February 13, 2025 - TRA Newswire -

Newly appointed Vice Chair of the Surface Transportation Board, Michelle Schultz, will be a guest speaker during the 21st Annual Southwestern Rail Conference, April 7-8, at the Hurst Texas Conference Center.

Ms. Schultz was named Vice Chair of the independent federal agency January 22nd and joins with new STB Chair Patrick Fuchs, who was designated chairman by President Donald Trump on January 20, 2025.  Together they will oversee a government board that has wide ranging powers regulating the nation's railroads. 

In recent news, the STB ruled on a decade-long dispute and sided with Union Pacific over tank car owners, who were charged to move empty tank cars to repair facilities; heard comments on Class 1's losing market share to trucking companies; and the agency continues to solicit individuals to fill an open position on the recently formed Passenger Rail Advisory Committee. 

In a previous shippers conference, Schultz noted three main complaints continued to surface. They included a desire to be able to ship more volume by rail, better communications with carriers about delayed shipments as well as location of their rail cars and the inability for predictable service. Immediate Past Chair Robert Primus, last month, admonished Class 1's for retaliation against shippers and others that openly criticized the railroads. 

Schultz has been a member of the board since 2021. In the previous 14 years she served in various leadership roles with the  Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA), which serves the public transportation needs of over one million daily riders in Philadelphia and the surrounding suburbs.

According to the Surface Transportation Board website, her responsibilities at SEPTA included representing the agency before the Federal Railroad Administration and Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission; serving as lead counsel on a major railroad reconstruction project; overseeing compliance, regulatory, and legislative issues; and, serving as lead counsel on real estate transactions and contract negotiations.

The Surface Transportation Board has jurisdiction over railroad rate, practice, and service issues and rail restructuring transactions, including mergers, line sales, line construction, and line abandonments. The STB also has jurisdiction over certain passenger rail matters, the intercity bus industry, non-energy pipelines, household goods carriers’ tariffs, and rate regulation of non-contiguous domestic water transportation (marine freight shipping involving the mainland United States, Hawaii, Alaska, Puerto Rico, and other U.S. territories and possessions).