Prototype Railroading: Rest Cycles

In 2008, Congress voted into law the Railroad Safety Improvement Act (RSIA), which we have talked about before.  It is severely flawed, and was obviously written by people with no experience railroading.  Driving a desk is completely different from moving trains.  Without getting into all the details and problems again, I will just say that it is still in effect, and still frustrating to everyone who is subject to it.  Today we are going to talk about how things were before that though.  Before RSIA was in effect, railroaders were not subject to monthly limitations on work, and could work as much as they wanted without days off.  They were required to have eight hours off between jobs, and they were allowed a maximum of twelve hours on the job.  Many railroads had a system of rest cycles in place, where employees would work six or seven days typically, and then have the option of taking two or three off.  This gave them the advantage of having somewhat predictable and reliable days off, in an otherwise unpredictable occupation.

For many railroads, RSIA did away with rest cycles, because it supposedly had days off built in.  RSIA days off require starting work a certain number of days in a row.  Since they are based on calendar days, and the railroad runs 24 hours a day, they do not work well.  In fact, it has been over three months since I had my last RSIA days off.  According to RSIA however, an employee was required 48 hours off after six consecutive starts, of 72 hours off after seven starts.  A "start" is when an employee goes to work during a calendar day in train service.  Only one start per calendar day counts towards the total consecutive starts, and working in deadhead service does not count as a start.  This means, if you go to work at 10:00am on Monday, and move a train, you have a start for the day.  It also means if you go to work at 11:59pm on Monday, you have a start for Monday, but not Tuesday, even though most of the shift will obviously be during Tuesday.  This is how the railroad uses the system designed for days off to avoid days off!  If they send you to work at 11:59pm on Monday, you will probably get off around 8:00am Tuesday.  Well, that gives you a Monday start, so if they wait until 12:01am Wednesday to put you back on duty, you did not have a start on Tuesday, and therefore your consecutive start count resets.  However, many railroads did away with rest cycles because most of the upper management thought this system was working.  A few months ago the Chief Operating Officer if the BNSF held a town hall meeting locally and he honestly thought we were getting two days off every six days.

Rest cycles operated a little differently.  They were not based on starts at all.  If you were available for seven days, meaning marked up on a working board, with an assignment, you were eligible for the rest days.  If the railroad only called you for work three times in those seven days, you were still eligible as long as you had been available for work the whole time.  When the rest days came around, there was an option to take them, which for most people was the obvious choice, and there was the option to purge some or all of them, and work through the rest days.  It was based on whether or not the employee felt that they needed rest days.  I've found that, for the most part, people are better at judging their own fatigue, and need for rest, than the government.  The reason rest cycles were done away with was partly due to the RSIA promised days off, and partly due to the situation with "starts," making it hard to work all the days between rest cycles.  The starts and work days would have to line up perfectly to allow a person to get to their rest days without hitting their RSIA limit, and since train schedules often do not line up perfectly with that, scheduling presents a challenge.

Recently, at least locally, the BNSF has come up with a way to give us our rest cycles back, and a I write this, bids are being awarded on rest cycles.  They have added a feature called "Smart Rest," which allows a person to reset their RSIA start count on their own, so they they will not hit their RSIA limit for starts.  "Smart Rest" makes a person unavailable for work until the 12:01am that comes more than 24 hours after their last start.  For example, if I went to work at 10:00pm on Monday, got off at 6:00am Tuesday, and then selected the "smart rest" option, it would make me unavailable until 12:01am Wednesday, meaning I would not get a Tuesday start, and therefore reset myself.  By using the "smart rest" option, employees can ensure that they will be available for the seven days, and get their rest cycle days off.  If they do not use "smart rest" to reset themselves when necessary, and they hit the RSIA days, the rest cycle days are forfeited.  It is a little adjustment that is required to make seven on-three off rest cycles work properly.

The really nice thing about having three days off is it gives railroaders a proper weekend, even if it is not on weekend days.  Three days is 72 hours for the railroad, and while most people think of the weekend as two days, it is actually longer than that.  If a person with a regular schedule gets off work at 5:00pm on Friday and returns to work at 8:00am Monday, they have had 63 hours off, so our 72 hours off really is not much longer of a weekend.  With the 48 hours off that RSIA requires after six starts, you spend the first eight to ten hours asleep, and usually you only really end up with about a day to yourself, where you are not asleep, trying to get rested for work, or adjust back to a normal schedule for the day you have.  The seven and three rest cycles will be really nice.  I should know what my rest cycle is by this afternoon, which will finally make working for the railroad more predictable!