Railroad Retirement Board: Retirement, Survivor, Disability, Unemployment, and Sickness Benefits

[Excerpt] The Railroad Retirement Board (RRB), an independent federal agency, administers retirement, survivor, disability, unemployment, and sickness insurance for railroad workers and their families under the Railroad Retirement Act (RRA) and Railroad Unemployment Insurance Act (RUIA). These acts cover workers who are employed by railroads engaged in interstate commerce and related subsidiaries, railroad associations, and railroad labor organizations. Lifelong railroad workers receive railroad retirement benefits instead of Social Security benefits; railroad workers with nonrailroad experience receive benefits either from railroad retirement or Social Security, depending on the length of their railroad service. The number of railroad workers has been declining since the 1950s, although the rate of decline has been irregular and recent years have seen increases in railroad employment after reaching an all-time low of 215,000 workers in January 2010. Recently, railroad employment peaked in April 2015 to 253,000 workers, the highest level since November 1999, and then declined through FY2017, falling to 221,000 workers. The total number of beneficiaries under the RRA and RUIA decreased from 623,000 in FY2008 to 574,000 in FY2017, and the total benefit payments increased from $10.1 billion to$12.6 billion during the same time. During FY2017, the RRB paid nearly $12.5 billion in retirement, disability, and survivor benefits to approximately 548,000 beneficiaries. Almost$105.4 million in unemployment and sickness benefits were paid to approximately 28,000 claimants. This report explains the programs under RRA and RUIA, including how each program is financed, the eligibility rules, and the types of benefits available to railroad workers and family members. It also discusses how railroad retirement relates to the Social Security system

Railroad Retirement Board: Trust Fund Investment Practices

[Excerpt] The Railroad Retirement Act authorizes retirement, survivor, and disability benefits for railroad workers and their families. The Railroad Retirement Board (RRB), an independent federal agency, administers these benefits. Workers covered by the RRB include those employed by railroads engaged in interstate commerce and related subsidiaries, railroad associations, and railroad labor organizations. These benefits are earned by railroad workers and their families in lieu of Social Security. Railroad retirement benefits are divided into two tiers. Tier I benefits are generally computed using the Social Security benefit formula, on the basis of earnings covered by either the Railroad Retirement or Social Security programs. In some cases, RRB Tier I benefits can be higher than comparable Social Security benefits. For example, RRB beneficiaries may receive unreduced Tier I retirement benefits as early as aged 60 if they have at least 30 years of railroad service; Social Security beneficiaries may receive unreduced retirement benefits only when they reach their full retirement ages, currently rising from aged 65 to 67. RRB Tier II benefits are similar to private pension benefits and are based only on railroad work. The Tier I railroad retirement benefit that is equivalent to Social Security benefits is mainly finance by Tier I payroll taxes (typically the same rate as the 12.4% Social Security payroll tax) and Social Security’s financial interchange transfers.3 Tier II benefits, Tier I benefits in excess of Social Security benefits, and supplemental annuities4 are mainly financed by Tier II payroll taxes (currently 13.1% on employers and 4.9% on employees) and transfers from the National Railroad Retirement Investment Trust (NRRIT; hereinafter, the Trust)

2009 Iowa Railroad System Plan, 2009

The 2009 Iowa Railroad System Plan is intended to guide the Iowa Department of Transportation (DOT) in its activities of promoting access to rail transportation, helping to improve the freight railroad transportation system, expanding passenger rail service, and promoting improved safety both on the rail system and where the rail system interacts with people and other transportation modes. The Iowa DOT has been developing railroad transportation plans since the late 1970s. The original plan was prepared in 1978 during a time of crisis in the Iowa railroad system. Several large Iowa railroad carriers had filed for bankruptcy and were reorganizing both their businesses and physical systems. The 1978 plan was a guide for determining which railroad lines the state would partner with to preserve and improve the lines. In the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, the railroad system mileage in Iowa was reduced from abou

Railroads and micro-regional growth in Prussia

We study the effect of railroad access on urban population growth. Using GIS techniques, we match triennial population data for roughly 1000 cities in nineteenth-century Prussia to georeferenced maps of the German railroad network. We find positive short- and long-term effects of having a station on urban growth for different periods during 1840-1871. Causal effects of (potentially endogenous) railroad access on city growth are identified using instrumentalvariable and xed-effects estimation techniques. Our instrument identifies exogenous variation in railroad access by constructing straight-line corridors between terminal stations. Counterfactual models using pre-railroad growth yield no evidence in support of the hypothesis that railroads appeared as a consequence of a previous growth spurt

Railroad Brotherhoods

[Excerpt] The traditional pattern of union organization in the railroad industry has been along multiple craft-union lines. As late as 1970 there were more than thirty separate unions representing the approximately 800,000 railway workers of the nation. Historically, the unions have been divided into two groupings: the operating employees, who are involved in the physical movement of trains, and nonoperating employees, an amorphous group composed of workers who fall into numerous classifications

The Supreme Court As Risk Manager: An Analysis of Skinner

Examining a recent case in which the U.S. Supreme Court approved the collection of blood and urine samples from railroad employees, the authors conclude that, in attempting to improve railroad safety, both majority and minority opinions reflected undue emphasis on technical issues and inadequate attention to the intangible social values underlying traditional Constitutional rights to privacy

The Bellona Company\u27s Case

The Bellona Gunpowder Company of Maryland was one of Maryland’s most prominent gunpowder manufactories during the early nineteenth century. Founded in 1801, the gunpowder company become the second leading gunpowder producer for the American government, and supplied almost one-fifth of American domestic gunpowder. In 1828, the Baltimore and Susquehanna Railroad Company was incorporated by the State of Maryland to construct a railroad that would connect the City of Baltimore to the Susquehanna River. The legislature authorized the railroad company to initiate condemnation proceedings against private property owners, if it was unable to negotiate for the sale of such land. In 1831, the Baltimore and Susquehanna Railroad attempted to obtain a right of way across the Bellona Gunpowder Company of Maryland’s property. When negotiations failed, the railroad company initiated a condemnation proceeding in the Baltimore County Court in order to acquire the right of way. The Bellona Gunpowder Company of Maryland fought this condemnation proceeding, and the parties litigated the issue in the Chancery Court of Maryland. This Article analyzes the gunpowder industry in revolutionary and post-revolutionary America. It also discusses the City of Baltimore’s efforts to secure the trade of the Susquehanna River Valley. Finally, this Article analyzes the opinion of Chancellor Bland, and applies a Coase analysis of the two incompatible land uses of the parties

Iowa Railroad Traffic Density, July 1, 2011

Iowa railroad traffic density

Iowa State Railroad Map, July 1, 2012

Iowa railroad map of Iowa trains

Wireless Power Transfer for High-precision Position Detection of Railroad Vehicles

Detection of vehicle position is critical for successful operation of intelligent transportation system. In case of railroad transportation systems, position information of railroad vehicles can be detected by GPS, track circuits, and so on. In this paper, position detection based on tags onto sleepers of the track is investigated. Position information stored in the tags is read by a reader placed at the bottom of running railroad vehicle. Due to limited capacity of battery or its alternative in the tags, power required for transmission of position information to the reader is harvested by the tags from the power wirelessly transferred from the reader. Basic mechanism in wireless power transfer is magnetic induction and power transfer efficiency according to the relative location of the reader to a tag is discussed with simulation results. Since power transfer efficiency is significantly affected by the ferromagnetic material (steel) at the bottom of the railroad vehicle and the track, magnetic beam shaping by ferrite material is carried out. With the ferrite material for magnetic beam shaping, degradation of power transfer efficiency due to the steel is substantially reduced. Based on the experimental results, successful wireless power transfer to the tag coil is possible when transmitted power from the reader coil is close to a few watts.Comment: 2015 IEEE Power, Communication and Information Technology Conference (PCITC) accepted, preprinte