Rails caught between demand and capacity

[Wdlgln005]

http://www.tennessean.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050829/BUSINESS01/508290345/1044/BUSINESS

News article in Tennessean.
Today I saw a NS/CSX freight on the Memphis/Nashville L&N line!
Normally, I see UP/CSX action.

Someone here was looking for a job??
Who said rail traffic was down? Not here!

[Anonymous]

Excellent article, better than the usual rail-related tripe we get from the mainstream press. A lot of us have made the exact same points as some brought up in this article. Of course, no one dares put forth a possible solution.

[bobwilcox]

How will railroads obtain capital in the next ten years? I do not think the will find enough to significantly increase capacity. Therefore, they will ration traffic by increasing prices and more rail traffic will be put on the highway at higher cost to consumers.

[daveklepper]

Once they raise prices they will become profitable enough to invest in capacity expansion

[oltmannd]

QUOTE: Originally posted by bobwilcox

How will railroads obtain capital in the next ten years? I do not think the will find enough to significantly increase capacity. Therefore, they will ration traffic by increasing prices and more rail traffic will be put on the highway at higher cost to consumers.

I think the RRs know it. Goode of NS has made some speeches to that effect. In fact, there's a rather large white paper out there somewhere (I'll try to find the link later) that details the size of the capital funding gap and the consequences. It makes the case for public funding of private infrastructure improvments as being the lowest overall cost to the public. It'll come with strings attached, for sure, like commuter and intercity passenger service, but it could be a win/win for the RRs and the public.

There has already been some movement. VA, MD an PA are looking into the cost to upgrade NS vs. adding capacity to I-81. The NE governors are looking at frt RR improvements along the I-95 corridor, too. So far, lots of talk, no money.

[Junctionfan]

Well, I came up with some ways to save on capacity on past threads that I will be happy to share again.

1/Higher Capacity cars

2/Service Consolidation Per Car-Distribution Centers with customers aquiring the same product from the same producers might be able to share a car instead of using separate cars.

3/Larger industries with their own yards should only be switched moments before the mainline train is to leave and preferably by that trains power. This would reduce the conjestion in yards. CN does this with train 422; the power heads light into Hayes-Dana plant (now 331's job) and grabs then returns to Port Robinson Yard and backs into the sitting train and departs.

4/ With cooperation from the trucking industries, encourage them to use domestic containers or provide them domestic containers and a chassis so instead of 1 53 foot trailer on 1 flat car, you get 2 53 foot containers on 1 cofc car. There increasing capacity by 50%.

Thease are great short-term solutions until money can be aquired to increase capacity either on the mainline or by increasing the yards themselves. Railroads seem to be doing much of what I said.

They may want to just build a little bit on budget here and there until they achieve capacity increase-for example, they don't need to add say all 35 tracks to an existing yard all in one fiscal year; what about 5 tracks per fiscal year? This way you are paying for 35 tracks (plus labour and other associated costs) over 7 years instead of 1.

[oltmannd]

Here's the link to the report:

http://freight.transportation.org/doc/FreightRailReport.pdf

Even with projected growth, RRs fall short of being able to invest enough and result is net loss for consumers.