Re: Not dead yet. What needs to be done.

I ended the last entry noting that the interested media have the railroads unable to compete in short-haul freight lanes. The railroads are doomed, or so the mantra goes.

The railroad media assume that the Class One’s have gotten fat and lazy. I say they are the lean, hungry lions lying in wait for the prey to get too close to run away.

The prey that is looming closer every day has a dual nature. The first part is the aging Interstate system, the second is urban congestion. Both are close to what will be the breaking point for truckers. Some short-haul, and probably a considerable amount, will be forced onto the rails as the Interstates crumble and it gets harder and harder to get freight into urban terminals with highway trucks.

That doesn’t mean that the railroads, never having been ones to squander an opportunity to screw things up, won’t have to make some changes. The first change will be getting used to doing things on a smaller scale. That means shorter trains using lighter locomotives running shorter distances with turnaround times comparable to public transit.

The second change will be in diversifying. Shippers who can see their shipment picked up at their door and delivered to their customer’s door without having to book three or four different carriers will be willing to pay more to get the job done. That means railroads might have to start their own logistics companies and be ready to add warehousing and/or refrigerated storage at either or both ends of the rail journey—or even in the middle. They will have to add some to many end points for freight along what now are thousand-mile or more routings between giant double-stack terminals.

The third, and maybe the most difficult change will be in getting out into the shipping community and getting to know individual shippers who may never, ever have the need to ship a 100 car doublestack. Truckers already do this, while railroads, except for shortlines, have gotten away from this personal touch. If a railroad and trucker are going head to head on a shipping contract, with everything comparable—that means transit time, price, and service—I guarantee that the trucker will get the business if the railroad fails to make a personal visit.

What can the government and private enterprise do? In the first place, I don’t think there’s enough political will-power to rebuild the Interstates in their entirety. I also do not think private toll roads are the answer. Currently operating toll roads aren’t particularly profitable. Right now, I’m hearing the ridiculous proposition that federal and state governments should allow even bigger trucks on existing roads. Imagine the accelerating deterioration that will bring.

No, if the government and private enterprise want to make a capital investment in moving short-haul freight, it will have to be in partnerships to provide those multiple short-haul terminals and in financing or granting money for smaller locomotives to run the shorter trains.

Another idea, based on the trend embodied by Florida’s BrightLine, would be to attach short-haul freight to new and frequently scheduled private passenger trains using proven distributed power technology to detach one or more trains from the overall consist at those multiple terminals. It would increase the profit margin of those passenger trains by quite a bit, I’d wager.

And these ideas just scratch the surface. I’m sure that a well-engineered application of PTC coupled with the potential for autonomous trains the PTC brings would well engender a whole new way of dispatching such short-haul trainsets—perhaps in convoys rather than coupled multiples.

In the same way, I’m sure there are more ideas out there, and many, many railroaders willing to implement them.

On the other hand, what happens if the railroads do screw things up? Don’t worry, they won’t go away. They will, however, become the river and canal barges of the new millennium. They will still have business, but will go about it in their own antiquated way, perhaps prompting their stockholders to look at still newer transportation tech.

But, as I have said, don’t count out the railroads yet. Not yet.

©2018 – C. A. Turek – mistertrains@gmail.com

(Charles A. Turek is a writer and novelist based in Albuquerque, NM. After four decades working in areas of the insurance industry related to transportation, he now writes on all aspects of American railroading. Charles is a political conservative but believes in public funding of passenger rail as a part of the federal government’s constitutionally conservative obligation to provide for defense and public infrastructure so that private enterprise may flourish.)