Congestion Reports

[Anonymous]

http://www.modbee.com/local/story/9097339p-9997349c.html
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/editorial/outlook/2778162

[Junctionfan]

It is amazing that much of what Shelley Sekula Gibbs is advocating, is what I have said more or less. As I have said, the decisions that the railroads make effects us all.

I agree with William Garrison's comments that the biggest problems with the railroads is movements east-west. It would seem that someone in the railroads under-estimated the power of economic recovery. I don't understand why; I knew it was only a matter of time and short time at that before the U.S' economy would have been restored to its formal glory. If they knew before hand that they were going to have a difficult problem keeping up with demand and that even at a time of recession they were nearly at capacity, why have they waited til now to do something before the problem escalated.

As I am not familiar with UP's operation, do they operate as required intermodals?Perhaps they should operate more like this. As for the government funding the railroads, I ask this of the governments and the voters. Which is cheaper, spending money on helping the railroads to add track and than lower their taxes on the important lines or continue to build more roads and increase spending on the maintainance of the roads? After a while, you have ask yourself is increasing highway lanes really the answer? I don't believe that Toronto traffic even compares to the conjestion in Los Angelas and we should be using more rail than road. In alot of cases we don't have the room to expand the highways but we do have some room to add track.

As far as the west coast is concerned, I believe that the capacity should be increased if it is needed, to accomidate what seems to be the starting of the next North East Corridor. I don't believe that reduction of dwell times in yards is the only solution. You can't run too many trains on a line that can only handle so many trains per so many miles. This seems to be the problem with west-east movements. I believe that trucking companies should be using more domestic containers on chassis than trailer so the railroad can at least fit more customers on existing trains. That is how the trucking industry can help themselves. UPS should start to think about that more as they already use 28 foot containers but they still use alot of regular trailers on trains. I know that J.B Hunt, Yanke, Trans X, Allied Movers, ATS and a few other trucking companies have their own 53 foot domestic containers.

I think that UP should get help in locating new crews as well though. Their big problem is crew shortages. If the people want a less conjested highway than the people must help a little and allow the government to spend the necessary amount of money on the railroads. A great deal of freight movements can't be shipped by air or water since air traffic is getting pretty conjested too and not all places are easily reached by water. Not to mention that a canal is more expensive to build than an extra rail line.

[Junctionfan]

Hello sir,

Good to hear from you.

I was agreeing with Garrison who was disagreeing with the truckers complaining about the north-south problems as the biggest problem.

I wouldn't say that using all containers should be compulsory, all I said was it would be advisable if the trucking companies, particularly the smaller ones may want to start investing in them regardless if the container on chassis is cheaper than regular trailer for the options of using rail service that may not be able to make allowances for increasing TOFC unless in COFC form (domestic movements). CP seems to be more interested in domestic containers than in trailer for example. There must be a reason why J.B Hunt for example owns alot of domestic containers and makes alot of container movements by rail so cost has to be a factor there. Even retail stores like Canadian Tire and The Bay / Zellers, owns their own domestic containers so it must be more convenient than trailer if they want to ship by rail. The target of my comments are directed specifically to the trucking industries who would consider shipping by rail. It also stems on the remarks made that U.P cut the amout of car shipments from Cemex so I logically concluded that the trains were getting too long and they didn't have enough locomotives for the haul; so naturally I claimed to stack more and than you have more room. Perhaps subsidy will have to be the option or as trucking companies update and replace their older trailers, they can buy the containers instead of the trailers. I also refer to the fact that trucking industries are loosing money due the inability to get to where they are going on time so it costs them money to be late. If the truckers can't get to where they are going and it comes out of their paycheck than the trucking companies are going to find it difficult to find truckers to replace the retiring ones. In other words they will need to use rail if it will insure better on-time delivery.

I have to ask than, what was U.P thinking when they bought SP? If they knew that SP had a history of capacity problems, why later after they bought it did they rip out passing sidings on the lines that could have taken the extra trains from the SP lines like low priority merchandise trains or unit mineral trains if possible, to relieve the stress for more important trains like intermodal and than any other trains that have to use that line? If I am wrong about when they started this, than I will ask why did they at all removed the track and buy SP at the same time?

Can't U.P build overflow yards? Can't they find any land that they could get but again the government would have to help out; is that a viable option? As I said again though, governments must reduce taxes on the railroad lines including terminals if they want the railroad industry to be used more.

Andrew