On call rest periods

The airlines received a mandate from the FAA/NTSB to find a way to have rested crews available at all times when on call. The result was a "Reserve Availability Period" or RAP for short. Crewmembers on reserve (on call) bid and are awarded, based on senority, a RAP that runs 12 - 15 hours on call. After that they are off duty 12 - 9 hours then go back on call. During this off duty time crewschedule (crew callers) may not attempt to contact you until the moment that your RAP begins. That way you can plan your sleep cycles and be rested on the job.
Having crews divided into several RAPs around the clock, ie. 0600-1800, 1200-000, 1500-0300 etc..., allows the company to always have an available pool of rested crews.

Have any railroads or the BLE ever considered this type of system?

There's been numerous rest cycle schedules proposed, the UP comes to mind, voted down by $-hungry TY&E personnel! The IC just recently abolished some 6-day per week assignments and advertised the same jobs on a 5-day schedule. The hue and cry was deafening! Safety superseded by greed once again. What!? You expect me to "exist" on a minimum of $3,000/pay? Preposterous!

Back in 1997 CP established time pools on our Calgary to Field run up in Canada, Lark pool 0600 to 1500, Owl pool 1501 to 2359 and Cat pool 0001 to 0559 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. It really helps for making plans, you just book rest past your call 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

Having extreme duty periods seems to be one of the biggest negitives of working on the railroad. I can see working at any time of the day or night but the practice of assigning trips that require crews to go from day to night, AM to PM is onerous. With all the understanding and evidence available today on the importance of proper rest and how the body reacts adversly to disrupted circadian cycles I'm surprised that the railroads do this with such frequency.

With all the emphisis placed on safety in the work place and the ever constant goal of reducing injuries I would think that the railroad management would would place more importance on this subject.

Of course the Bean Counters have a big say in this and employee moral has yet to have a value on a spread sheet.

flatspot wrote:Having extreme duty periods seems to be one of the biggest negitives of working on the railroad. I can see working at any time of the day or night but the practice of assigning trips that require crews to go from day to night, AM to PM is onerous. With all the understanding and evidence available today on the importance of proper rest and how the body reacts adversly to disrupted circadian cycles I'm surprised that the railroads do this with such frequency.

With all the emphisis placed on safety in the work place and the ever constant goal of reducing injuries I would think that the railroad management would would place more importance on this subject.

Of course the Bean Counters have a big say in this and employee moral has yet to have a value on a spread sheet.

Uphill slow, downhill fast, tonnage first, SAFETY LAST!
This is actually more indicative of carrier mentality than most folks realize.

Yeah I cant figure it out JG, they bitch about no rest or not enough time at home but then shoot down rest cycle periods. We dont have rest day jobs in Galesburg but I can go to other boards on the CHicago Div and see extra boards with rest day schedules.
So if you need a turn off you lay off sick fatigued or whatever. Then you have to worry about availability issues that the brass can use against you. How cool is that? Not cool at all.

Personally, I'd rather lose $1000 a month and have a little more time at home than to run all the time and not see the family.