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The Obama administration’s $8.5 billion plan to advance U.S. high-speed rail programs is being questioned by trucking interests and the freight railroads whose tracks would host most of the new services, officials in both industries said.

Cargo theft increased sharply in 2009, according to an international insurer and a security firm, although two major carriers said they had experienced a drop in losses from theft and American Trucking Associations said good statistics were hard to come by.

Law enforcement officials said they may not strictly enforce the Transportation Department’s recent ban on texting by commercial drivers until the government issues a specific regulation rather than reinterpretations of current rules, officials told Transport Topics.

The Obama administration last week proposed a $4 billion “down payment” on a national infrastructure bank to supplement traditional highway funding, as part of its $78.8 billion budget proposal for the Department of Transportation.

The U.S. retail diesel average dropped 5.2 cents to $2.781 a gallon last week, the third straight weekly drop, the Department of Energy reported.

SAN DIEGO — CSA 2010, the new federal safety monitoring and rating system for motor carriers, is likely to be the most important and potentially disruptive federal policy development for trucking to come out of Washington this year, fleet executives and industry watchers said last week.

Regarding the letter with the headline “EOBRs Revisited,” there was a very interesting guest commentary about electronic onboard recorders recently in another publication, in which the author claimed only 2% of crashes occur after more than 10 hours of driving time.

If it works as advertised, trucking’s new safety rating machinery will be as quick and as responsive as a sports car when compared to the old, glacial way of doing things.

American Trucking Associations has joined forces with farmers, manufacturers and consumer groups calling on Congress to more strictly regulate excessive oil speculation.