Western Railroad Discussion > STB Railroad Hearing April 26, 2022 - Matt Burkhart (BNSF)

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Great synopsis, but, wall street is in control of operations now...I don't know if anyone can break their grip on the railroads and they way they operate now.   Profit over all else, efficiency does not matter, productivity rules it seems and so the shippers needs matter very little.   The speaker was excellent, he earns his pay for sure.

Well spoken. True. Let's hope it leads to some badly needed changes. Hope springs eternal. 

    Ross Rowland 

Thank you for posting this.

This started out as a presentation with many great points. But a glaring exception is at 6:08. If the elimination of an on-site yardmaster in Wenatchee, Washington is in any way related to the deadly Amtrak derailment in Montana, he needed to do a better job of elaboritng why. 

ATSF3768 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Thank you for posting this.
>
> This started out as a presentation with many great
> points. But a glaring exception is at 6:08. If the
> elimination of an on-site yardmaster in Wenatchee,
> Washington is in any way related to the deadly
> Amtrak derailment in Montana, he needed to do a
> better job of elaboritng why. 

Yeah I agree. That made no sense to me either.

I appreciate seeing and hearing this bit of the Board procedings, thanks for sharing.
My hearing is compormised so I only understood about 70% of what he said.
Take notice of the points made in comments above, about how investor profits are driving the railroads to these absurd outcomes in terms of service to customers, employees, and the public.  This is a great introduction to the concept of the need for some legislation to regulate the social impacts.  We truly do not want to quash the profit motive of our capitalist system, but we do need some laws to make bad outcomes for the other stakeholders measurably expensive to the investor class.
Adding some competition (reciprocal switching?), limiting train length (perhaps as measured by time blocking crossings?), and adding performance reliablity to freight contracts (with enforcement provisions?) are some ideas.
Interesting times....

I don't understand the Wenatchee/Amtrak refrence besides maybe he mis spoke or mixed up a few lines.

I will say Wenatchee is a disaster nearly every day. The line-ups while never great there have been absolutly horrible with trains off by hours or even days. The Seattle Planner often has no idea how to make a power move or setout/pickup simple and with crew moral being what it is guys are pretty much doing what they say and it ties up the main or the yard for hours on something that could have been done in 45 minites. I can't see anyway that eleminnating the Yardmasters there has saved any money overall and god knows how much time it has cost them. Add in the fact the Hot Seat out of Seattle plans the route B/C's from Pasco to come up there and he does it on bad lineups so he will send two crews up from Pasco only for evereyone to sit in the hotel foe 24-30 hours because half the trains never got called out of Everett/Interbay. What used to be a prefered run now is hated by the vast majority.

Follow their instructions and open your pockets...while everything melts down.

Okay, so the STB is making them testify, but, what else can they do? Do they have the power to actually make changes even if the railroad Boards of Directors don't want to?
Or is that as Greta Thornberg called the G7, blah, blah, blah?

Greta had a massive impact, the Green Party in Germany now wants new nuke plants!

Out