information. All I know is the 

real number is that it is less than 1 percent for the Class 1s and 

I just happen to know Mr. Dealy’s is .08 percent. Whether or not 

that is more than the past, I don’t know, but just as a real number, 

it seems to me to not be a crisis if it is less than 1 percent. 

Mr. SHUSTER. One percent, I must have misunderstood you. 

Mr. HAMBERGER. So you take a look at all of the shifts that a 

BRS employee works. Of all those shifts over the course of a year, 

how many times were they asked to work more than 12 hours? 

They have to be reported to the FRA if they are. 

Mr. SHUSTER. Less than 1 percent? 

Mr. HAMBERGER. Less than 1 percent. 

Mr. SHUSTER. Mr. Parker? 

Mr. PARKER. The problem is it is not defined in the act. Any supervisor on the railroad track can say that this is an emergency, 

and a signal employee has no other alternative but to do exactly 

what he says. They also know how to manipulate the time of the 

signalmen. You go sit over here for a while. You go do this. You 

go do that. 

Depending on the individual, the problem is not a need of contract. The problem is a need of more employees. We have had a 

shortage of employees for a long time. Territories have been increased, more responsibility, more testing, more things to do. It is 

something that the railroads could do something about. 

If it is an emergency, if it is a snowstorm, if it is a fire, if it is 

an icestorm, we understand that. That is an act of God. We understand that is an emergency. That is not what w are talking about. 

We are talking about when a lower line supervisors or a vice president declares an emergency just to keep you out there rather than 

call somebody else just to keep you out there so he can have somebody available for the next day. 

41

We need a definition. I am telling you it is devastating to us for 

20 years,30 years, five year employees. We have to do what we are 

told. What is the word they use for when you have no protection 

for reporting incidents? Whistleblower. We have no whistleblower 

protections on the railroad. It is just devastating for the things we 

have to do in the name of so-called emergency. 

Mr. SHUSTER. I see my time has expired. I yield back. 

Ms. BROWN. Mrs. Napolitano? 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. Thank you, Madam Chair. 

On that point, Mr. Parker, I have discussed with the Chair the 

possibility of adding some kind of protection to whistleblowers because that seems to be an issue that keeps coming up again and 

again, that there is no provision. There is no safety for those employees who are trying to protect not only the infrastructure of the 

railroad but their own safety and safety of those areas where they 

go through. So that is a good point. 

There are many, many questions, and most of you already probably have heard me talk over and over again. L.A., the biggest 

sample, we are going to be increasing rail traffic through my whole 

district six to tenfold. You talk about a train every six to ten minutes. I want to be assured that whatever railroad, be it UP or 

BNSF, going through my district, the rest of the district, the rest 

of California too, is not only trained, experienced, not tired, not fatigued because that has seemed to be a big player in some of the 

accidents that I have heard about. 

Now I am not sure. You have told me you have enough trained 

employees, and yet I hear time and again that you do not have 

enough trained personnel, adequately trained personnel. I certainly 

would want some of the organizations to tell us what about the 

training the employees are receiving. Is it adequate? Are there 

questions in regard to the length of time, to the type or methodology rather used? 

What is it that we can ask that be given to all employees to protect them and the rail cars and the public? 

Mr. PARKER. We signed an agreement with one railroad five 

years ago, six years ago, ten years ago to have advanced training. 

It has never happened. Sometimes the training is a film. The majority of the time, the training is from an older maintainer. A lot 

of the older maintainers are gone from the experience. You would 

just be surprised at the lack of training that we have. 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. No, I wouldn’t because I have heard about it. 

Mr. PARKER. OK. I had an old maintainer when I began as a signal maintainer, and there was no training as a signal maintainer 

at the beginning. You went to school eventually but not for long, 

and the school was set up not for training, for testing, probably to 

get rid of some people. 

He taught me to survive. He said do this, do that, do that, so this 

switch can go. I learned how. I learned to survive. He taught me 

to survive until I learned exactly what I was doing. Without the expertise of the older fellows, the railroads have no desire, speaking 

of my own experience and some of the others. They just don’t believe in training for signals. 

We have vital circuits. It is just so vital. The nightmare that the 

signal maintainers have to go through, knowing there is some lack 

42

of knowledge. Sometimes with the new crossing systems that come 

in, they may bring a salesman to teach you, but they just do not 

invest in proper training for the signalmen. 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. Would it be more appropriately called on the 

job training? 

Mr. PARKER. On the job training if you have someone there who 

has the experience to give you on the job training, but we need 

them to fulfill their agreement with advanced training. 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. Yes? 

Mr. BRUNKENHOEFER. Mrs. Napolitano, the Federal Government 

has regulations on all of us. In the last round of the safety bill, we 

did drug testing which has turned out to be good—we need to work 

on that together some more—and we have what is known as personal liability. I have a responsibility to comply with a Federal regulation or if I don’t comply with that Federal regulation, I can be 

fined or removed, banned from the industry. 

In our wish list, we would like that the Federal Railroad Administration would set training standards for both labor and management so that we would make sure that we are being adequately 

trained to comply with the Federal regulations to protect ourselves 

and protect our public. 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. Thank you. 

One of the things, and I am almost out of time, is the cost to the 

industry gentleman. Mr. Hamberger, while in California, the only 

way I can bring the railroad to comply with some of my community’s requests to do certain things in their own back yard is by 

going to the FPPC, the State regulatory, to do fines on them. Is 

there another way that we may be able to get better compliance? 

I know that I had one representative for one railroad for the 

whole West Coast including Hawaii, and when I called, he was either not available or was very not understanding is putting it mildly. I certainly would want those that have requests to make that 

would help bring compliance to the community’s request or at least 

addressing the issues to be able to help address some of the issues 

that have been brought up today. 

Mr. HAMBERGER. Probably a long answer, I have a request in to 

meet with you. I would like to be able to come in and, with the railroads, BNSF and UP, and talk through some of the specifics you 

have voiced in the last couple of hearings, that I would like to get 

a little more detailed understanding so we can make sure we can 

respond properly. 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. The last question, you can answer it, is because you have had some findings from the research that was done 

over fatigue. Have you reviewed them? Have you found out whether some of them can be implemented? What about some of the work 

that should be done? 

Mr. HAMBERGER. Mr. Dealy is in charge of doing that. 

Mr. DEALY. Sure, I think some of it points to earlier testimony, 

but it really does come back down to looking at the modeling that 

the two individuals talked about in the panel ahead of us. I think 

it directly applies on the small group of employees that I referred 

to that do work a lot, and we would just as soon they take days 

off. We would be all in favor if there was mandatory off time for 

43

those, and we think it does fit the modeling that Dr. Sherry and 

Dr. Hursh have done. 

If I could just touch on the question you said earlier because you 

asked a good question. One, do you have enough people and, two, 

are they adequate trained? 

Right now I am surplus 100 people. I know my counterpart with 

Union Pacific because both of us operate through your district, we 

both have a surplus of employees. Two, we have worked with the 

unions in the last two months to keep them on the payroll even 

though economics probably would dictate we furlough them. So we 

have worked through some innovative ways to keep them around, 

so they can continue to get training. Then thirdly, both the training 

program for our conductors and for our engineers are by agreement 

with the UTU and the BLE and actually the UTU training agreement also applies for a UTU coordinator on each seniority district 

to supervise the training. 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. Sir, after 9/11, a lot of the personnel was deleted. Are you comparing the statistics after 9/11 or before 9/11 

where you had full complement and you did not fill all of those positions? 

Secondly, as we have heard the testimony, you are utilizing less 

and less personnel on the trains themselves. 

Mr. DEALY. Well, before and after 9/11, we had two men, two 

person train crews, conductor and engineer, so that really didn’t 

change. 

Two, I am talking current state when I said we have plenty of 

people right now. We still plan to hire this year. We all know the 

pain of running short of employees. That is not a good thing, and 

we all have intentions of staying ahead of this. We have it in our 

business plan to stay ahead of it with really still aggressive hiring 

programs, and we will still hire at BNSF in the neighborhood of 

1,500 employees this year even though right now I have got 1,000 

surplus. We know that because we have a good idea of what the 

retirements are going to be, and we think we understand what the 

growth rate is going to be, particularly out of southern California 

this year. 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. I am sorry. There is apparently a response to 

that. 

Mr. BRUNKENHOEFER. Railway Age off the web site, February the 

7th, between mid-December, 2005 and mid-December, 2006, Class 

1 employment in railroads increased 1.63 percent to a total of 

167,558 according to Surface Transportation, where the largest employee group was transportation train engineers which rose to 

75,815 during the period, an increase of 3.10 percent. The second 

largest group was the maintenance away structures decreased 1 

percent to 34,000. They were laying them off. 

The biggest percentage increase was the category of executives, 

officials, staff assistants whose numbers increased 6.37 percent to 

10,148. So, yes, they are hiring. 

But are they hiring at the rate, one, that business is growing? 

God bless Dave and the sales department that got business growing. Are they hiring fast enough to cover the business that is growing and retirements? 

44

I would say that if I am understanding correctly, recent growth 

in business has been at the double digit level for the last several 

years. God bless them. But at the same time, the overall hiring 

numbers, at least according to the numbers quoted by the Surface 

Transportation Board, do not reflect that other than we are getting 

a lot more supervision. For every one employee in the category of 

operating the trains, we are getting two supervisors hired. 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. Thank you, sir, and thank you for your indulgence, Madam Chair. 

Ms. BROWN. I am going to go to Mr. Lipinski for the last question, but let me just ask you quickly. 

I went to the training program that CSX had, Mr. 

Brunkenhoefer, in Atlanta, and my understanding is they are 

training 24 hours. In some of the I guess railroads, they are training as many as they can accommodate. This is a good problem for 

the industry, and I think maybe we need additional training programs for people that have been there. Maybe it took a five man 

crew and they actually didn’t run the train until after they had 

been there for a number of years, by themselves. I guess with the 

technology, the industry has changed. 

Mr. BRUNKENHOEFER. Ms. Brown, put me down in the Amen corner down at the AME at 11:00 on a Sunday morning. I am in 

agreement with you. I would just like somebody like the FRA to set 

some standards to make sure that everybody gets quality training 

because the trains that they handle are all the same all over the 

United States. And so, all we want is if somebody has got something good, let us apply it everywhere. 

Ms. BROWN. Help me now. The trains may all be the same, but 

the conditions are not always the same. 

Mr. BRUNKENHOEFER. Amen. 

Ms. BROWN. All right, Mr. Lipinski? 

Mr. SHUSTER. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. 

I just want to point out one thing. I just want to tell Mr. 

Brunkenhoefer, who I normally call Broken Rail but I wasn’t sure. 

This is the first time in this formal surrounding that I addressed 

you. 

Mr. BRUNKENHOEFER. I hope you forgive me for not wearing my 

jacket. 

Mr. SHUSTER. That is perfectly all right, but I knew you knew 

what statistics were. 

Mr. BRUNKENHOEFER. Thanks very much. 

Mr. LIPINSKI. I just heard you fire off several of them, so I appreciate that. 

Ms. BROWN. Mr. Lipinski? 

Mr. LIPINSKI. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. I get to go cleanup, otherwise known as last, and I know everyone is ready to get 

out of here. A couple things I just want to mention here a little bit. 

Mr. Dealy, I don’t know. I may have misunderstood you. I just 

want to make clear that this tragedy that occurred was in Berwyn 

that happened yesterday. I wasn’t sure if that was what you had 

said, but I didn’t want to interrupt you. 

Mr. DEALY. I stand corrected, Congressman. Thank you. 

Mr. LIPINSKI. The issue of the camp cars is something that certainly has been brought to my attention many times, and certainly 

45

seeing this video makes it very clear what a terrible situation. I 

just imagine trying to get sleep in there. I just want to make sure 

that we do get that cleared up about what is going on, if this is 

something that, as Mr. Hamberger said, NS is going to end. I just 

want to make sure. 

Mr. HAMBERGER. I don’t want to overstate that. It is my understanding they are in a transition phase, but I do know, as Mr. 

Pontolillo indicated, they are in discussions with the unions on that 

exact path. So I don’t want to say that it is over, but I think they 

are discussing it with the unions. 

[The information received follows:]

46


34779.008
47

Mr. PONTOLILLO. We will supplement our response and let you 

know exactly what our people are telling us. Thank you. 

Mr. LIPINSKI. I thank you. 

Mr. Broken Rail, I will go ahead and use that, although it is a 

simple German name there that we could probably really pronounce, but I guess this works well. 

I just want to make sure. I heard this now brought up a couple 

of times about this issue in Illinois. We are working on getting that 

straightened out, aren’t we? 

Mr. BRUNKENHOEFER. I expect that Mr. Szabo who is our State 

Director will be making a request to that particular. This is a problem when you win a lawsuit that says it is federally preempted. 

Now it looks like we are going to have to come to you and this 

Committee and ask that we have a Federal law to solve the problem in Illinois. 

It is not a problem just in Illinois, but we were trying to address 

this at the State level. We thought we had successfully done it. Unfortunately, we misunderstood. We thought a deal was a deal, and 

so we will be approaching this Committee to add language to the 

safety bill to address it. 

Mr. LIPINSKI. I have spoken with Mr. Szabo. I know that others 

have also and Chairman Costello has, it being an issue directly 

with Illinois although, as you say, it also applies elsewhere. Every 

week, well, the last two weeks, I have heard about this issue regarding Illinois, so I will have to work on that. 

That is all. I yield back, Madam Chairwoman. 

Ms. BROWN. Mr. Shuster? 

Mr. SHUSTER. I just want to congratulate you in your judgment 

today, Madam Chair. Where everybody else left in the Federal Government at 2:00, those of you who are going to leave at 5:00 are 

not going to have the traffic to deal with tonight. So you can all 

thank the Chairwoman for her great insight into that. 

Mr. PONTOLILLO. We appreciate that very much too. 

Ms. BROWN. I hope we don’t have ice. 

Let me just thank the witnesses for their valuable testimony and 

the members for their questions. 

Again, the members of the Subcommittee may have some additional questions. I know I do. I am going to put them in writing. 

With that, this hearing is adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 4:40 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]

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