SEPTA Engineers want SEPTA to follow fatigue safety rules

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Regional Rail engineers have asked federal regulators to require SEPTA to follow a safety rule designed to limit fatigue.

SEPTA wants the Federal Railroad Administration to renew a waiver that the transit agency has had from the work rule for two years.
The Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen asked the federal agency to deny SEPTA's request and hold a public hearing on the issue, citing accidents at other railroads caused by fatigued engineers.

None of SEPTA's 200 engineers works a 40-hour week. Most work six-day weeks, with the typical engineer working about 67 hours per week. The Federal Railroad Administration requires two days off every 14 days.

Clearly they need to get some more engineers and stop putting all the pressure on a thin list of overworked people.

25Hz wrote:Clearly they need to get some more engineers and stop putting all the pressure on a thin list of overworked people.

Clearly due process under the law needs to run its course

I'm going to side with 25Hz.

Forcing people to work 6 days per week (especially the night shift) becomes a grind after a couple months.

How is someone getting adequate rest working 12 hours per day, 6 days per week? And that's assuming they are getting rest at home. A couple people at my old job used to stay on the night shift to save a thousand bucks per month in daycare services for the kids.

Can the engineers ask for more rest if they need it (especially the guys working on call) or is it a cut and dry policy at SEPTA?

The Inquirer story points out that two years ago, when SEPTA applied for the waiver (which was granted) the union offered no objection. Some guys like the overtime. I don't have the story in front of me, but I think SEPTA has said that of the incidents on SEPTA cited by the union, none involved engineer fatigue. I'm wondering whether the union has some other issue with SEPTA and the complaint to the FRA is a bargaining chip.

I completely understand the whole overtime argument, and you certainly don't want to limit someone's ability to earn extra money. However, I'm sure there is another faction in the BLE that doesn't want to work more than a 5 day week, or 60-70 hours per week.

They need to find a happy middle ground.

Certainly working a guy 11hrs, 59mins then bringing him back to work after 8 hours off (that's time off, not actual rest time) isn't safe.

I'm sure fatigue isn't to blame for all the incidents on SEPTA, but it is certainly a risk that can easily be mitigated. When are they going to hire the 10 or 20 engineers they need to fully staff their operation?

Norfolk Southern website says they plan to hire an additional 300 train crew personnel in the 4th quarter to handle increased business between Chicago and North Jersey.

How hard is it for SEPTA to hire 20? This manpower crisis has been in the paper over and over again.

But what you don't see are the unreported (to the media) incidents, you don't see or hear about the near misses if they have them, you don't see the reports of how many people call out because they are too exhausted to work, just because the major incidents make it into the paper and it gets deemed fatigue wasn't a factor does not mean incidents because of fatigue don't happen.

How many of you have been driving and then the tiredness hits you, you know full well it smacks you in the face and you become just about useless, you have to pull over, well what happens when that happens to your train engineer, I'm sure they have to struggle through it, no one there to take over for them, they can't just stop for a 20 minute sleep.

It's not just the guy that works 11h59m and off resting for 8, it's the guy that takes the 4 hour plus HOS break in the middle of the day, and is still working for 14-16 hours with that break in the middle of the day - 5 weekdays a week and another 10-11h59m on one day of the weekend.

Looks like enough is enough. The BLE is fed up with them piling more work on a decreasing number of engineers.

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Let's hope that SEPTA won't have to suffer a Metro-North like accident to get the point across that you just can't overwork people endlessly and not have it catch up with you eventually.

Two thoughts:

1. SEPTA is looking to increase weekday service from 1 hr to 1/2 hr on all lines. Yet, not increase engineers. You can only squeeze so much blood from a stone.
2. There is a block of engineers nearing retirement. They estimate losing 1 engineer per month. SEPTA will be hard-pressed to promote at that average.

SEPTA does not want to hire. The opinion is it is cheaper to pay OT rather than hire and have to pay benefits. (And has anyone seen this internal fatigue study that was supposedly done?)

If the FRA grants the waiver, and there is a Metro-North type accident...

First step would be to hire more engineers. Second step - Keep the 12 hour service limit, but increase the mandatory rest period to another 12 hours. That way the engineers get to keep their overtime, which is where a lot of their money comes from.

According to the article, they hire enough to reach their goal, but it takes months to train. SEPTA loses more workers before the new hires can start contributing; therefore, SEPTA is always short qualified workers. They need to hire to replace workers that are about to retire and have them qualified and ready to go when the retirement occurs.

I just hope no one gets hurt if something does happen due to these folks being overworked.

Every engineer i've talked to in the last 5 years says they like the pay just fine, but need more time off between working.

Clearly SEPTA is at a point where it's either going to have further and more dire problems, or it can make lots of improvements and serve the region better. 30 minute service on all lines would be a massive improvement, especially in how RRD connects to other modes. But, if the engineer assigned to that train called out the night before sick & you have no replacement, that's going to put your schedule right down the toilet, and piss off the all ready aggravated riders dealing with the existing issues SEPTA has.

What part of SEPTA being broke don't people understand? The problem is Harrisburg, not 1234 Market. It's easy to say that SEPTA is mismanaged or stupid, but in 2014 the root cause of their problems is money. When they moved their HQ cleaning from night to day so they could turn off the lights and save electricity you know its not a mismanagement problem anymore.