Out here in the Pacific Northwest shortline Puget Sound and Pacific (PSP) runs the furthest west of any continental US railroad, serving all of the Olympic Peninsula of Washington. Part of it's task is to haul out all of the trash. In order to accomplish that Union Pacific dispatches 4 AC AH units a week. It used to be UP sent those units with empties on Friday and PSP would return them loaded on Monday. Now, for the last month or two, they still come up on Friday but they head back out on Saturday. Not positive, but the only reason I can see is that UP informed them they needed their units back sooner due to PSR.
Shortlines already achieve many of the goals of PSR. They cut costs and use their assets more efficiently than the big roads. And most do it while working with customers instead of fighting them.
I could see a regional system like Pan Am trying to imitate EHH, but for most shortlines the poor customer service experience would bring the experiment to a quick end.
Greetings from Alberta
-an Articulate Malcontent
I imagine small railroads place more emphasis on maximizing customer service than maximizing asset utilization and cost cutting.
I'm guessing some probably have although they might not call it PSR. When EHH developed PSR at IC in the early 90s some suggested that it wouldn't work on a larger class 1. We see now that it does, but so far nothing in the press about PSR at the smaller class 2 and 3 railroads.
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