Rail Insights: AAR on FRA’s two-person cab rule

From Chicago, and Railway Age's Rail Insights Conference and Expo today, June 7:

William C. Vantuono, Editor-in-Chief, Railway Age: What issue does AAR look ahead to now?

Ed Hamberger, President and CEO, Association of American 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 PTC , which is a good thing, and designed to override human error. Yet the 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 released soon on this study…)