Supporting Statement - wageab - 2021 extension (to ROCIS)

2140-0004
September 2021
SUPPORTING STATEMENT –
QUARTERLY WAGE FORM A & B

A. Justification:
1. (a) Why the collection is necessary. The Surface Transportation Board (Board)
has broad statutory authority to provide economic regulatory oversight of railroads, addressing
such matters as rates; service; the construction, acquisition, and abandonment of rail lines; carrier
mergers; and interchange of traffic among carriers (49 U.S.C. §§ 10101-11908). Under
49 U.S.C. § 11145, the Board may require regulated carriers to submit financial and statistical
data and reports that the Board needs to carry out its mission. For each reporting railroad, the
annual and quarterly Wage Forms A & B, which are required to be filed by Class I (large)
railroads pursuant to 49 U.S.C. § 11145 and 49 C.F.R. pt. 1245, show the numbers of employees,
service hours, and compensation by employee group (executive, professional, maintenance-ofway, maintenance-of-equipment, transportation (train and engineer), and transportation (other
than train and engineer)). This information is collected on the same form (Wage Form A & B) in
two phases: The Quarterly Report of Railroad Employees, Service, and Compensation; and the
Annual Report of Railroad Employees, Service, and Compensation. The Board is requesting an
extension without modification of this information collection, which will otherwise expire on
October 31, 2021.
2. How the collection will be used. The Board uses information from this form to
forecast labor costs, to measure the efficiency of the reporting railroads, and to evaluate proposed
regulated transactions under 49 U.S.C. §§ 10902-03 and 11326 that may impact rail employees,
such as mergers, acquisitions of control, purchases, and abandonments. Other federal agencies
and industry groups, including the Railroad Retirement Board, Bureau of Labor Statistics, and
Association of American Railroads, depend on the information contained in these reports to
monitor railroad operations.
3. Extent of automated information collection. The railroads submit this report
electronically in Excel spreadsheet format.
4. Identification of duplication. No other federal agency has economic regulatory
authority over freight rail transportation. Because no other federal agency collects the
information in this report, nor is this information available from any other source, no duplication
of information. In most instances, the information sought is unique to each carrier.
5. Effects on small business. No small entities will be affected by the collection of this
information. This reporting requirement applies only to Class I railroads, which have operating
revenues in excess of $900,000,000. The threshold value for Class I railroads is based on the

new thresholds established in Docket No. EP 763, which also provided for a deflator factor
referenced to the new base year of 2019.
6. Impact of less frequent collections. The agency collects the quarterly and annual
reports primarily for public use. Collecting both the quarterly and annual reports provides more
utility to those members of the public who are interested in specific quarterly data, as well as
those who work only with annual data. Therefore, the utility of the data would be diminished if
collected less frequently.
7. Special circumstances. No special circumstances apply to this collection.
8. Compliance with 5 C.F.R. § 1320.8. As required, the Board published a Federal
Register notice on June 28, 2021, providing a 60-day comment period regarding this collection.
86 Fed. Reg. 34,109. No comments were received. As required, a Federal Register notice
providing an additional 30-day comment period is being published simultaneously with this
submission.
9. Payments or gifts to respondents. The Board does not provide any payment or gift to
respondents.
10. Assurance of confidentiality. All information collected through this report is
available to the public.
11. Justification for collection of sensitive information. This collection contains no
information of a sensitive nature.
12. Estimation of burden hours for respondents. The following information pertains to
the estimate of burden hours associated with this collection:
(1) Number of respondents: Seven
(2) Frequency of response: Quarterly and annually
(3) Annual hour burden per respondent: Based on information provided by the
railroad industry, we estimate a per-respondent-railroad burden of not more than 16 hours, which
includes the time needed to gather the information, edit, review, complete, and submit the
quarterly and annual reports. It is estimated that each of the seven railroad respondents requires
no more than 3 hours for each of the four quarterly reports, and no more than 4 hours for the
annual report. The total annual burden hours on the industry are estimated to be not more than
112 hours.
13. Other costs to respondents: No non-hour costs for operation, maintenance, or
purchase of services associated with this collection have been identified. This report is
submitted to the agency electronically.

14. Estimated costs to the Board: We estimate that it takes 11 hours annually (analyst) to
review the annual and quarterly filings, and one hour (auditor) to post this report (Wage Statistics
of Class I Railroads) on our website.
15. Changes in burden hours. No change in burden hours is requested. The Board is
requesting an extension without modification.
16. Plans for tabulation and publication: These reports are submitted in the form of Excel
spreadsheets and are posted on the Board’s website at https://prod.stb.gov/reportsdata/economic-data/.
17. Display of expiration date for OMB approval. No exception is sought. The control
number and expiration date for this collection appear on the form.
18. Exceptions to Certification Statement. Not applicable

B. Collections of Information Employing Statistical Methods:
Not applicable