Rest Time Under Hours of Service and Commuting

I believe there is a dangerous flaw in the rest requirements of the hours of service laws governing railroad ooperating personnel. It seems to me that the time to commute between a conductor or engineer's home and his or her home terminal is counted as part of the 8 hour rest period, which does not seem safe, especially for those people who have a commute of 2 or more hours each way. A great way to play Russian Roulette with people's lives and I believe that the commute time should be counted separately from on duty and rest time rather than lump it in with one or the other. No wonder we have trains running stop signals right into other trains, some of them head on. Inadequate rest is what is killing engineers and conductors on the job. The time on and off duty should be determined by the actual time the engineer or conductor actually reports for their assigned trip or turn in their paper work before going home. Travel time to and from the home should NOT be counted as part of the 8 hour rest period. But in a separate category. I hope it does not take a mass casualty incident involving a train to correct this flaw as I see it.

rangerjim94 wrote:I believe there is a dangerous flaw in the rest requirements of the hours of service laws governing railroad ooperating personnel. It seems to me that the time to commute between a conductor or engineer's home and his or her home terminal is counted as part of the 8 hour rest period, which does not seem safe, especially for those people who have a commute of 2 or more hours each way. A great way to play Russian Roulette with people's lives and I believe that the commute time should be counted separately from on duty and rest time rather than lump it in with one or the other. No wonder we have trains running stop signals right into other trains, some of them head on. Inadequate rest is what is killing engineers and conductors on the job. The time on and off duty should be determined by the actual time the engineer or conductor actually reports for their assigned trip or turn in their paper work before going home. Travel time to and from the home should NOT be counted as part of the 8 hour rest period. But in a separate category. I hope it does not take a mass casualty incident involving a train to correct this flaw as I see it.

It would never fly. The railroad's answer would be to tell you to move closer. Their perfect world would have us living track-side in converted box-cars, within a five minute walk to the yard office.

This has been a weak spot in the Federal Hours of Service Law for many years. It comes under the same idea that disturbing your minimum rest with a call for duty does not interrupt the rest period. For example, if you get a 2' call to report for duty immediately after your 8' rest, the official position is that such a call does not violate the requirement for 8' continuous and unbroken rest.

When we started interdivisional seniority equities on the Selkirk to Buffalo run, we had prior rights EL and LV crews bid in for jobs. An LV crew from Sayre could own a regular job out of Selkirk, but their roughly3' travel time from home to work did not count as time worked. After completing a roundtrip, the return trip home did not count against their rest time. However, somebody working an extra list and ordered to headhead to an on-duty point has that travel time count against the time worked.

jg greenwood wrote:

rangerjim94 wrote:I believe there is a dangerous flaw in the rest requirements of the hours of service laws governing railroad ooperating personnel. It seems to me that the time to commute between a conductor or engineer's home and his or her home terminal is counted as part of the 8 hour rest period, which does not seem safe, especially for those people who have a commute of 2 or more hours each way. A great way to play Russian Roulette with people's lives and I believe that the commute time should be counted separately from on duty and rest time rather than lump it in with one or the other. No wonder we have trains running stop signals right into other trains, some of them head on. Inadequate rest is what is killing engineers and conductors on the job. The time on and off duty should be determined by the actual time the engineer or conductor actually reports for their assigned trip or turn in their paper work before going home. Travel time to and from the home should NOT be counted as part of the 8 hour rest period. But in a separate category. I hope it does not take a mass casualty incident involving a train to correct this flaw as I see it.

It would never fly. The railroad's answer would be to tell you to move closer. Their perfect world would have us living track-side in converted box-cars, within a five minute walk to the yard office.

That's about right. The barracks at Clinton were peachy.
The hours railroaders work has always been an issue, and I suppose there's room for improvement. However, there needs to be some sort of standard, I mean, how would the hours of service be fair for someone who lived closer, vs. someone who lived far away? Travel time is awfully arbitrary. Then so-and-so would get a 2 hour call, thisotherguy gets 3 hours... What would stop someone from getting a mailing address two hours away, while actually shacking-up just down the road to get a better call time?

I agree with all the points made but aren't you asking the railroad to pay for your choice of living two hours from work? On my road if you are forced to an assignment due to your seniority you are paid to travel. If you are sent on assignment to a remote point the clock starts when you sign up at the home terminal.

I don't understand the point of having the employer have to recognize your own personal choices in living and commuting.

Everywhere I have worked allows you to book up to 12hrs rest at the home terminal, 14 for pool guys.

GN 599 wrote:Everywhere I have worked allows you to book up to 12hrs rest at the home terminal, 14 for pool guys.

The BNSF is a little more realistic than other roads. 10' undisturbed is the max on the IC. If you book for the 10', don't bother claiming your guarantee for the following day, ain't gonna happen. This is true regardless if the additional rest prevents your getting out or not. Safety first!

10 hours sound rough, on CP (Canada) we can take 24 hours plus the 2 hour call at the home terminal and 8 hours at the afht. Some terminals have local agreements for 36 hours rest. Back in 1997 they established time pools on our Calgary to Field run, Lark pool 0600 to 1500, Owl pool 1501 to 2359 and Cat pool 0001 to 2359 with an additional 1 hour overlap before each time pool starts in case one pool gets drained. The spare board was split into a day and night board 0600 to 1759 and 1800 to 0559. Since this was implimented there have been very few incidents caused by human error. It really helps for making plans, you just book rest past your window and you can get a day or two off with out booking off. Even with the time pools we still manage to get our miles in. It's made life a hell of alot better here but has not been implimented anywhere else on the system as far as I know. When you compare this to our other subdivision there have been far more incidents caused by human error and the lifestyle is the shits compared to the sub with the time pools.
I beleive this all started as a pilot project after a bad runaway/derailment down the Field hill caused by crew fatigue and was supposed to go system wide, but that never happened and this is the only example of this on CP.

see links for more info
http://www.ble355.com/agreements/laggan ... _pools.pdf
and
http://www.ble355.com/agreements/canale ... olicy.html

For got to mention, passing red signals have been pretty rare since the time pools were established, it's been quite a few years since the last time a crew has passed a stop signal on this subdivision.

CCCPR wrote:10 hours sound rough, on CP (Canada) we can take 24 hours plus the 2 hour call at the home terminal and 8 hours at the afht. Some terminals have local agreements for 36 hours rest. Back in 1997 they established time pools on our Calgary to Field run, Lark pool 0600 to 1500, Owl pool 1501 to 2359 and Cat pool 0001 to 2359 with an additional 1 hour overlap before each time pool starts in case one pool gets drained. The spare board was split into a day and night board 0600 to 1759 and 1800 to 0559. Since this was implimented there have been very few incidents caused by human error. It really helps for making plans, you just book rest past your window and you can get a day or two off with out booking off. Even with the time pools we still manage to get our miles in. It's made life a hell of alot better here but has not been implimented anywhere else on the system as far as I know. When you compare this to our other subdivision there have been far more incidents caused by human error and the lifestyle is the shits compared to the sub with the time pools.
I beleive this all started as a pilot project after a bad runaway/derailment down the Field hill caused by crew fatigue and was supposed to go system wide, but that never happened and this is the only example of this on CP.

see links for more info
http://www.ble355.com/agreements/laggan ... _pools.pdf
and
http://www.ble355.com/agreements/canale ... olicy.html

Sounds as though there actually are some sane agreements. We can't get any additional rest at the away from home terminal. Solution? Drag your heels and hose the canine until you get all 12!

On the former GN engineers can book rest at the away from home terminal. On the former SP&S we cant. Not sure about the NP and Q as I have never worked on their properties other than a few NP yards. Sometimes its nice to get a little extra rest at the motel but most guys want to get home so they dont book rest out of town.