Before the Railroad Safety Improvement Act, or RSIA, went into effect, railroaders were allowed to work a 12 hour shift. They then had to have eight hours off before their next tour of duty. Once they hit that 12 hour limit, the train had to stop and be secured, regardless of its location. A van would come out and get the crew. They would continue to get paid until they went home. There was no federal regulation on days off. Most railroads had policies in place giving people time off after a certain number of days worked. On the BNSF, an engineer or conductor would be on call for seven days. At the end of the seven days, they got 72 hours, or three days off. If they were on duty when the seventh day ended, their three days off started as soon as their tour of duty ended. People tell me it was a great system, and you always knew when your days off would be. If you decided you did not need the days off, you could work all or some of them, and there was no penalty.
That all came to an end with RSIA. Train crews are still permitted a maximum of 12 hours on duty. At the end of 12 hours, just as before, the train stops and the crew secures it and a van picks them up. Instead of then getting eight hours of rest time, they are now required to have ten hours off duty before the next shift. That is nice at the home terminal, but away from home, we would rather just get back to work and go home. Additionally, a crew may receive rest in the middle of their shift as well. If they receive less than four hours of rest, then their rest time also counts towards the 12 hour limit. However, if they get between four and ten hours of rest, it does not count towards the 12 hours. When they go back on duty, the time starts again where it left off. Of course, anything over ten hours is considered "Rested" and the clock starts back at zero upon going on duty.
Prior to RSIA, the amount of time spent waiting for the van, after the 12 hour limit, had no limit. A train crew could spend 12 hours moving a train, and then another 12 sitting on the train waiting for the van to show up. That time, after the on duty limit has been reached, but before a crew goes off duty, is called "not on-duty, not off-duty" time. Yeah, Congress even came up with an original name! Most of us call it Limbo time. That is now limited to 30 hours per calendar month. Typically the van shows up in just a couple of hours now, rather than within a couple of days! Even with that limit, I have sat on a train for 16 hours. Just as before, the railroad does continue to pay the crew for the time waiting for the van to show up. Additionally, if you have to wait for the van and you go over 12 hours during the wait, then any additional time beyond 12 hours must be added to the rest time. So if you "go dead" as we say, and then it takes an additional hour for the van to arrive and get you home, you get an additional hour added to your rest time, making it 11 hours of required rest. This is to encourage the railroad to plan ahead a little and get the van out to you sooner. This 30 hour limit is allowed to be broken in the event of "casualty, derailment, Act of God, major equipment failure, or cause unknown and unforeseeable." So if you do not foresee an unknown cause, you can sit in the van longer!
The seven days on, three days off cycles were done away with. Now, there is a rather complicated system of "starts." When a person has six consecutive starts, they are required to get 48 hours off at their home terminal. If they have seven consecutive starts, then they are required to have 72 hours off at their home terminal. Getting six starts is rather common, but seven is unusual. Typically a person gets a seventh start when their sixth one takes them away from home. A start is when a person reports for duty, except when it is for a deadhead movement or when it is their second tour of duty beginning on the same calendar day. Basically, when you go to work, it is a start. The next day, when you go to work again, it is another start. However, if you went to work at 12:01am, and then you went off duty at 11:00am, got rested, and went back to work at 23:59pm, you still only get one start for the day. If you went to work and you were deadheaded, it does not count as a start, unless you immediately get a train at the end of your deadhead, without any rest of any length. If you start work at 11:30pm on Monday, and go off duty at 11:00am Tuesday, it only counts as a start for Monday. In order to get a start for Tuesday, you would need to get rested and then go back on duty by 11:59pm. This is how the starts can be manipulated to prevent days off from ever being reached. If a person has five starts, and they are not rested until late in the evening, around 10:00pm, for example, it is very easy to push their duty time back to 12:01am, and make them miss a start. Since the requirement only applies to consecutive starts, when they miss a start like that, they are farther from days off.
In addition to all these restrictions, Congress decided we were working too hard, and imposed a monthly limit of 276 hours. This limit includes all the on duty time, as well as any "not on-duty, not off-duty" time we may have. Any or all of these limits can be waived if needed by the Secretary of Transportation or one of his delegates. This does occur, but only occasionally.
Now the really ironic part about all of this is that none of it applied to passenger train crews. These new hours of service regulations do not apply to people assigned to work on regularly scheduled intercity or commuter passenger trains. There is a clause in there indicating that if the Secretary of Transportation deems necessary and if no other hours of service law is in place, then this can go into effect on passenger trains in October 2011. I find that very interesting. Obviously we do not want anyone getting hurt, and one way to make that happen is to make sure crews are fully rested an alert. The thing that gets me is that there are a lot more people on a passenger train. Sure, a freight train could potentially derail and wipe out a community, but a passenger train could derail and kill the equivalent of a small community as well. It seems that Congress was worried more about protecting coal than passengers. I just find it interesting. Every cargo we carry is replaceable. People on the other hand, are not, yet these rules do not apply trains carrying people.
My opinion of RSIA is that this was not that well thought out and left quite a lot of loopholes open, such as the consecutive "starts" thing. Most railroads had a pretty good system in place to give their crews days off, and Congress managed to ruin that, and give the railroad an easy loophole to allow their crews to work every day, with no days off. Because of that system of "starts," I managed to work nearly a month before I finally decided to lay off fatigued. Who knows how much longer I would have gone. My "start" count just kept getting reset though, and so I was constantly available for work. Hopefully amendments are made and the Railroad Safety Improvement Act sees some improvements of its own.
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