The Surface Transportation Board (STB) is calling on Norfolk Southern (NS) to address the deterioration of “key operating metrics” over the past several weeks and the increasing number of customer complaints to STB about the Class I railroad’s “poor performance.”
I wonder what has happened?
If I didn’t know any better I’d say you were describing Washington DC.
It's all by design they control the narrative they control the money they are experts at this and know exactly what they (NS) are doing!best part they are making business decisions on personal opinion, they don't like this guy.. that guy? they want results not excuses they have heard tell of something a crew possiblity did one night.. like the conductor walked over to a soda machine and bought a MtDew while stopped at a signal waiting for the signal to upgrade! they will fire the conductor do away with that train and combo it into another with DP over a can of soda at 2am!
They heard??? about this from a signal maintainers comment overheard in a locker room and run to the nearest Boss Hog Supervisor and scream..BossHog BossHog them Duke Boys are at it again we got em this time!!!None of this is PSR it's all opinion and personal vendetta driven
They spent weeks and weeks and Millions of dollars on time studies and crunching minutes into seconds and found out that a couple of jobs and a terminal or two needed to do this and not that they said"block swap" this with that and??? Change this start time,,? anyone remember this??then everyone did what they was told! and it didn't work, didn't change a thing really did it,or if it was a success it was something that was done that way for 10yrs and some BossHog trainmaster changed it one day months before PSR and the time study people said do it the same way it was done for 10 years before they come along in the night from the Holiday Inn Express with a Captain Obvious assumption.
Now they are not following through with anything they said they was going to do!? Everything they are doing now is driven by vendetta against the people who got the work done and made that company record profits year in and year out and now they heard?? tell of 14,000 foot trains running at track speed... exactly at track speed mind you for hundreds and hundreds of miles at exactly 60mph the whole way from Fantasy Island to the HardRock Candy Mountain and everyone was happy and never spoke a word and pi-y dust
fixed everything and the workers thanked BossHog everyday.
They are cutting these jobs by design so they can double up with the CSX and control the best and most profitable routes in the Eastern Half of the US.
This is all by design so they can go to Washington and say..look look see see these workers are doing this we need help and we need this to stay viable and move forward and please while you are at it..!? can we have a few BILLION dollars from the pockets of the American people?
It's the liquidation of America
Privatize the profits
Socialization of any and all losses
Control the narrative
Sway public opinion
Tip the scales of justice
Write the rules into laws
Use the law to generate dollars
Taken from the pockets of the people
WashRinseRepeat
From James Squires Chief executive officer : Dear Mr.Martin J. Oberman ; Your claim is without merit therefore it is declined.
they would probably run a banner test on it to try to take the crew out of service.
Keeping with the Holiday theme. These douchebags could not get a Lionel around the bottom of a Christmas tree
NS, the DOT, the FRA and the STB have always worked hand in hand to come up with nonsensical solutions to real world problems. Nothing positive will come from this and no advocates for the workers will be involved in coming up with solutions. Get ready for more layoffs and shop closings because that’s their answer to everything.
The team and their cronies know nothing about managing a railroad. I don’t think they could even manage an ice cream stand. Kudos though for robbing us blind (craft workers) who made them look successful up to this point. Now the tide has turned. Too late though, because they have made their millions at our expense. Guess they’re smarter than us.
The Emperor has no clothes !
Whats happening is Greed . Corporate , Shareholder and Hedge funds playing a shell game to increase maximum profit . In the process continually spreading a false truth to STB , FRA and lawmakers. Truth be told they are continuing to cut jobs several at my location , shutter locomotives or the ones they have in service are falling apart due to furloughed employees who use to repair them and continue to consolidate positions . They cannot hire because new employees hear the horrors of the job first hand from the men and women doing the actual work .We had several quit within two weeks . They have reduced the workforce to an all time low and moral at this company has never been worse . Years of working without a contract yet being labeled as essential so they can achieve their operating ratio . They did muster enough money to build a brand new headquarters. This company deserves everything it has coming .
Keep dragging your feet, slow down, take your time. It’s working!
Squires
Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer Norfolk Southern Corporation
Three Commercial Place
Norfolk, VA 23510
Dear Mr. Squires,
I am writing to request an update on the rail service performance of Norfolk Southern Railway (“NSR”) in meeting the needs of its customers.
Over the last several weeks, NSR’s key operating metrics, as reported under STB Docket No. EP 724, have deteriorated significantly and are hovering far below 2019 comparables. (Because of disruptions caused by COVID-19 during 2020, in my view, 2019 is a better year for measuring the degree to which service has been restored.) For example, NSR’s system average train speed for manifest service was 14.01 mph for the second reporting week of November 2021, showing a marked decline against the same week for November 2019 when NSR’s manifest train speed was 20.7 mph. This delta is particularly troubling given the focus on the manifest network in NSR’s precision scheduled railroading operating model. Similarly, NSR’s system average dwell is approximately 10 hours greater than the same reporting week in 2019, 27.5 hours versus 17.8 hours. Finally, the average number of manifest trains holding per day increased by ten times when the second reporting week of November 2021 is compared against 2019: 58 versus 5. These metrics reflect an unfavorable trend in NSR’s overall performance in 2021. Yet, NSR’s number of “transportation” employees has continued to decline over the last three months (8,281, 8,269, and 8,207, respectively), as reported on STB Form C.
Coinciding with the marked deterioration in NSR’s performance metrics, the Board has received an increasing number of complaints from NSR’s customers about poor performance. These complaints include missed switches, cars stranded at intermediate yards, longer transit times, operating plan changes without notice, and a lack of communication from customer service. Many of these complaints are from customers along NSR’s Cincinnati to Chattanooga corridor, but I have also heard from shippers in the deep South and the mid-Atlantic. Taken together, they represent a cross-section of key commodity groups. These rail service disruptions have caused customers to incur additional costs, typically without compensation from NSR.
For these reasons, I am requesting that you provide the Board with a review of the current state of NSR’s network, and your assessment of what factors are affecting NSR’s ability to achieve past levels of fluidity and consistent service, and in particular the impact on customer service of previous headcount reductions for train, yard, and maintenance employees.
It would be most helpful if you could provide this review as a follow up to your letter to me dated June 18, 2021, in which you outlined a “program of targeted hiring” to meet workforce needs, referenced measures to attract and retain operating employees, including through financial incentives, and forecasted the number of conductor trainees you anticipated onboarding through 2021. In light of the declining employee headcount since June as shown by the data supplied to the STB, your program does not appear to have succeeded in obtaining a workforce level sufficient to avoid the service challenges described above. Please detail any adjustments NSR has made in the intervening time, and any modifications or additional efforts NSR intends to make in the future to increase its overall operating headcount against attrition.
I take the problems involving NSR’s service with the utmost seriousness and look forward to their resolution in the shortest possible time as the Nation’s economy continues its rebuilding efforts while recovering from the effects of the pandemic.
Thank you for your attention to this request. If you or your staff have any questions, please contact me or Ms. Janie Sheng, Acting Director of the Board’s Office of Public Assistance, Governmental Affairs, and Compliance, at 202-245-0238.
Sincerely,
Martin J. Oberman Chairman
Chickens have come home to roost, thats what happened.
Oh no failure from the top no way.
Ok people keep up the good work
It's seems to be working.
Let the Corporate Greed kings talk their way out of this.
More job cuts, longer trains,
No crews I don't understand it looked good on paper they wrote everyone up.
They fired or layed off so many sold their Engines cut back on everything and it still not working.
We the people that are left here are making a difference let's keep it up and make the top executives sqeal.
Maybe a change at the top is coming let's hope and pray for that.
This just shows they need us now more than ever, if you aren't helping bring them to their knees you are the problem. I say ns slit their own throat, let's not offer then a bandage. Let this miserable company bleed out get congress to put rail executives on trial for their blatant thievery and causing this shipping crisssis.
Up the same
NS happened to get caught with their pants down. They're to ignorant and stupid to pull them back up. Money and greed drives their insanity.