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Enron Type Mentality in Today's Railroading

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[quote]QUOTE: Originally posted by M.W. Hemphill UP829: UP's traffic to and from Mexico is almost entirely carried on former Missouri Pacific lines at least as far as Dallas-Fort Worth, and then on the former Katy to Kansas City, or on former MP lines as far as Longview, Texas-Shreveport, Louisiana, and then paired with SSW lines. SP is not an issue here. Moreover, the traffic growth on these lines plateaued several years ago and hasn't changed much since since for UP. Traffic growth on UP in the last three years has been almost entirely on the former Sunset Route from Los Angeles east, splitting three ways at El Paso to Kansas City, Fort Worth, and Houston. The two biggest choke points on UP at present are the endpoints, Los Angeles and El Paso, but Houston has been a choke point for nigh on 30 years now, all on its own. When you use the term "bottleneck" I assume you're talking about profiting from artificial constraints on supply, which is what Enron and other energy traders did. UP can't do this despite what some people think. There's also such as thing as "bottleneck rates," which is not a congestion issue but is definitely a monopoly issue[/quote] I was thinking of the plants along the California & Arizona borders. The tie-ups I saw on CNN was for truck traffic down to Ensenada. Looking at the Trains UP map, there isn't that much going down there, so maybe it's all truck or not UP territory. By bottleneck I was refering to tying up the railroad with trains waiting for replacement crews, not delievering on-time, and refusing service to additional customers. That's not very good for business or profits. To do an Enron, I suppose UP could run empty trains around in circles toy train style, then claim they have to raise rates because of congestion [:)] Don't think so [:D] [:D] [8D] Interesting comments on rates. Maybe what's needed is for carriers to only quote door-to-door rates and work out the details internally. When Fed-Ex flies shipments on commercial airlines, the shipper still only deals with Fed-Ex and gets one bill.
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