Bush picks Jamison acting head of rail agency

Bush picks Jamison acting head of rail agency    President Bush last week designated Robert Jamison acting administrator of the Federal Railroad Administration. He served as deputy administrator of the Federal Transit Administration, a sister agency within the Department of Transportation.
   Jamison has also served as a senior operations officer for the American Red Cross and worked at UPS for 13 years in various roles, including operations supervisor and manager of systems and infrastructure for the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area.
   He replaced Betty Monro, who retired as acting administrator Dec. 31. Monro replaced Allan Rutter who resigned as FRA administrator last June.
   The DOT’s inspector general is investigating the FRA’s oversight of railroad safety at grade crossings. Munro was under fire after the New York Times revealed she regularly vacationed with a Union Pacific Railroad lobbyist,    with whom she was close friends, and discouraged tough enforcement in favor of a partnership compliance approach. Inspector General Kenneth Mead has completed an inquiry into the relationship, but the DOT has not made it public.
   Jamison had an eventful first week. Within hours of taking the job he had to respond to a deadly train wreck in which eight people were killed in South Carolina when a Norfolk Southern freight train crashed into a parked locomotive and began to leak chlorine gas. He dispatched FRA experts to help investigate the accident the how the tank car carrying the deadly gas was breached.