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[quote user="nbrodar"][quote user="futuremodal"] I'll ask the same question I've asked over and over again:  Why can't it all move at the same high speed?  The only reason those hot intermodals foul up the system is that everything else is moving too slow.  I mean, the railroads have been dragging their arses at about 25 mph average speed for decades now.  Will we ever see a significant improvement in this key performance indicator in our lifetimes? [/quote] Speed costs money.   You  need a.) more engines for longer trains, b.) shorter more frequent trains, or c.) more capacity.   This adds up to more fuel, locomotives, and crews, all of which is expensive,  adding capacity - the best solution - the outragously expensive. It's not a matter of everything moving at the same speed. You forget, that traffic moves in BOTH directions on the single track.  Sometime, someone has to pull over to pass.  Moving in the same direction, (which all your examples are) it's easeir to move everything at the same speed.   Which even on the highways rarely happens.  (How many times do YOU pass someone or get passed?) Nick [/quote] You forget, the Wall Street rail analysts use the average velocity measure as an indicator of profitability potential.  Speed costs money, but more importantly time costs money.  And it is the time sensitive traffic that usually pays the highest margins - this is true across all modes that incorporate the speed variable.  This all goes back to the railroads' tendency to focus on reduced costs rather than increased business.  Again, you can move stuff that is not time critical at the same speed as the time critical stuff and keep all the business, but not the other way around. You're original post on the subject makes it appear that the hot TOFC business isn't worth it, as it's demand for sustained speed is out of kilter with the rest of the 25 mph average velocity system.  Yet the biggest potential growth market for railroads is intermodal, and since a majority of cross country freight still moves by over the road truck, there's a big chunk of business going to waste. Since we're talking freight, how passenger traffic interacts with trucks is not relevent to the railroad comparison (Amtrak aside).  Most trucks, regardless of what they are hauling, will move at the same speed.  Ocassionally, you'll get some trucking company that uses speed governors on it's trucks which do not allow that rig to move at the speed of traffic, and of course heavier trucks will be slower on grades than lighter trucks.  But other than that, truck speed is not related to commodity type.
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