daveklepperPsychat: I'm certain BNSF's managemenyt has some very good answers to that question. Again, judging by results, including shipper evalluations, not just stock prices, PSR isn't PSR. All good railroading should be Precision Scheduled. Every car should have a specific trip plan, and modern computer technology makes that feasible and doable. What people call PSR is really Assett Utilization Railroading. I believe BNSF is still trying to be Customer Responsive Railroading. I hope they continue. With every car having a trip plan.
Again, judging by results, including shipper evalluations, not just stock prices, PSR isn't PSR. All good railroading should be Precision Scheduled. Every car should have a specific trip plan, and modern computer technology makes that feasible and doable.
What people call PSR is really Assett Utilization Railroading. I believe BNSF is still trying to be Customer Responsive Railroading. I hope they continue. With every car having a trip plan.
While the implementation of PSR happened after I retired. While I was working CSX did have trip plans for every manifest car on the system. The measure of all those individual trip plans was the metric 'Right Car/Right Train'. RCRT was then coupled with the performance of scheduled trains in maintaining their schedules.
Bulk Commodity trains ran to their own individual trip plans.
My contacts that are still working indicate PSR broke all those measurement systems.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
BaltACDMy contacts that are still working indicate PSR broke all those measurement systems.
I would opine that it's because they didn't contribute enough to the bottom line...
Providing quality service costs money.
Larry Resident Microferroequinologist (at least at my house) Everyone goes home; Safety begins with you My Opinion. Standard Disclaimers Apply. No Expiration Date Come ride the rails with me! There's one thing about humility - the moment you think you've got it, you've lost it...
tree68 BaltACD My contacts that are still working indicate PSR broke all those measurement systems. I would opine that it's because they didn't contribute enough to the bottom line... Providing quality service costs money.
BaltACD My contacts that are still working indicate PSR broke all those measurement systems.
CSX was reporting a standard set of metrics to the STB that were originated out of their service deficiencies steming from the ConRail acquisition in 1999. Shortly after EHH got on the property those metrics were sh.tcanned and he implemented his own set. Not having worked with the EHH metrics I have no idea what or how well they are measuring anything.
As we are well aware the past five years in the country have been rife with all manner of lying and obstruction of factual information from all levels of society.
I can tell you this much from being a customer for a pair of railroads that practice PSR in the real world what it means. The BNSF were the majority of our resins come from has met our expectations as much as possible. The UP and NS however they play such games with the metrics of when and where our cars are in their systems and just when we can expect to get them interchanged to the BNSF for the UPs case and on the NS just when they're going to be here at all. Literally having cars 60 miles away sent back 500 miles because it made a yard masters stats look better. Or as it's happened several times on the UP sending them on a round robin of their system to avoid dwell time. We literally had 5 cars shipped out of Houston for Kansas city end up being interchanged in freaking Seattle. Just how good is PSR in our eyes as a customer.
Shadow the Cats owner Literally having cars 60 miles away sent back 500 miles because it made a yard masters stats look better.
I've heard stories of cars shuttling back and forth between two points because no one knew what to do with them...
Sometime in the past few months; I seem to recollect a piece of equipment destined to either a museum or historical group in Ohio; managed to make something like four passes by the Elkhart, IN Virtual Railfan webcam before NS finally got it all figured out.
CW
My contacts still employed by CSX refer to the post EHH days at being invaded by the Canadian Mafia. That use mafia style tactics, with the 'hit men' putting their 'bodies' on the unemployment rolls instead of cemetries.
Many of them originated in various places down south, and trust me they are not missed in the great white north, Montreal already has enough mafia problems.
As for gaming the system and fudging numbers, all the stories you hear are true. Cars would get dragged out of the yard so the scanner would show them leaving, only for it to mysteriously miss them re-entering the same yard a few minutes later.
I can't say I blame the low level supervisors who use these sort of tactics, all too often they are told to improve the numbers or else, and if they don't the 'mafia' will find someone who will....
Greetings from Alberta
-an Articulate Malcontent
It happens, but not very often. It happened A LOT just after the Conrail split since the old-NS system and remnant of the CR system still in use got out of sync.
Misrouted cars are a thing that's measured.
Up until the PSR folk took over NS, NS cared about which train a car departed on after classification. You send it out on the wrong train - missed connection - period.
When a car departs on the wrong train, the classification system will find a new route to get it where it's going and a new trip plan will be generated. If the classification system can't find a route (really rare), it gets send to a queue to see why and fix the problem.
-Don (Random stuff, mostly about trains - what else? http://blerfblog.blogspot.com/)
Yep. Same at NS. Now that Sanborn is there, they are relearning what a lot of us knew before the PSR guys showed up. Sigh...
I've seen it in every type of organization: military, government, non-profit, and private sector. If you make middle managers' careers dependent on metrics, they will inevitably find a way to game the metrics. But as SD70 said, it's hard to blame them if their continued employment depends on it.
Sales manager: So how is the new sales associate working out?
Sales associate: He is really difficult to work with and disruptive of our team. Anytime he disagrees with you, he tells you to "go jump in the lake!" If we tell him that we will discuss his disruptive behavior with you, he says that you can go jump in the lake.
Sales manager: Hmm, let me look up his record. It shows here than since joining us a month ago, he has sold 5 million dollars worth of our company product. I don't know how you and your fellow team members feel, but my take is that for the money he is bringing in, I can always go buy a new suit.
If GM "killed the electric car", what am I doing standing next to an EV-1, a half a block from the WSOR tracks?
PsychotI've seen it in every type of organization: military, government, non-profit, and private sector. If you make middle managers' careers dependent on metrics, they will inevitably find a way to game the metrics. But as SD70 said, it's hard to blame them if their continued employment depends on it.
At ANY LEVEL where metrics will be the criteria for one's job performance - the metrics will be 'managed' to any and all extents possible.
With CSX, since EHH was the boss and could not get the established metrics to tell the story he wanted, he canned those metrics and created his own.
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