REMOTE CONTROL LOCOMOTIVE OPERATIONS

Remote Control Locomotive (RCL) Operations were initiated on the nation’s railroads in the early 1990s. Since that time, it has been demonstrated time and time again that a single person remote control assignment puts rail workers at great risk of injury or death and is nothing more than the industry’s attempt to reduce operating costs to increase profits, at the expense of worker safety, as stated in a joint petition for an emergency order filed with the Federal Railroad Administration on June 12, 2009, by the BLET and the UTU. The two unions were seeking the prohibition of the use of one-person train crews, including conventional and remote control yard switching operations. This petition was filed just one month after an accident on CSX in Selkirk, New York, took the life of a young conductor, Jarod Boehlke, who was working alone and using a remote control device. The petition states that: “The workload associated with [remote control operations] while performing other safety critical tasks, demands too much of a single individual, including loss of situational awareness.” This was just one of numerous petitions filed by the unions in recent years. As an aside, “situational awareness” can seem like an innocuous term, but some have come up with a more accurate portrayal deeming it “task overload.”

Due in part to the inaction of the FRA to these petitions that have been filed by both the BLET and the UTU for emergency orders to prevent RCL operations, there have been far too many incidents of accidents, injuries, and fatalities caused by remote and single-crew operations. A 2006 FRA report entitled “Safety of Remote Control Operations” concluded that the safety records of remote control and conventional operations are basically the same; however, the BLET’s response to the FRA clearly demonstrated that the data used for this report was erroneous. After correcting for those errors, the data showed that the mean RCL fatality rate was nearly 3.5 times higher than the conventional switching fatality rate.

The widow of CSX conductor Jarod Boehlke has launched a campaign to urge the FRA and the railroads to ban single-person train crews. She is speaking out about this issue and urging others to join her in her quest to seek regulation of remote control technology by sending letters to Congress. Below is the text from a sample letter that Mrs. Boehlke has requested be used as a guide to for imploring the support of the members of the House Transportation Committee regarding this issue.

The BLET and the UTU have called on the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) to establish safety regulations governing the operation of remote control locomotives. In their joint comments filed on March 14, 2011, in response to the FRA’s Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on Locomotive Safety Standards that was filed in January 2011, the unions urged the FRA to issue enforceable regulations governing the operation of remote control locomotives (RCLs) and to prohibit the operation of RCLs on mainline tracks. They asked that the FRA’s proposed rules for regulation of remote control operator units require these units to be simple in design and uncluttered with any function not necessary for safe operations. In addition, the unions asked the FRA to develop an improved electronic record keeping system to maintain accurate records of employee on-duty hours in remote control service in order to compare the number of employee hours worked in remote control switching versus convention switching so that the number of accidents, incidents, and fatalities can be compared on an “apples to apples basis.”

When RCOs were first implemented, a point of contention between the unions was the issue of whether or not our arguments were about jobs. With the tragic deaths of single crew RCL operators, and the inherent danger that exists with this type of operation, it is clear that the issue is not jobs but the safety of working crews and the communities they operate within. We all need to band together to make sure we do not lose one more railroad employee to an unnecessary peril. Please join with Jarod Boehlke’s widow in writing not only the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee and Railroad Subcommittee, especially in light of the hearings to roll back regulations, but also your Congressperson, the FRA, and your railroad carrier to let them all know that it is important to maintain safety in switching operations, including the safety of workers and handling of hazardous cargo, in the interest in public safety.

Sample letter to Congress re: Regulation of Remote Control Technology:

I am writing to you concerning the growing danger of one person locomotive operation, specifically the use of one person remote control operations (RCO). On Mother's day of 2009, in Selkirk, NY, locomotive remote control operator Jared Boehlke was killed while attempting a repair as the sole member of a yard switching crew. If Boehlke had not been assigned to work that job alone, there is no doubt that he would be alive today.

Working a one-man RCO job is akin to performing a complicated juggling act. The operator must always be checking his track list to see that he gets the right cars in the right track. He, alone, must always be operating the correct track switches to see that his train is going to the right location. Add to that the inability to see what is ahead of his engine(s) and operating the engine and answering radio calls. You can readily see that he, alone, is required to juggle many tasks. It takes a herculean effort to do it safely and deal with management’s production pressures.

The Federal Railroad Administration has adopted guidelines for RCO operations, but these guidelines do not actually require the rail carriers to adopt all the necessary safety procedures and in general do not go far enough to ensure that this technology is implemented and utilized safely.

Conventional locomotive engineers are federally licensed, have weeks and weeks of classroom training and months of on-the-job training, sometimes as long as a year. RCO operators take only an 80 hour training course in order to receive their simplified certification. Conventional locomotives must have federal inspections of air valves and of the air brake system any time components are changed. There are no such federal regulations for remote control locomotives. Conventional locomotive operations are governed by strict regulations, while RCO operations are subject only to FRA “guidelines”.

Regulations, not guidelines are needed. Additionally, the ability of rail carriers to “cover-up” accidents involving RCO operations must stop. The carriers must be required to report all accidents involving any RCO operation to a single FRA oversight group.

Regulations governing conventional rail operations are in place to protect not only rail workers but also the public from potentially devastating accidents. That protection is not in place for any of us as long as rail carriers are able to avoid complying with vital RCO safety and operating regulations.

Remote control locomotive technology needs regulation now, and the House Transportation Committee should direct the FRA to ban one person locomotive operations entirely, and enact enforceable regulations to make other RCO operations safer.