URCS

From STB, Another NPRM

The Surface Transportation Board on April 29 issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM), URCS Data Reporting (Docket No. EP 769), “to codify a longstanding voluntary practice of data reporting by the Class I carriers,” which through the Association of American Railroads (AAR) have annually reported tare weight and L&D (loss and damage) data for use in the Board’s Uniform Railroad Costing System (URCS).

Commentary

Forcing Round Pegs Into Square Holes

Frank Wilner’s excellent article in the September 2019 issue of Railway Age, “STB Moves to Rehab Antique URCS,” brought back many memories of my direct involvement in its development. To this day, I often spell the acronym for the Uniform Rail Costing System, URCS, backwards—SCRU—as many “experts” developing rail costs with it can produce these results!

Commentary

STB Moves to Rehab Antique URCS

If you think a currently under way Surface Transportation Board (STB) search for outside experts to rehabilitate and modernize the 30-year-old Uniform Rail Costing System (URCS) is not of significant importance to railroads and their customers, then think again, and stay focused.

Commentary

URCS: Love It or Hate it, We’re Stuck With It

For a sleep inducer, consider working with the Uniform Rail Costing System (URCS), long a general costing system indispensable for determining maximum reasonable rail rates. Worse, its second side-effect is indigestion, as this 30-year-old accounting relic is much like a classic car lacking modern GPS and satellite radio. Practitioners too often become frustrated with its built-in averages from a time when railroads, rather than shippers, owned most of the freight car fleet and line hauls were shorter as the modern merger movement had not yet run its course.