JD Vance Questions NTSB Officials About Effects Of Port Data Collection

6 months ago

At a Senate Commerce Committee hearing prior to the Congressional recess, Sen. JD Vance (R-OH) questioned NTSB officials about data collection.

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Transcript

00:00 Thank you Madam Chair. Thank you. Senator Vance. Thank you Madam Chair. Thanks to both of you for

00:06 being here. I've spent probably too much time grilling Chair Halamudy about rail safety and

00:13 I'm sure she's sick of talking with me about the topic. So I'm going to focus on you Mr. Fuchs.

00:17 No I'm kidding. Obviously that's your job. Mine too. So but I want to actually sort of pick up

00:24 on something that Senator Baldwin was talking about earlier which is this sort of data that

00:29 you collected at the STB in response to some of the service disruptions. So just to set the table

00:35 Mr. Fuchs, do I understand it correctly that the main thing that motivated that data collection in

00:39 2020-2021 was sort of pandemic related service disruptions? Yes that's correct Senator. Okay.

00:46 So maybe you know I understand this is sort of relatively new data. You probably haven't spent

00:54 that much haven't had that much capacity to sort of fully incorporate and understand it. But I mean

01:00 any high level conclusions or considerations? I mean anything that's especially interesting about

01:05 the data you collected over the last couple years? Absolutely. Thank you for the question. So first

01:11 is it provided transparency into the carrier's on-time performance in first last mile service

01:16 which the board hadn't collected before. So if you talk to a rail shipper what they want to know is

01:21 is my freight going to show up on time and will the railroad hit their local switch so the people

01:25 who are doing the important work of loading and loading freights can keep the economy moving.

01:29 The second and so what the data did is it clearly underscored the severity of the problem. The

01:36 second thing it did is it it underscored the importance of of the labor shortage to service

01:40 performance. Third is it allowed us to to dig down both geographically and by service type. And then

01:44 you know fourth is it required the carriers to set six month and one year targets so we could

01:49 track their progression. So you know it's helped the agency hold the railroads accountable.

01:53 It's focused our oversight efforts. It's informed shipper decisions and it's also informed others.

01:58 So I think the data has been very valuable. Okay so I'm gonna pick up on the labor shortage

02:02 sort of theme in a second but I mean have you guys noticed just the act of being required to

02:10 report this information has actually solved some of the service related excuse me the service

02:15 related issues? Certainly it's been a helpful factor. You know the carriers had numerous

02:21 reasons to improve not least of which is the effects of their poor service on demand.

02:25 But but I believe that the board's data collection was helpful. I mean

02:30 Senator if you just look at the facts you know when we started our reporting around around May

02:35 of 2022 compared to the end of 2023 the carrier's trip plan compliance which is that measure of

02:42 service reliability increased by about 17 to 29 percent depending on the carrier's percentage

02:47 points. And you know at the same time the carriers increased their train and engine crew all of them

02:55 by more than 500 some of them closer to a thousand. And I have been gratified to hear from shippers

03:00 about they're using both the employment and the service data to inform inform their decision

03:05 making which provides a private sector incentive additional private sector incentive on the carrier.

03:11 So I do think it's been a helpful contributing factor. Okay that's that's helpful to know.

03:15 And just you know being mindful of time you mentioned the labor shortage issues and you

03:21 know one of the concerns that I have is that very aggressive staff reduction and the especially the

03:28 class one railroads contributes in some ways to service disruptions. Do you see any evidence of

03:34 that in your data? What's what's actually going on with the labor shortage? Is that because the train

03:38 companies aggressively cut back or is it because they can't find people or is it both?

03:43 Thank you Senator. You know I would say if you look at the employment shortage

03:50 during the pandemic it was a combination of both. And in addition to the factual predicate that I

03:56 laid out I would just point out that the railroads have stated to the board on the record that the

04:02 labor shortage contributed to their service problems. Yep got it okay. So one just last

04:06 comment and I'll yield back the remainder of my time is you know we we myself and a number of the

04:11 colleagues that I have on this committee have worked on a railway safety bill. And one of the

04:15 arguments we sometimes run up against is that if the bill passes the two-man crew provision will

04:21 radically reduce service in the rail industry that will significantly cut back the quality of service.

04:27 And one of the the interesting observations is there have been some service issues related to

04:32 staffing well before the Rail Safety Act was even envisioned and certainly of course it hasn't gone

04:36 into effect as law yet. So I find it a little rich that the railways want to blame a bill that

04:42 doesn't actually exist in law for service disruptions that existed for for now many years.

04:48 So it seems a little absurd to me but that's just my biased opinion. I yield back thanks to the chair.

04:53 Thank you Senator Vance.

JD Vance Questions NTSB Officials About Effects Of Port Data Collection

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