freight rail

As published by Keith Laing in The Hill.   Senate to consider extending deadline for automating trains The Senate committee that oversees transportation issues is scheduled to mark up a measure on Wednesday that would extend a deadline for U.S. railways to equip their trains with automated control systems by five years. Current law requires that […]

Washington, DC—Edward Wytkind, president of the Transportation Trades Department, AFL-CIO (TTD), issues this statement about the Senate markup of the Positive Train Control (PTC) extension bill:  “A five-year extension of the deadline by which Positive Train Control (PTC) technology must be implemented cannot be considered in a vacuum or in isolation. Rail employees, first responders, […]

As published by Sean Kilcarr in Fleet Owner.   Groups lay out transportation agenda items for 2015 A variety of groups, from unions to safety-themed organizations, laid out their transportation agendas for the rest of the year – especially where highway funding and electronic logging devices (ELDs) are concerned. The primary focus of the Transportation Trades […]

ATLANTA, GA—The Transportation Trades Department, AFL-CIO (TTD) and its 32 affiliated unions waded into every major transportation policy debate in Washington and focused on expanding transportation investments, reforming safety policy, protecting workers’ rights, and rejecting job-killing trade policies. “2015 must be the year when we break the stalemate on funding our badly deteriorated transportation system […]

Since the last rewrite of federal railroad safety laws in 2008, an increased number of hazards identified by both employees and government agencies, coupled with significant growth in the industry, has put a spotlight on the need for legislative action to impose needed safety reforms. Congress must move forward on the expired Rail Safety Improvement […]

Few transportation safety issues have as far-reaching effects as the transport of hazardous materials and toxic chemicals. Strong laws and regulations surrounding the movement of these materials are essential to protecting not only workers but also the public and local communities who are risk when an accident occurs. Congress and the administration must address the […]

Talking about transportation safety isn’t enough – measures are needed to close gaps in the system that expose both workers and the public. That’s where the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) comes in. Since it was established more than 40 years ago as an independent safety and accident investigation agency, the NTSB has pressed regulators […]

TTD’s rail safety agenda got a boost last week when Senator Richard Blumenthal, along with three other Senators, included several reforms that rail labor has long championed in their Rail Safety Improvement Act of 2014. Some 130,000 miles of freight rail tracks crisscross the United States, driving the economy, supporting more than 175,000 employees, and […]

[As published on August 27, 2014 by Linda Kor in Arizona Journal] Concerns over public safety and railroad jobs are prompting members of the Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation (SMART) Union to reach out to the public for support for H.R. 3040, also known as the Safe Freight Act. The effort is to ensure that no […]

On any given day in Washington someone important makes a speech about the need to invest in our passenger and freight transportation system and put Americans to work.  Routinely that speech doesn’t answer the only question that matters: how do we pay for it?  We helped to answer that question today at a special House […]