From Chicago, and Railway Age's Rail Insights Conference and Expo today, June 7:
William Vantuono, Editor-in-Chief, Railway Age: What topic does AAR look ahead to now?
Ed Hamberger, President and CEO, American Association of Railroads: This year, we're looking at the Federal Railroad Administration's mandate for two person cabs. Our position is that we don’t have data to suggest it's safer to have two people in a cab rather than one. Particularly galling to my members: this regulation comes after the PTC expenses, which is a good thing, and designed to override human error. Yet Transportation Department is now asking Congress for $3.9 billion for development of driverless trucks. It makes no sense. We will be unveiling a study shortly, just looking at the numbers being requested with these FRA regulations: we're estimating 25 million hours of paper work, at a cost of $1.3 billion. (More to be realeased soon on this study...)