Management and transportation unions at Chicago’s Metra regional/commuter rail system have entered into an agreement to create a Confidential Close Call Reporting System (C3RS) designed “to proactively address safety issues and create a more positive safety culture,” the agency said.

One need not look to the wild blue yonder to find the BNSF air force. Soon, it will be patrolling BNSF tracks from altitudes no higher than 500 feet, but not within three miles of any airport and always during daylight hours.

One of the largest rail labor unions—the International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers (SMART)—will have a new president May 1 upon the unexpected retirement April 30 of SMART General President Joseph J. Nigro.

BNSF Railway conductors and ground-service workers represented by General Committee GO-001 of the International Association of Sheet Metal, Air and Rail Transportation Workers (SMART, formerly the United Transportation Union) have rejected a proposal to allow freight trains equipped with Positive Train Control (PTC) to operate as early as next year with a lone engineer in the cab and no conventional on-board conductor between specific territories in the Midwest and Pacific Northwest.

In a July 20, 2014 letter to SMART-Transportation Division International Representative John W. Babler and General Chairperson Randall S. Knutson, former United Transportation Union International President Paul C. Thompson expresses his support for the tentative agreement on one-person train crews reached by BNSF Railway and SMART General Committee 001: