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BNSF boss says transport system nearing crisis

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[quote]QUOTE: Originally posted by Murphy Siding [quote]QUOTE: Originally posted by nanaimo73 [quote]QUOTE: Originally posted by futuremodal THERE WAS NO "EXCESS CAPACITY" OF THE US RAIL SYSTEM. [/quote] Yes there was. Dave, look at pages 7 to 12, November 1976 Trains, and pages 14 and 15, December 1976 Trains. [/quote] OK suppose my Trains library doesn't run that deep.[sigh] What does it say?[:p] [/quote] I think what nanaimo is refering to is what we all read (and therefore took as a basic tenet) in the railroad press during the 70's, 80's, and 90's - namely the economy was shifting from a manufacturing economy to a service economy, therefore there was no more need for carrying lots of heavy bulky things, ergo railroads had "excess" capacity. I believed it, we all believed it. The problem is, no one cared to mention that a "service" based economy had just as much a need for adaquate mass transportation systems as the manufacturing economy, maybe more. Because even though there was an ostensible shift in the economy, the demand for manufactured things continued to grow with the ever expanding economy (the occassional recession not withstanding). Instead of railroads hauling most cars out of Detroit, they began hauling in foreign cars from US ports in great numbers. Instead of most consumer goods being hauled by railroads from the MIdwest to the cities, now railroads were hauling consumer goods from ports to cities. It should be noted that the average length of haul by rail for these products probably increased, e.g. instead of the bulk of auto hauls from Midwest to Northeast, now that haul came from Portland OR and LA/Long Beach to the Northeast. In the meantime, there was still a continued increase in US ag production, and coal demand for the most part continued to increase incrementally as Clean Air requirements increased longer haul coal trains from the PRB. Housing demand has mostly been on an upward trend ever since WWII, so lumber demand has remained mostly constant, maybe more was coming out of Canada than the US but that still resulted in increased demand for railroad centerbeams. Then of course, with a service economy, you have more demand for trucking services. I expect that trucking firms during this time period would have been glad to shift their medium to long haul truck routes to TOFC, but the railroads seemed to have a reluctance to fully embrace TOFC right up to today, after all isn't that aquiescing to the "enemy"? Railroads prefered (and continue to prefer) COFC to TOFC, while truckers prefer van trailers over domestic containers. Since the US rail system was and is closed access, if truckers wanted to shift to rail they had to play by the rules of the railroad or keep the trailers on the roads. Bottom Line - Demand for rail services (explicit and implicit) has grown with the economy regardless of what kind of economy it is, yet the railroads ignored this demand (Remember John Kneiling's general quote of railroad marketing people? "That business does not exist. It doesn't show up on our traffic sheets anywhere"). Which is why the push for reducing capacity wasn't really related to a drop in railroad demand, it was instead the byproduct of rail industry consolidation for the purpose of increasing pricing power. All Stagger's really accomplished was pushing this potential business onto the highways, where it remains to this day, if not actually shutting it down. Not that this business shouldn't be on rails, and demand for railroad services is as high as it['s ever been. But the capacity to handle this business (and thus push railroading's market share back to the 50 - 70% range) was let go..........
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