STB has ordered CORP to show cause on why they have not either reopened the Coos Bay line or filed for abandonment. Full story here;
Time to watch the beancounters, financial wizards and related operating/corporate brass, who never got their boots dirty, sweat for a change. (interesting tone of the document’s text, hardly neutral)
The Brits at TCI had best take note of what happens here.
Looks to me like an engraved invitation to file for abandonment. Precedent IIRC is not on their side. The NWP lost a tunnel just north of Willits (not Island Mountain, they rebuilt that one without a whimper) and had to reopen it despite the fact that the line was a chronic looser. SP sold the line to a shortline, the shortline failed, and that was the end of rail service to Eureka.
Mac
I can’t blame the law for working legally, and the “Surf Board” seems to be doing just that. - a. s.
If nothing else, it’ll force CORP to answer some questions, which they have left up in the air since this whole thing started.
The only real surprise here is how long it took STB to do this, given all of the flak generated by the shutdown of the line - the law is this area is very clear, and is accurately stated in the STB decision. It’s one thing to embargo and shut down a line for a long period, with no apparent plan for reopening, when there’s nobody that cares. No harm, no foul. It’s quite another to do so when there are shippers demanding service and politicians demanding your scalp. It will be interesting to see how this plays out. My bet is that CORP will file for abandonment or discontinuance of service, possibly by the May 12 deadline.
By the way, the header for this thread is a little misleading. STB isn’t requiring CORP officials to explain themselves at a hearing. They’re just requiring CORP to make a written filing by the May 12 deadline.
One of the other notes in this thread mentioned Northwestern Pacific, which has been embargoed and shut down since FRA ordered it out of service in 1998. From a purely legal standpoint, it’s the same as CORP, only NWP has been shut down a lot longer. I’m not sure why STB never stepped in on NWP like they did on CORP. Possibly, it’s the “no harm, no foul” effect mentioned above. The shippers and politicians in NWP’s service territory don’t appear to be nearly as exercised about the road’s shutdown as those in CORP’s service territory (in fact, the NWP locals seem more animated by the prospect of NWP reopening than they do about the fact that it’s shutdown). Another factor may be that the NWP line is owned by a government agency, which has at least been making some attempts to restore service.
Falcon, perhaps there is an exception in the law concerning STB’s authority for a “railroad” whose primary purpose is to provide a second job for local politicans. [:-^]
For serious, I take it there is an exception to their authority in the case of Amtrak, else the situation with the Sunset east of New Orleans could not occur.
You’re correct about Amtrak. In the days before Amtrak, both Federal and state regulators had authority over passenger train discontinuances (which is why passenger service survived as long as it did on private railroads). But that’s no longer the case. STB has no authority over over Amtrak service change or discontinuance decisions. The same is true of service or discontinuance decisions by mass transit authorities.