Surface Transportation Board Report to Congress Regarding the Uniform Rail Costing System. Submitted Pursuant to Transportation and Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies Appropriations Bill, S. Rep. No. 111-69 (2009)

摘要

In August 2009, the Senate Committee on Appropriations directed the Surface Transportation Board (Board or STB) to submit a report providing basic, moderate and comprehensive options for updating the Board's general purpose costing methodology, the Uniform Rail Costing System (URCS). The Committee's request dovetailed with an initiative the Board began in FY2009 to review URCS, its history and purposes, and its use in performing the Board's statutory functions. The Board evaluated URCS' current functionality and studied criticisms of URCS made by stakeholder groups (including railroads and rail shippers) as well as by transportation economists and other analysts. This report discusses the Board's review and, pursuant to the Committee's request, describes a range of options the Board could consider to update URCS. The Board uses URCS to calculate, for each large railroad, a system-wide estimate of the proportion of the railroad's costs of providing service that are variable with changes in traffic volume (as opposed to those costs that remained fixed regardless of traffic volume). URCS develops variable costs estimates by relying principally upon a series of statistical estimation tools - regression equations - that were developed by the agency in the 1980s. The resulting URCS variable costs are used in a wide variety of Board proceedings, including those determining whether a railroad's rates are unreasonably high.