Railway Track & Structures - May 2008 - (Page 27)

issue where Amtrak was competing with our private companies in the business of rail contracting. We took a public stand that this was unacceptable. Then there was a legislative effort to bring all construction and maintenance contractors under the Railway Labor Act and Railroad Retirement. The purpose was to kill the edge our private contractors had in competing against Amtrak. This was all before David Gunn, David Hughes and now Alexander Kummant took over operations at Amtrak. With a lot of help from our unions, the Laborers, the Operating Engineers and the Carpenters, we won the issue of putting us under railway labor laws. That issue is dead in Congress. For some time, Amtrak took themselves out of the thirdparty contracting business for track and signal construction and maintenance, while they stuck to their core business of running trains. However, there have been some noises lately that Amtrak is again exploring the possibility of competing directly against the private contracting sector to bid on these track and signal projects. That would be unacceptable to the NRC and we would fight aggressively against this practice. Other than that, the NRC has no conflict with Amtrak and we are supportive of a dramatically increased level of funding and government support for passenger rail. We do believe that there should be policy reform that can spur a revival of intercity passenger rail in this country. There should be maximum participation by private companies in rail passenger operations. We believe the states should be given greater responsibility for operating corridors that are not part of the long-distance national system or the Northeast Corridor. We believe there should be a major capital program of track infrastructure upgrades and rolling stock acquisition that would be run through the states on an 80-20 match (similar to the highway program). Clearly, a new generation of public-private partnerships will be the key to a freight and passenger rail renaissance. RT&S: Are there any other new developments in your safety training program besides the new pricing system and offering it on CD-ROM that you mentioned earlier? Ramirez: Yes, there have been several major victories. As evidenced by the previously mentioned safety training DVDs, our goal is to become the premier source for safety training in the railroad construction industry. We invested a lot of money in a very aggressive and sophisticated userfriendly Web-based RWP safety training program. The courses were designed and are maintained by CANAC Inc. In addition, they were reviewed by the FRA to make sure they are in compliance with the agency’s regulatory safety standards. The overall program is state of the art in our industry. This program is available via the internet or via CD-ROM at no charge to our members, in both English and Spanish. The first major victory that I mentioned is that the ASLRRA has agreed to endorse this training method and recommend to all of their 500-plus railroad members that they accept this training and not require any other duplicative training programs. This is a win-win situation for everybody involved, and will save both NRC and ASLRRA members time and money as we cut www.rtands.com Railway Track & Structures May 2008 27 http://www.rtands.com

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Railway Track & Structures - May 2008

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