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[quote]QUOTE: Originally posted by greyhounds [quote]QUOTE: Originally posted by futuremodal greyhounds - you're splitting hairs. Bitzan himself does not differentiate between what he calls "way and structure" costs and total capital costs, because his theory says it isn't kosher to do so, and admittedly I am not totally clear as to why he frames it that way. But whether the claim is that (a) track maintenance and associated costs would go up, (b) rolling stock and associated costs would go up, or (c) both a and b, there is no evidence of that claim. For one to claim that rolling stock costs would go up, you would have to assume that rolling stock would be functioning at underutilization under OA, but in fact we already know that current rolling stock is underutilized in the current closed access system due to slow transit speeds, yard dwell, and system congestion from long slow consists. If OA resulted in a return to the Milwaukee/D&RGW model of more expedient dispatching, then car utilization would improve, and costs relative to tonnage moved would go down. [/quote] No, I wasn't splitting hairs - I was pointing out that you were changing the meaning of a word to fit your purpose. Equipment ownership costs are important - and you changed the meaing of the word 'capital' to only include RofW ownership. When you did this you tried to get around what is obvious to anyone - OA will: 1) Increase equipment dwell time in terminals because multiple trains will have to be aggregated seperately - instead of one railroad forwarding the blocks twice a day, for example, two railroads will each forward the equipment once a day adding 12 hours to the dwell time. There is no "magic" in OA that will make shorter trains more economical. 2) Increase the terminal investments required to hold the equipment that is going to be sitting around longer in those terminals. Both these thing will logically drive up capital costs. But you don't go on logic, you go on an ideology. [/quote] It is my understanding that it takes longer to put together a 100 loose car consist than a 50 loose car consist. If I understand what you're saying, you think it is quicker to put together a single 100 car consist than two 50 car consists, or four 25 car consists. Putting together shorter consists takes less time, not more, so if railroads started to run the shorter faster model (whether from OA or some other reason), time would be saved both at terminals and in transit. With shorter trains you don't need massive yards, you can do with smaller more dispersed yards. And if the intent is to go after time sensitive business, you're not going to go the carload method but the TOFC/COFC/Bi-modal method. In that case the need is not for classification yards but empty sidings, and there are still plenty of unused or underused sidings out there that would suffice. In the meantime, the faster transit speeds would make the mainlines more fluid, and would provide more revenue hauls per year for this equipment. This is logic, not ideology. What Bitzan and you apparently assume is that under multi-user access of single user lines, a set number of carloads that currently move in the single-user's long slow consist would shift to a number of short slow consists split among the multiple users. Clearly this is not happening under current multi-use situations, rather each line is still maximzing their total consist carloads under the long slow model. So in essence, you have little if any change in actual numbers of long slow consists, it's just that instead of a single railroad running for example 20 long consists per day, you have two railroads running 7 and 13 long consists, or 10 and 10, etc. There is no evidence that those 20 long slow consists are being split up into 30 or 40 shorter slow consists. Terminal investment, whether in yards, sidings, or intermodal transfer facilities, would only need to be increased if total freight movement also increases. If railroads are found having to increase this type of investment, it could only mean that they are getting a larger share of the transportation market. You are also wrong to allege that shorter faster consists would result in equipment "sitting around", because equipment sitting around is what is happening now under the longer slower model: "For many years, substantial effort has been devoted to the reduction of empty car-miles. These efforts have focused on finding backhauls and establishing pools. As nearly as I can tell, the benefit of these efforts has been zero. The boxcar fleet, and most subsets of it, continues to produce only one load per car per month. And the costs of repositioning are bound to consume the modest savings from reducing empty miles." (Charles N. Marshall; Railway Age Magazine, August 2005) (bold font mine) As you can see, the equipment utilization problem you say would occur under OA is actully happening now under CA. I ask this in all honesty, what would you do now to take care of this problem of poor car utilization? You constantly repeat the mantra of "it ain't broke, so don't fix it", yet the evidence clearly shows that massive, perhaps even radical improvements are needed. If anything, the mantra is itself an ideology, not a logical or objective analysis of reality.
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