TRUCKING!
Well, the fact is that it is frequently much more efficient to unload the trailer (or container), pay much less than $100 to TRUCK it to the destination intermodal facility and place it next to the proper departure block directly with a TRUCK than it is to use a rail transfer system.
Of course, if it becomes more efficient to use rail transfer, they'll switch to rail transfer.
The fact that you don't understand economics, business or efficiency does not mean that the other folks are MAD. It really just means that they know more than you do. For example, they know and understand the need to aggregate truckload shipents for rail movement. A need that is basically absent in TRUCKING! This need cost money and can be eliminated by TRUCKING the loads between rail yards in Chicago. The people in charge understand the situation. You Don't.
Sawtooth500I just can't understand how trucking could be cheaper... I'm not trying to be rude here I just want to figure this out... a cab ride from one of the intermodal facilities to another in Chicago could run you close to $100, so how can you truck something for significantly less than $100? Not to mention your onload/offload costs, times how many containers do you have in a train? It was my understanding that drayage in the Chicago area occurred because of rail congestion, not economics.
You can truck between rail terminals for less than $100 because the truckers charge less than $100. I've never had a $100 cab ride in my life.
It's the whole aggregation thing into units of production. Something you don't understand. Something you call people who do understand "MAD" about.
It's midnight. I'm going to bed. I'll explain latter. Try to meditate. Be kind to animals. Chill. Hopefully, you'll eventually understand this whole transportation thing. Maybe not. You don't have a good start.
Hey Grayhounds... to put aside your abusive response to a simple question let's try wording it another way.
How come it is cheaper to take the time and personnel pay to unload a rail car, whether it is simply hooking up a hose or using a forklift or using a crane/scoop, put the goods into a similarly sized truck trailer unit, then take the time and personnel pay to transport that quantity of goods to another rail yard where we also take the time and personnel pay to put the goods back on/in another rail car?
This seems to incur the additional pay for at least two more people, assuming the trucker and the engineer earn similar pay for the time to move the goods (one to unload and one to reload)... Okay, okay, maybe only one additional person, since it usually takes two to run a train and only one to drive a truck locally. But, still there is one additional paycheck to cut with the present method than just moving the goods via rail.
To us poor ignorants of lessor intelligence that sure seems to be a more expensive proposition than hooking up an engine to the rail car and towing it via rail lines to the other rail yard.
My limited knowledge of economics says that if there were multiple cars of goods to be moved then doing so with just one train would be much cheaper than multiple trucks. Let's see... two train crew could move 20 cars, or 20 truckers and between 2 and 20 ground crew... wow, engineers and conductors must command some paycheck if the truck routing is cheaper.
I suppose that if there is no direct route via rail then it might take longer than the truck transfer but one tends to doubt the lack of a connection from one RR to another if they are both in the same urban area... especially one named Chicago.
This transfer method beggars logic to those of us that do not understand the economics of railroads. It does appear to be a "mad" process based on maybe some individual that doesn't want "his" rail car to be on a foreign set of tracks and thus imposes this restriction on the movement of goods.
Do you suppose you could use your superior intellect and explain it in language that makes sense, instead of belittling the questioner? Please?
Semper Vaporo
Pkgs.
A simple question would have been answered differently.
An accusation of "Madness" brought the appropriate response.
I'll explain more when I have time if someone else doesn't do it first. Basically people need to understand that the street transfer process in Chicago does more than transport trailers/containers to different rail IM facilities. It performs a necessary sorting function at a hub and facilitates aggregation into production units. These production units are called "Blocks" or "Trains".
When it is more efficient to do this with a truck it is done with a truck. When it id done more efficiently with a rail transfer it is done with a rail transfer.
The problem is that you have to have enough volume going from the origin ramp to the destination ramp to justify the move. Most of the high volume lanes do have run-though train service or steel wheel interchange at Chicago.
Most of the other lanes don't generate consistent intermodal car loads and/or sufficient quantity of car loads to justify the time and money for the steel wheel move. Getting a train from one side of Chicago to the other is no quick, cheap thing!
There have been some "load centering" efforts that allow some more steel wheel interchange for smaller volume lanes by grounding and reloading boxes to and from multiple inbound and outbound trains. NS does this at Rutherford PA and Ashland Ave in Chicago, I believe.
But, greyhounds is right. If it were cheaper, they'd be doing it.
-Don (Random stuff, mostly about trains - what else? http://blerfblog.blogspot.com/)
greyhounds Sawtooth500I just can't understand how trucking could be cheaper... I'm not trying to be rude here I just want to figure this out... a cab ride from one of the intermodal facilities to another in Chicago could run you close to $100, so how can you truck something for significantly less than $100? Not to mention your onload/offload costs, times how many containers do you have in a train? It was my understanding that drayage in the Chicago area occurred because of rail congestion, not economics. You can truck between rail terminals for less than $100 because the truckers charge less than $100. I've never had a $100 cab ride in my life. It's the whole aggregation thing into units of production. Something you don't understand. Something you call people who do understand "MAD" about. It's midnight. I'm going to bed. I'll explain latter. Try to meditate. Be kind to animals. Chill. Hopefully, you'll eventually understand this whole transportation thing. Maybe not. You don't have a good start.
(1) Fly in to Bush International Airport in Houston and take a cab downtown, with an appropriate tip, the cab fares will be close to $100. The racket is betray by the fact that the cab ride back to the airport is about half the price of the cab ride to the airport.
(2) I certainly agree with you that the use of trucking is nothing to get mad about, and I even more strongly agree with you that the reason railroads do it is because it is the most efficient means of transportation--they are not dumb, why else would they do it.
(3) However, here is why I "lament" the use of trucking to transfer containers in Chicago:
There are dozens of railroad advertisements that promote intermodal transportation because it takes trucks off the road. Also, although it is nothing compared to the dole that is dished out to trucking, increasing government resources are provided to railroads under the theory that such funding ultimately saves the tax payer money because it takes trucks off the road. As Joe Taxpayer, when I drive to Chicago and get squezed off the road by a truck driver carrying a container from one intermodal facility to another, I tend to view proposals to expend government resources to encourage intermodal use less favorable and view with suspicion rail advertisements that promote the idea that they are serving the common good by taking trucks off the road--if the use of intermodal saves me 10 minutes driving to Chicago but then makes me sit on I-90 in traffic gridlock for 40 minutes, it certainly hasn't increased my common good . . .
That having been said, I realize that railroads will continue to use trucking for such transfers until it is less efficient than rail. I can't say I would do it any differently were I in their shoes.
Gabe
Sawtooth500So there has to be a method to the chaos - let's say there's a UP intermodal train coming into chicago from the overland route. It can go to Global I, II, or III? Are there any hard and fast rules which yard it goes to? And then, the question of drayage comes in. I've heard that in Chicago railroads frequently interchange intermodal by unloading them at their yard and then TRUCKING them to the yard of the other railroad. How can this be so? It must undoubtedly be cheaper just to run a train to the other yard rather than unloading the whole train, trucking it, and then loading it up again!
Thanks to Chris / CopCarSS for my avatar.
Beaulieu and Gabe are absolutely.
Anyone bothered to price a cab ride in/around NYC lately?
THAT will be a real eye-opener, let alone the tip/and or the abuse if it is too small!
As was alluded to earlier,by several other posters. Most people outside the environs of "Da Windy!" have a tendency to thing in terms of convienience (certaily. in THEIR place). As Beaulieu pointed out a five position container car (potentially, can have ten destinations), for the railroad, it becomes somewhat of a convienient move for them, but you can take it to the bank. The 'Bean Counters' will be in the cost analysis of those expenses up to their Mont Blanc's. To paraphrase Telly Savalas, ( It's all about the costs,Baby!'
Crosstown 'Roading' is a fact of life in rail transportation of trailers and TOFC business, and now COFC is in the Chicago market area and that the equation as well.
Oh, Yeah! Cab rides are always more expensive for the arrivee, than the Dearly, departed one's wallet,
The cabbie's ability to size up his"fare" is in line with his ability to understand English, let alone his desire to speak fluently. 'Beware the broken meteter ploy''
First, to address Semper Vaporo's question - no, it's not the contents of the railcars or containers that are being unloaded here. Instead, the entire intermodal container is picked up by a crane or lift truck, swung over, and set down on a truck chassis. It takes about 2 minutes if well-organized and reportedly and credibly costs less than $10 per lift. At the other end, the same process is repeated in reverse, for about the same time and cost.
This topic has been discussed several times here within the last year or two, perhaps captioned under ''St. Louis'' instead at least once. The best exposition was a multi-part dissertation by Railway Man - what's happened to him, anyway ? - where he pointed out that the railroads are essentially using the streets of Chicago as a spread-out sorting yard and interchange facility - an extension of the railroad's infrastructure, evidently to gabe's dismay as above.
The root cause of these operations is in the diversity of ''Origin-Destination'' pairs for the several hundred containers on each train. While most of them typically unloaded on the West Coast are from a ship that originated in Asia, and then put on a double-stack train are bound for the U.S. MidWest or East Coast - otherwise, they wouldn't be on that train, eh ? - they're not all bound for the same or similar or close-by destinations.
So when a train rolls into Chicago with 280 containers on board - randomly loaded, by the way - that are bound for - say, 30 different destinations across the Eastern U.S., but not uniformly - some get only 1 container, others may get 20 or 30 boxes. So - now how do you sort those containers out and then aggregate them for forwarding and delivery in a single block of cars or train for each of those destinations ? If you don't do that, then you're either sending them to the wrong place, or running a train with a lot of unloaded/ empty wells. [It's kind of like a post-office sorting and delivery operation in a city, except with much larger 'parcels' or 'envelopes'.] You might be able to find a few 'platforms' of well cars that are mostly all going to the same place - but then you'll have to weed out the ones that aren't - and how many of those are going to be the bottom container ?
More typically, any one 'car' of say 5 'platforms' and 10 containers will be going to almost 10 different destinations, so there's not much to be gained by trying to keep the box for one of those destinations on board, and then finding and bringing the others going to the same destination to it. The machines that lift those boxes are not very agile or mobile either, esp. when carrying a load of that size and weight, so they can't easily drive a mile or so to the other end of the train - hence they'd be putting the box on a yard tractor-trailer rig anyway. Keep in mind too that most of the Chi-town IM yards are very much space-constrained, and doing this kind of operation within their 'fence' only will result in a lot of cross-traffic, congestion, interference, etc. So it's better and easier in many cases to spread it all out by loading the box on a trailer as they would be doing anyway, and then sending it out the gate and letting the sorting function occur on the ramps and roads over to the outbound IM terminal.
One of the 'brave new worlds' in this field is software to identify all the inbound containers on a train and their destinations to optimize this 'unload, sort, and haul' operation, so that it isn't done any more than it has to be. As the volume of IM freight builds it will be more common and easier to accumulate a solid block or train of containers for a single O-D pair, and accomplish the transfer by rail instead of by rubber.
This is only a brief and general explanation. There are whole professions, consultants, groups, and offices in the industry and carriers that are devoted to managing and optimizing this flow - one used to be the ''Rail Applications Special Interest Group'' or ''RASIG'' that was run by a guy named Muten, if I recall correctly. Perhaps some references to those publications would provide some more insight into this.
Load Planning Problem At An Intermodal Railroad Terminal Ashish Kumar Nemani
- Paul North.
Absent readily available statistics, I am willing to bet that only a very small percent of intermodal traffic on Chicago area streets and highways is interchange business. I seem to recall someone in the know pointing out that at least 50% of the intermodal traffic in and out of Chicago is from or to businesses served by the Chicago ramps. As these things run, I would not be surprised to find the 80% of the interchange business moves by rail transfer.
Consider this: Carload trains are broken up and cars are sorted by destinations and made into new trains on tracks in yards designed for that purpose. Intermodal terminals are designed to sort the containers by destination using lifting machinery and trucks. Generally, you won't find any of the Chicago intermodal yards with trackage designed to switch cars to make blocks for multiple destinations. Adding such trackage would be extraordinarily expensive and from an operating view might not be a less expensive method of sorting loads than the current practise of lifing loads off and on and using yard trucks to do the sorting.
It may come as a surprise to some forum members, but railroad operating managers are fairly good at figuring out the least direct cost to move freight around. I suspect that Chicago area ramp managers all have some numbers in mind to guide the decision on rail vs highway interchange.
In the best of circumstances, some highway interchange is inevitable. Suppose a train arrives at Ramp X with 6 containers for interchange to Ramp Y and the loads are spread out in the train. To accomplish a rail interchange, they will be offloaded, yard trucks will reposition them next to some empty cars where they will be reloaded. A two man train crew with a multimillion dollar locomotive will then tie on and quite possibly take a full shift to deliver the loads to Ramp Y. At Ramp Y, it is possible that the containers will be again offloaded, moved and reloaded on different outbound trains. It is not hard for me to believe that a highway transfer of those 6 loads would be less expensive.
"We have met the enemy and he is us." Pogo Possum "We have met the anemone... and he is Russ." Bucky Katt "Prediction is very difficult, especially if it's about the future." Niels Bohr, Nobel laureate in physics
To expand a little bit, there was a time when there used to be a lot of traffic bound for the East Coast that was landed from container ships in Los Angeles and sent by train cross country, now that traffic has diminished quite a bit. That is why the railroads are not very concerned about the Panama Canal enlargement, there is very little traffic to lose. Most of the transcontinental traffic in maritime containers is traffic from shipping companies who don't have the volume to operate ships directly to the east coast, or there is time considerations. East of Chicago traffic arriving on BNSF or UP will only move on NS or CSX if it is for points east of Buffalo or Pittsburgh, otherwise it will be trucked directly to the customer from Chicago. As jeaton pointed out there is less trucking than you may believe, because there is less transcontinental Intermodal than you believe, and there are too many Origin-Destination pairs that can only be served by sorting out complete trailers and containers in Chicago.
I guess my point is more public perception.
I do not doubt Jay's assertion that the vast majority of Chicago intermodal transfer jobs are not done by rail rather than truck. I knew that when writing my above-listed post.
My only thought is, if I am Joe Taxpayer, and I hear a railroad say, why don't you give us X dollars for this funding project because it will take trucks off the road, I would find that argument a lot more convincing if the railroad could state that it transfers trailers via rail rather than road in all but the most inefficient instances.
That may already be the case. I just think it would be good for railroads to convey that perception rather than the perception that such transfers are entirely driven by market factors.
P.S. Although I have every reason to believe what Jay and others state above, it seems to me that the percentage of trucks with an intermodal container on them is noticeably higher in Chicago when compared to other cities. Could be just me, as I am interested in such things; but that has certainly been my observation.
gabe [snip] P.S. Although I have every reason to believe what Jay and others state above, it seems to me that the percentage of trucks with an intermodal container on them is noticeably higher in Chicago when compared to other cities. Could be just me, as I am interested in such things; but that has certainly been my observation.
Ahh - but how can you tell if those trucks with containers are transferring them from one railroad's IM yard to another - or instead are on their way to making a final delivery of the load in the greater Chicago area's expansive marketplace ? Unless, of course, it's being hauled by one of those 'yard tractors' instead of an OTR tractor.
And for what it's worth - I too notice the same things on the roads here in the Lehigh Valley. And what I too can't tell is if they are delivering, or running back to the NY-NJ container terminals - or just back to the LV Rail Management terminal in Bethlehem . . .
gabeMy only thought is, if I am Joe Taxpayer, and I hear a railroad say, why don't you give us X dollars for this funding project because it will take trucks off the road, I would find that argument a lot more convincing if the railroad could state that it transfers trailers via rail rather than road in all but the most inefficient instances.
Carl
Railroader Emeritus (practiced railroading for 46 years--and in 2010 I finally got it right!)
CAACSCOCOM--I don't want to behave improperly, so I just won't behave at all. (SM)
To the non-railroader, railroad operations have the appearance of disorganized chaos.....because they are not cognizant of the carriers operating plan....and every, repeat every carrier does have a very detailed operating plan....a plan of regular merchandise car load freight as well as plans for the intermodal networks. Without the plans virtually nothing would be moving....EVER. With the wrong operating plan, the carriers operations come to a screeching halt (the UP melt downs in the late 90's, CSX's melt down after Day 1 when the ConRail operating philosophy was implemented). Operating plans have to mesh the traffic volumes with the physical plant characteristics of the territory it is being implemented on. Mandating 200 car trains on terminals who's physical limitations will only handle 100 car trains is the fast track to gridlock.
The plans are continually adjusted, on a daily basis as dictated by daily volumes. On longer term basis based on known traffic changes from shippers/consignees, large scale construction/maintenance projects on the carrier and any of 101 other sustained measurable changes in traffic volumes.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
Good question, but as with everything related to transportation, the economics are much more complex than what logic may make you think.
The industry term is 'rubber wheel' vs. 'steel wheel' interchange, and why would anyone dray a single container cross town in Chicago when railroads could interchange dozens of containers all with one trip?
For those not familiar with the term, "dray" is the trucking portion of a container movement.
Here are the factors at play:
1) Ease of interchange / Terminal capabilities: Operating speeds and congestion between two interchange yards, plus the size of the facilities for handling the inbound load. Some terminals handle trailers, others handle containers.
3) Economics: Sometimes the majority of your freight is going from one terminal to another, so steel wheel interchange makes the most sense. Say 90 pct of inbound loads to CSX Bedford Park need to get over to UP Global 1. But maybe only 10 pct. is going to another terminal. In that case, it may be cheaper to take those containers off the cars and truck the across town.
My background doesn't come from the railroad side, so I really can't get too in depth with railroad's costs or standard operating procedures. However, I know a lot about economics of end to end container transportation, and if you think the cross-town drayage in Chicago is odd, here are some examples that will really make you think:
1) Sometimes it is cheaper to load a container in Cincinnati, dray it to Chicago and then rail to Los Angeles for LESS than ramping the container right there in Cincinnati, to travel to Los Angeles by rail.
2) Some companies will dray containers FROM Chicago to as far away as TORONTO rather than using the CN/CP and the local ramp in Toronto!!!! Remember, it all depends on rail and truck pricing and the particulars of your door to door move!
3) Would you believe me if I said sometimes shipping a load from Charlotte, NC to Oakland, CA is not necessarily cheapest or best going the entire way by rail? What if rail pricing out of Charlotte, NC is very high, and there isn't any equipment available? What if a more cost effective option is to truck a shipment to Memphis, transload the same shipment into a rail container, and then the railroad handles the shipment to Oakland?
4) What about Florida to New Jersey? Sometimes rail is cheaper, sometimes truck is cheaper. Why? There's a variety of factors that play in here.
The bottom line here is that the economics of the transportation marketplace are influenced by many, many different factors.. some of which are difficult to realize and understand if you do not work in the industry.
I think a lot of people on here have lost track of sawtooth500's point: Is it or is it not a reproach to railroading's vaunted "efficiency" that it is somehow more economical to truck a rail load across Chicago than to switch it ... whether one load or a block of cars?
Come on, people! Unless you're getting your paycheck from a railroad, I expect better from you. Greyhounds, for one, needs to take a pill.
Sawtooth500 But this brings me to another question: Why are intermodal trains always unit trains? Why don't you ever put a few intermodal cars into a mixed freight?
The Intermodal terminals are frequently at some distance from the nearest carload freight yard. So you would need a local or switch crew to move the Intermodal cars from the carload yard to the Intermodal yard or vice versa. For BNSF carload is handled at Eola, while Intermodal is handled at Cicero, Corwith, Willow Springs, and LPC near Joliet. Figure 3-4 days longer transit time from the LA area to Chicago if you moved an Intermodal load via carload freight trains. And that is compared to a "S" series Stacktrain, the difference would be nearly another day compared to "Z" train service.
dakotafred I think a lot of people on here have lost track of sawtooth500's point: Is it or is it not a reproach to railroading's vaunted "efficiency" that it is somehow more economical to truck a rail load across Chicago than to switch it ... whether one load or a block of cars?
Railroad's "efficiency" has always been in the long haul, not switching.
An "expensive model collector"
dakotafred I think a lot of people on here have lost track of sawtooth500's point: Is it or is it not a reproach to railroading's vaunted "efficiency" that it is somehow more economical to truck a rail load across Chicago than to switch it ... whether one load or a block of cars? Come on, people! Unless you're getting your paycheck from a railroad, I expect better from you. Greyhounds, for one, needs to take a pill.
Well, medication or no medication, I won't suffer fools gladly.
It's no "reproach". It's just beyond your understanding. That doesn't make it invalid..
Three further comments / observations:
1) Suppose the inbound-to-Chicago train posited by the Original Poster does in fact have 10 or 20 containers scattered through it that are going to be interchanged to NS at Chicago - that would be the equivalent of 1 or 2 5-'platform' 'cars' worth of double-stacked containers. And let's further suppose that UP is nice enough to pick them all out and consolidate them all onto a pair of those 5-'platform' 'cars', and 'steel wheel' interchange those cars and the containers over to NS, and that it all goes pretty quickly and economically because they are combined with a 'transfer' run of regular freight cars, or a 'light engine' move that's going that way anyhow, etc.
But UP really hasn't done NS any great favors, because those 20 containers may then be bound for half-a-dozen or more different destinations in NS territory, which are likely going to be in different 'blocks' and perhaps even different trains - unless there's an entire 'car' load of 10 boxes in that UP transfer which are all going to the same place on NS. So NS now has to unload the containers a 2nd time, sort and handle them again, and then reload them one more time, likely on different tracks. Although that lifting, handling, and loading equipment is capable and mobile, it isn't very agile, so again the boxes will likely be put on truck chassis for movement within the yard. Enough of these kinds of 'favors' and the NS terminal manager will likely call his counterpart over at the UP terminal and work out a deal to save them both time, money, and congestion by ''rubber-interchanging'' the miscellaneous number of containers that are much less than a full block or trainload's worth.
2) The only way to greatly cut down on the need for 'rubber interchange' is to find a suitably located huge plot of land in the Chicago area and build the 'mother of all intermodal terminals' there for all of the major railroads to consolidate their IM yards into a single location. How big ? Well, at least 2 miles long to accomodate the now almost standard 9,000 or 10,000 ft. train - and after UP's stunt with that 18,000 ft. monster train from Texas to Calif. earlier this year, maybe 4 miles would be better to allow for future increases in train length. But I digress . . . Next, say it's all 6 major railroads, and they each need at least 10 tracks for their various destinations. The tracks can be in pairs at maybe 15 ft. centers, but they need to have a paved roadway between the pairs for truck and lift access - say, 50 ft. spacing there, for about a 40 ft. wide paved area between the cars. So each track needs an average of about 32.5 ft., so the 10 tracks for each railroad will require about 325 ft. of width x 6 railroads is 1,950 ft., call it 2,000 ft. across, or almost a half-mile. So for our 2-mile long x 1/2 mile wide terminal, that's 1 square mile or 640 acres - and that doesn't include any room for storing or holding containers, empty cars, truck chassis, etc. - and 10 tracks per railroad may not be near enough. So altogether, that's a huge chunk of land - where are we going to find it ? And at what cost ? And difficulties tying into each railroad's network ? Etc., etc.
3) Really, Chicago is a 'hub' for container traffic just like major airports are hubs for passenger traffic. And note that at airports, almost all passengers transfer themselves individually through the terminal concourse from the inbound plane to the outbound plane - the airline does not move the inbound plane over to the outbound plane and then carry the passengers into or onto the outbound plane - not even at the same or adjacent 'gates' usually, in my experience. Only if you're lucky enough to have the inbound plane continue onto your destination can you stay in your seat and avoid this ritual. The container interchange at Chicago is of like kind, it seems to me.
"Chicago Worst in Truck Congestion"
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37374561
Activated the link for you, too.
Says Chi-town has 3 of the top 10 spots, as follows -
#9: The Dan [Ryan ?] Expressway at the Bishop Ford Freeway.
#2: The junction connecting the Kennedy and Edens Expressways. Travel times average 23 mph during rush periods and only 39 mph during rush periods. [Huh ?]
#1: The circle interchange. (The junction between the Eisenhower Expressway and the Kennedy and Dan Ryan Expressways).
But the article doesn't say anything at all about containers being a factor in this. [It also has some editing issues, which I similarly noted in brackets above.] And which - if any - of these interchanges are heavily used by trucks transferring containers between railroad intermodal terminals ? If not much, then even if all containers were interchanged on 'steel wheels', the truck traffic congestion would remain . . .
Sawtooth500As a Chicagoan, this is why I would personally prefer everything be steel wheel: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37374561. Unless you live in New York or LA, you really don't know how bad the problem is...
Copy to activate link!
(EDIT) To add: FTA " Chicago Worst in Truck Congestion"
Probably a headline to be noted in the annals of understatement. Some time back I worked out of a business at Archer Ave and Halsead. Traffic was a way of life. Kind of like a beating, you cannot fully appreciate it til you have received one. And you can be it has not gotten any better, just exponentially worse.
My wife and I flew from Austin to Long Beach with an intermediate stop at Phoenix. We had to deplane, pick up a boarding pass, and wait for the same plane to reload. Our baggage stayed on the plane; cows and baggage are different from people. Remember the hullabaloo about pigs and cows can ride through Chicago but people can't?
The Spring 2010 issue of Classic Trains has an article about a transfer run in Chicago. I think a person could probably walk faster than the transfer's speed.
Art
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