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[quote]QUOTE: Originally posted by TomDiehl [quote]QUOTE: Originally posted by futuremodal [quote]QUOTE: Originally posted by TomDiehl [quote]QUOTE: Originally posted by cementmixr [quote]QUOTE: Originally posted by futuremodal Reminds me of the time long ago (well, four years ago) when I was involved in trying to arrange a dedicated single stack container service between Yakima and Puget Sound over the little used trackage over Stampede Pass. Everything was a go, but BNSF said no. No explanation given. [/quote] The sting of competition from another northern transcon railroad would wake up the sales and marketing people at BNSF. Imagine another competing railroad run by young agressive people saying to the growers and the Yakima shippers you mention, "sure, we can do that for you!" Competition is what's absent in the railroad landscape today. [/quote] There WAS competition in the railroads in all parts of the country. However, the competing railroads went out of business or merged with each other due to a lack of freight volume to support more than one railroad. Too many shippers were seduced away by trucks, so the railroads cut back service and infrastructure that was no longer needed. Now that this decision is burning them, they're complaining about the railroads not being able to provide service at the drop of a hat. Unless they talked to me about being more than a backup shipper when the truckers fall flat, I wouldn't go out of my way to help them. Show me a steady freight flow on a predictable schedule, then maybe the railroads would be more serious in bidding to provide a better service, not the setup that's stated in the article. [/quote] Tom, Tom, Tom........ The trucker's didn't "seduce" traffic away from railroads (at least for the mid to long haul), rather the railroads gave up on providing the service the customer desired, and subsequently the shippers HAD to turn to trucks as a last resort. You know, like when former 4 day service in the days of steamers becomes 8 day service with all those fancy diesels............[}:)] [/quote] Unfortunately you're still living in the past. How many route miles of track were there in Washington State in the days of the steamers? How many today? How many railroads provided service in the state? How many today? How many railroads back in those days have merged into the one(s) providing service today? Sorry, but if you bring your thinking into the latter half of the 20th century, your argument falls flat. [/quote] Primer No. 313 Recipient: TomDiehl In the statement "The trucker's didn't 'seduce' traffic away from railroads (at least for the mid to long haul)" there is a clear if indirect acknowledgement of the loss of route miles, albeit via retrenchment of various branchlines. So tell me, how does a reduction of such lightly used route miles translate into service dynamics that have doubled the amount of service time required? If anything, such a trackage retrenchment should show up as reduced rail service time, not increased service time! Your second set of questions...... "How many railroads provided service in the state? How many today? How many railroads back in those days have merged into the one(s) providing service today?" ....is simply an acknowledgement on your part that a reduction in the number of rail service providers will result in reduced incentive to provide the desired service levels, as witnessed by BNSF's actions over the last few decades. Economics 101, that's what you've stumbled across.
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