April 10, 2048: A Railroading Vision

[Murphy Siding]

Overmod

 

SD70Dude

 

Overmod

SD70Dude

Was Juniatha in there too?

It makes me feel old to say this, but this was written years before she first came to the forum... 

And y'all must think I'm still wet behind the ears for not knowing that

 

 

Hell to the no!  Do many 'new posters' who joined this thread in the past couple of years carefully look over the whole of the many historical threads, or take the time to 'get to know' first the range of older posters and then their 'forum personalities' over time?  

And then keep careful track of controversies, and quittings, over time?

Not something very many people would voluntarily do.  (If sane.)

 

OK, things were going well. I was reading Overmod's reply and nodding in agreement until I got to the end. Now I'm questioning my sanity.

     When I first joined the forum- way back in the last century- the first thing I did was go back to the oldest post I could access and started reading forward. It's probably an introvert thing- or a sanity thing, I don't know. I read every thread that interested me. By the time I got to the newest threads posted, I had a pretty good understanding of the feel of the forum and the players involved. I also learned a lot of stuff, which was my intention when I signed on.

[tree68]

Overmod

Do many 'new posters' who joined this thread in the past couple of years carefully look over the whole of the many historical threads, ...

Some do, then confuse the heck out us by posting to a thread that hasn't seen any action in ten years...  We get that on a firefighting forum I'm on, too.

Of course, there was the time that someone who used their real name on the fora was looking to go to a new job and requested that we go through and delete any posts of ours with his name in them...  The "front page" was chaos for several days.

[NorthWest]

Bruce D Gillings

To NorthWest: time to believe. In 2016 the average hourly truck count on I-15 at the junction with I-215 at Devore was 550 trucks/hour. The daily count at that location was 13,205. That is the last year I can find that Caltrans has data.

See page 40 on: https://dot.ca.gov/-/media/dot-media/programs/traffic-operations/documents/f0017681-2016-aadt-truck-a11y.pdf

If you translate that count into 160-box intermodal trains, it equals 82 per day. That is not an accurate translation, of course, as there are large numbers that move both between the LA Basin and the High Desert and Las Vegas. Those are trips that will likely always be OTR. I wish I had that breakdown: it probably exists somewhere. The balance, of course, are headed to Barstow and then east on I-40; or north on I-15 to I-15 / I-70 split near Sulphurdale, more going to Salt Lake City on I-15 than to Denver on I-70. I-15 going into Sulphurdale gets about 3000 trucks per day, or about 125 per hour. I-40 at Needles gets about 6500 trucks per day, or about 270 per hour. Hwy 58 (the primary truck route from Barstow to Bakersfield, very heavy reefer traffic) gets about 4,000 trucks per day, about 165 per hour.

Bruce,

I should've phrased that better.

My contention is that the road system wouldn't be able to handle a complete switch from railroading to trucking, even with autonomous capacity increases. Cajon sees about 4 intermodal trains an hour, and if trains headed over Tehachapi to the north are ignored, that's still about 400-600 truckloads of extra traffic that would need to find its way over Cajon Pass each hour. I-15 can't handle the traffic now with everyone on each other's bumpers.

Railroading likely will never be competitive under 300 miles. But it's a lot cheaper to fix railroading than expand the road system.

[BaltACD]

NorthWest

Railroading likely will never be competitive under 300 miles. But it's a lot cheaper to fix railroading than expand the road system.

Something the State of Virginia has recognized in working with CSX and NS to enhance capacity on their various corridors through the state, as well as working with Amtrak on the various services that are being offered in the state.  They view what they are doing with the railroads has the effect of creating additional traffic capacity on the various Interstate corridors - I81, I85, I95 as well as I64 and I66.

[Bruce D Gillings]

Many, many thanks for NorthWest for  being so mindful and taking the time to post this.  Yes, it is long, but it covers a LOT of ground! 

 

I sincerely hope you are right in that you have assumed that by 2048 railroading has changed enough to be competitive with OTR trucking. There will be a number of things that need to happen to make that true. More than anything else, there needs to be a huge paradigm shift in railroad thinking about the markets it serves. What are your customers’ needs? My clients are predominantly non-bulk 3^rd party logistics providers and manufacturers/processors. I rarely deal with the retailers/wholesalers, but rather those farther up the supply chain. They share one thing in common, though: they have figured out that the first thing to surviving is to understand that the “lowest price” you charge does not equate to the “lowest cost” to your customers. Service AND cost-effectiveness are crucial. And so their partners in their supply chains are increasingly being pared down to those who can meet that criteria; who can integrate into their information networks; who can provide timely, “reasonably” fast scheduling; and who are reliable enough that service failures are no more than a rounding error.

 

NorthWest has given us a window into the future where railroading has finally leveraged IT and reliability in equipment to effectively deliver on those. Gotten away from railroad/train-centric to customer-centric.  That is ground zero in surviving and staying (or should I say “becoming again”?) relevant.  The game is shipping goods, not running trains.

 

Multiple schedules: the notion of departures from Long Beach to Seattle every two hours is a brilliant concept. It shifts the concept of a terminal from a storage lot to a transfer station. (annoying details: the predominant DC area of the LA Basin – currently – is the Inland Empire; and a Tacoma-based terminal makes more sense than Seattle, but let’s assume that is a general vicinity allowance).  The market does not care that a railroad in this market only gets enough end-to-end traffic to accommodate a couple of trains departing once or twice a day.  The market wants trains departing all day.  Having much smaller blocks that do not spend hours and hours switching but rather leverage technology/equipment reliability to perform that task in minutes instead is essential to success. Blocks, not trains, on multiple schedules: thanks NorthWest for “getting it”.

 

UP currently wants to run one large, underpowered, unreliable train per day (sometimes two) in the LA-PNW lane. Check out the Tehachapi railcam to get an idea on consistency.  Even as UP slows down schedules, it still cannot perform consistently.  And gawd forbid they should operate multiple schedules. Small blocks quickly, efficiently swapped out? That involves discipline, thinking, skills. Sorry, not happening on UP….  BNSF is better in other lanes, but not “better enough” to survive into the future. I would love to see BNSF get back into the I-5 Corridor and kick UP’s butt, but I doubt it will happen until the events that NorthWest talks about happen.

 

NorthWest also gets the concept of “velocity”.  Velocity is not the same as speed.  Velocity is about a transportation plan that factors in maintenance, scheduling, priorities, eliminating failures to an extent where they are incidental.  You can have great velocity with a 50 mph speed limit if you keep things moving, factor in maintenance, schedule in yard work, and – of course – provide the manpower and horsepower to execute.  Again: it’s not about the lowest rate based on the railroad cutting its “costs” to the bare minimum: it’s about the lowest cost to your customers based on you meeting their needs and properly allocating and managing your resources. 

 

NorthWest also talks about the infrastructure itself. How do you pay for that? Do you create a freight Amtrak?  Another government funded/underfunded fiasco?  Or do you come up with a solution to the never-ending issue of OTR trucking not paying anywhere near it’s cost impact on highways by giving freight railroads tax credits to turn 19^th-Century alignments into 21^st-Century super railroads? In today’s political reality, OTR trucking will never pay its true way; so go for the low-hanging fruit and give the railroads the next best option.

 

Will freight railroading be able to compete on a rate/cost basis with OTR trucking in a future where fuel and labor costs drop for both modes?  I don’t know if it can work. Lower the costs of fuel and labor for trucking, and their costs drop a LOT greater than railroading’s does.  Yes, there are huge equipment costs for truckers in that transition. But the benefits are huge.  For railroads, those cost reductions are not as large relative to overall costs.  So OTR costs will drop a LOT; line-haul costs for railroads will drop but much less.  Will the difference be the death-knell for railroads?

 

My final comment: I love the thoughts on terminal transformation.  I mentioned near the top that terminal thinking needs to shift from a storage concept to a transfer concept. That means multiple schedules, combined with loading/unloading based on trucker in-gating and out-gating, not on the fewest schedules where boxes sit for a half day or more. Especially in high-value land areas that most urban/quasi-urban areas are becoming in major hubs.

 

Finally, thanks again for this: for realizing that something has to change and being willing to stick your neck out and give it a shot.  First and foremost to the change is the perception of what the market is and is becoming. Without that, railroading will continue its slide into becoming an anachronism.

[NorthWest]

Bruce,

Thanks for your kind words. Customer service/integration, reliability, and attentiveness are struggles for the railroad industry, and the logistics industry industry is requiring increasingly high standards in these areas. We can only hope that the railroad industry figures it out. 

I'm about to graduate college, and am exploring careers in supply chain/logistics. Would you be willing to talk about your experiences through an informational interview? The forum software won't allow me to send private messages, but I should be able to find you on Linkedin if you are there. Thanks!

Colin

[Bruce D Gillings]

Yes, you can reach me through LinkedIn.

[BaltACD]

NorthWest

 Would you be willing to talk about your experiences through an informational interview? The forum software won't allow me to send private messages, but I should be able to find you on Linkedin if you are there. Thanks!

Colin

Go into you 'Settings' and check how you have configured your profile.

PM's work fine when you allow them.  Bruce may have PM's turned off in his Settings.

[NorthWest]

Bruce,

Thanks.

Balt,

It's not a settings issue, it's a software/browser issue. I can pull up the PM box, but I can't type in it (a known issue with the last few issues of Firefox).

I tried with Edge and Chrome, but the software won't let me log into the site on either one (or on Firefox if I use private mode) on two computers and a smartphone...

[BaltACD]

NorthWest

Bruce,

Thanks.

Balt,

It's not a settings issue, it's a software/browser issue. I can pull up the PM box, but I can't type in it (a known issue with the last few issues of Firefox).

I tried with Edge and Chrome, but the software won't let me log into the site on either one (or on Firefox if I use private mode) on two computers and a smartphone...

I have been using Chrome without any issues.  Firefox on my system acts as if 'the Firefox server' is acting keystroke by keystroke - like some computers of long ago.

I don't try working on forums with my phone - no matter the browser.

[daveklepper]

I appear to be able to use eitther Chrom or Firefox with the Kalmbach Forums.

Computer, not phone at the present time.