Comment EI-32528
Received or sent (printed as 10/13/2022)
Arconic and our employees here in the Quad Cities will be negatively impacted by the proposed merger of the Canadian Pacific and the Kansas City Southern. And that is why we come to the STB today in opposition to the proposed merger. We currently average about seven trains per day passing our facility and blocking inbound and outbound traffic for anywhere from a few minutes to 10 to 15 minutes at a time. We have been told by the CP that they expect the number of trains passing our plant to increase from seven per day to about 21 per day. That is a threefold increase in the number of times traffic trying to exit our facility or entering our facility will come to a complete stop. With trains that are two-plus miles long compared to the current one mile long trains the traffic stops will be longer. Our biggest concern is for the safety of our employees. This change will require employees to leave for work earlier and perhaps be blocked in the facility longer during regular operations of these longer and more frequent trains. We have over 2,400 employees who work at our Riverdale plant. If there is an injury that requires hospitalization at the same time the tracks are blocked, we could lose precious minutes waiting for the tracks to clear or calling for a life flight helicopter to come and pick up the patient and transport to the hospital. In addition to the safety concerns, we will be faced with delays in our outbound shipments to customers. In many cases we are in a very tight contractual timeline for getting materials to our customers. We also rely on inbound shipments of raw materials and supplies to keep our facility (which operates 24/7) running around the clock. If supplies are late we can miss deadlines for customers and that can cost us business and the potential loss of jobs or hours of work. On behalf of our employees and our customers we ask you to reject the proposed merger.
Submitted by: John Riches · Arconic Davenport Works · Bettendorf, IA
The Board publishes this comment in its environmental-comment table for this proceeding. It is quoted here as printed; nothing is inferred from it, and it states the commenter's own position in their own words, not this record's.
Permanent address docketyard.org/d/FD-36500/comment/EI-32528 · back to the docket sheet