EAC Update for ACACSOMay 2012

George A. Jones – Dir. Car Accounting CSX

EAC meeting in January via Conference Call

Special EAC meeting in March via Conference Call

Next Meeting in State College, PA – May 15th

EAC Meeting Review

Car Accounting Self Service (CASS)

• Development is complete. The project was successfully implemented on October 18, 2011.

Car Hire Data Exchange Platform Upgrade

• Development is complete. File was implemented March 2012.

2011 Project Update

CHDX Edits • A TAG has been created by the Information Management

& Data Quality Task Force to work with Railinc to develop and implement the appropriate edits.

  Mileage Comparison Study Project • Railinc has compared mileage from the CHDX file to

mileage calculated by the Railinc mileage process. The preliminary results are very favorable. Almost half of the records analyzed matched the CHDX records exactly.

2012 Project Plan

The EAC passed a new annual DDCT audit that includes the incidents opened during the calendar year being audited. A statistically significant, random sample will be drawn. Key events – disposition request, DV request, settlement agreement, etc. - will be extracted from DDCT. LCS events will be compared to the DDCT events to confirm that car hire was transferred properly.

Updates from January 2012 EAC Conference Call

The meeting was called to review potential 2013 industry projects that the committee may choose to sponsor.

The Railinc Project Support Working Committee (RPSWC) met in April for the initial review of the projects. By August, the business case for each project must be fully developed.

EAC Special Meeting March 2012

Bid & Offer Enhancements Car Hire Rule 4 Centralization Add Seconds to LCS Messages Mileage for Car Hire Study, Validation

and Testing Rule 15 LCS Type Code Congestion Avoidance Service OCS Car Hire Liability File Enhancement

2013 Projects proposed by EAC

January Initial Communication for Master Plan and Schedule

March Deliver Opportunity Definition 1 to RPSWC:

Sponsor, Value Proposition, Primary Business Drivers

April RPSWC Meeting:  Preliminary Pipeline Review

May Deliver Opportunity Definition 2 to RPSWC:

Themes Correlated with Anticipated Business Benefits

June RPSWC Meeting:  Initial Prioritization

July Deliver Business Case to RPSWC:

Industry Summary Financial Analysis

August RPSWC Meeting:  Selection and Prioritization

October RPSWC Meeting:  Budgetary Review and Commitment

2013 Project Schedulefor the development and assessment of 2013 projects

As part of a long term strategy to move away from its mainframe platform, Railinc is migrating applications to mid-range platforms.

Current plans are to move Deprescription and the Car Hire Liability file in 2012. LCS and the Event Repository are scheduled for 2013 or later.

Mainframe Migration

Vision and Focus Car Hire Rules Car Hire Calculation Car Service Information Management and Data Quality

EAC - Task Force’s

The Vision and Focus Task Force continued to support the EAC goal of developing a car hire training program.

Suggested goals for 2012• Car Hire Training – ASLRRA Class was Held in April

and was great success.• Improve rejected railcar reporting (provide more

information on rejected cars).• Alternative routing of empty returns (help move

cars outside the normal distribution rules).

Vision and Focus

The task force has been assigned the task of reviewing the appurtenance rates established in Appendix S• It is anticipated that this effort will improve utilization of multi-level

equipment Proposal to revise arbitration fees - Car Hire Rule 25, C, 7,

I was reviewed by the Car Hire Rules Task Force. • Currently the verbiage in Car Hire Rule 25 specifies that $2,000 in

administrative fees will be split between the carriers that are party to the arbitration. In a recent arbitration, the administrative fees were in excess of $3,000. (Fees assessed by the arbitrator were approximately $10,000.)

• It was noted that bilateral agreements can be made to split the costs on any basis agreed to by the parties.  

• The task force was asked to reconsider the issues and make a recommendation to the committee at the May 2012 meeting.

Car Hire Rules

Supported the development of the Car Hire Training conducted at the ASLRRA convention in April 2012

Reviewing the proper handling of Rule 15 TOL offers when DDCT is controlling car hire, The task force recommends that Railinc develop logic to reject Rule 15 TOL offers when there is an open incident in DDCT and car hire has been transferred to the car mark owner.

In view of the changes to Car Hire Rule 5 recently approved by SOMC, the task force decided to table any new changes to the Car Hire Rules. The task force requested that Railinc maintain the status quo. and leave the TOL time limits in Chicago at 144 hours.

Car Hire Calculation

Rule 5 TOL Time limits for submitting Rule 5 TOL messages have been reduced from 30 to 25 days. Car Hire Rule 5, E, 2 specifies that TOL information must be reported.

• “Roads performing switching service must report the information required in Paragraph E.1 not before 6 days and within 25 days from the day the switching service is completed, except when, an inbound terminal switch as described in E, 1, a (1) exceeds the 120th hour from the official inbound interchange created through LCS processing, then the information must be reported not before 6 days and within 25 days from the date and time that ends the transfer of liability.”

• The proposal was unanimously approved by SOMC. The proposal was submitted

to the subscribers for approval by Letter Ballot. The proposal was passed by a large margin. The development work has been completed at Railinc. The effective date of the implementation will be communicated to the industry.

New Car Accounting Self Service (CASS) has been implemented and getting good reviews

Car Hire CalculationCompleted Projects

Proposal to Centralize Car Hire Rule 4 Reclaims – Presentation for detailsEditorial Changes to Circulars OT-10 and OT-36 - The task force will review and consider the changes at future meetings.Add Seconds and Micro-seconds to LCS Records - the Car Hire Liability File already uses the additional information to properly sequence LCS records, however, RR’s would have internal cost to accept the additional seconds and Micro-seconds to the LCS records.

Car Hire CalculationCurrent Projects

The task force has worked with Railinc to determine what changes should be made to RAMP-ED as a result of changes in US Customs and Border Patrol (CBOP) regulations• The Task Force recommended that RAMP-ED activity be limited

to car in the US to prevent cars from Canada and Mexico from being directed without proper information.

The Task Force recommends that mechanical designation FDC be added to SCO 90The Task Force is advancing a 2013 project called Opportunistic Car Supply which is designed to automate bi-lateral agreements between railroads to improve car utilization

Car Service

The Task Force worked with Railinc to develop the improved CHDX Edits project. Project was approved by RPSWC for 2012 Task Force envisions two levels of errors.• Critical errors may result in rejection of data files• Non-critical errors may NOT result in the rejection

of the data.

Information Management & Data Quality

 The Task Force has been created a TAG created to work with Railinc on the CHDX Edit Project. In anticipation of the project, several issues have been discussed at task force meetings. In order to allow time to correct errors identified by the edits, CHDX data may need to be submitted to Railinc earlier in the month than is currently done. The task force had prepared the following possible schedule for review by the TAG.  

• 7th Initial file submission (Railinc will process the files as they are received and notify carriers of errors.)

• 12th Error correction complete (Processing will be delayed if major players cannot be ready. This is the current procedure for Railinc.)

 The task force has defined two types of edits. Hard edit errors will cause a file to be rejected. Soft edit errors should be corrected but do not cause a file to be rejected.

CHDX Edit Project

Develop and Present Car Accounting Training Complete review and revision of Appendix S to

the Car Hire Rules Develop improved alternative routing of empty

returns (SCO 90, RAMP-ED) Implement Improved edits in the CHDX process Reduce Car Hire processing cost Identify variances in SCO 90 reporting to assist

carriers.

2012 Goals to Business Services Working Committee

(BSWC)

The New Chair - Robert Sanford, NS was promoted to Director Revenue Services at NS and resigned from office at EAC to focus on his new position.

Ken Jacobs, BNSF – Stepped up to the Chair position and a New Vice Chair will be elected at the next meeting in State College

Officers for 2012

Ideas for EAC?