Federal Railroad Administrator Joseph Szabo held a conference call with trade reporters to announce his agency was withdrawing guidelines it had released in May due to concerns from freight railroad executives that their input had not been considered and that performance standards set in the guidelines were burdensome, the Journal of Commerce reported.

Much of the $8 billion provided by Congress for high-speed and intercity passenger rail through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 will make improvements allowing freight and passenger trains to share track. FRA's May guidelines were issued to dictate how that partnership between freight railroads and state transportation departments operating passenger trains should be written into agreements for service.

FRA guidelines included measurable service standards that would have accompanied federal grant agreements, but freight railroads objected to requirements that they guarantee schedules for passenger service on their tracks or face fines.

"Guidance is not mandatory for good-faith negotiations to take place, but is simply a tool to help assist in the process," Szabo said. "We don't want to inhibit the parties' creativity by being prescriptive, but rather, provide them flexibility to achieve the performance outcomes that are required by law. Any questions by the states can be answered by the assigned FRA customer service agent, or if requested, FRA is willing to sit in with the parties to assist them in achieving the necessary results."

The disagreement arose from differing opinions between FRA and freight railroad executives about how rail lines would be shared between freight cars and high-speed passenger trains. Freight executives believe the priority must be given to freight operations and making on-time deliveries to their customers, but the guidelines set on-time performance standards for passenger rail that executives felt would be unreasonable to meet.

Szabo now says the agreements must include quantifiable service outcomes based on "mutually agreed upon analysis/modeling" that includes trip times, train frequencies and schedule reliability "to the extent it is under a party's control."

More information about high-speed rail is available from AASHTO at www.highspeed-rail.org.