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Re: Appeals court overturns Amtrak's priority over freight trains
Author: mook
Date: 07-04-2013 - 09:23
I did read the case. The Bloomberg article didn't substantially misrepresent it.
Grossly simplifying, Amtrak cannot now dictate performance measures that will be enforced by FRA and STB regulation. As the court said, Amtrak's a "private corporation" so it can't be delegated the power to generate and enforce federal regulations. That doesn't prevent them from attempting to write the measures into contracts with the RRs and enforcing them privately (good luck ...). It doesn't prevent them from advocating with FRA and STB to issue regulations (perhaps even ghost-written by Amtrak) that specify measures if they're rooted in safety or something else that FRA and STB normally have power over - not Amtrak's convenience; companies do that all the time with regulatory agencies. But Amtrak now can't define performance measures on their own and simply require FRA and STB to enforce them through the regulatory process.
I still think that this decision, combined with some others that have come down recently, bodes ill for parts of the original Amtrak legislation including the dispatching priority provision. The right case just hasn't developed yet. One thing I originally missed, though, is that the suit was against FRA, not Amtrak - so FRA would have to decide whether to appeal. Perhaps not quite so certain.
I thought it amusing when the judge pointed out that the case was brought by AAR ... of which Amtrak is a member!
BTW, is anybody familiar with how Conrail worked (they were also a private corporation owned by the Fed govt)? Did they have quasi-regulatory powers? They DID have the power to ignore the ICC in some ways, kind of pre-Staggers - did it go farther? If so, that might be a precedent that was missed in this case.
Grossly simplifying, Amtrak cannot now dictate performance measures that will be enforced by FRA and STB regulation. As the court said, Amtrak's a "private corporation" so it can't be delegated the power to generate and enforce federal regulations. That doesn't prevent them from attempting to write the measures into contracts with the RRs and enforcing them privately (good luck ...). It doesn't prevent them from advocating with FRA and STB to issue regulations (perhaps even ghost-written by Amtrak) that specify measures if they're rooted in safety or something else that FRA and STB normally have power over - not Amtrak's convenience; companies do that all the time with regulatory agencies. But Amtrak now can't define performance measures on their own and simply require FRA and STB to enforce them through the regulatory process.
I still think that this decision, combined with some others that have come down recently, bodes ill for parts of the original Amtrak legislation including the dispatching priority provision. The right case just hasn't developed yet. One thing I originally missed, though, is that the suit was against FRA, not Amtrak - so FRA would have to decide whether to appeal. Perhaps not quite so certain.
I thought it amusing when the judge pointed out that the case was brought by AAR ... of which Amtrak is a member!
BTW, is anybody familiar with how Conrail worked (they were also a private corporation owned by the Fed govt)? Did they have quasi-regulatory powers? They DID have the power to ignore the ICC in some ways, kind of pre-Staggers - did it go farther? If so, that might be a precedent that was missed in this case.
