One of the areas in which some of the more learned posters on here have expanded my rail knowledge is the efficiencies assocaited with rail hubs, how rail hubs work, and some of the dynamics associated with them. Some of my favorite threads were where Railway Man and Greyhounds explained to me why rail traffic flows through Chicago rather than Saint Louis or other smaller hubs. Such posters have also convinced me that railways want to concentrate more traffic into such hubs rather than spreading it out over several smaller hubs.
Well, my question is, why are railway hubs that different from airline hubs?
I hate flying with a passion–it is not fear, it is (1) waiting on a tarmac trying to fit my 6’6" frame into a chair that would seat a dwarf comfortably, (2) paying extra for my baggage, (3) having flights cancelled with twenty minutes notice, and (4) being told that purchasing a seat on a flight does not guarantee that I will be seated on the flight because I may be bumped. (I also think there is a rule that any restaurant in an airport is twice as bad as a restaurant you would find anywhere else). Yet, because I have to fly every two weeks, I try to make it more efficient.
One of the things I have noticed in my quest to make flying more efficient is that flying is nearly always better if I avoid hubs. I flew Indianapolis directly to Fort Lauderdale this weekend. My flight left on time, and my flight was 2 hours and 20 minutes from the time they closed the cabin door until the time they opened the cabin door. If flying were always like that, I wouldn’t hate it. I flew back (US Air), but had to go through the its hub in Charlotte. The flights to Fort Lauderdale to Charlotte and to Charlotte to Indianapolis were actually longer than the flight to Indy to Fort Lauderdale, which is almost twice the distance (basically because we h
If I recall correctly, airlines went to hub-and-spoke networks with the beginning of airline dereg around 1981 or so. The theory was that increased frequencies between two endpoints could be economically provided by use of connecting flights rather than through flights. An airline could establish a hub just about anywhere it wanted as long as the airport had enough available gates that could support the traffic. The now-defunct Western Pacific Airlines established its hub at Colorado Springs because of a lack of gate availability at Denver. Unless you live in a hub city, it’s almost impossible to avoid changing planes now.
Rail hubs are virtually set in stone because that’s where the traffic goes and alternate routes just don’t exist. It’s a lot harder to interchange freight in Peoria than in Chicago, the connections just aren’t there in Peoria.
I’m going to be thinking out loud - OK, as I type - here, so bear with me if this doesn’t seem completely thought-out yet . . . [:-^]
Proportions - the ratio of each load to the total vehicle ? Nope - you’re about 1 of 150 or so on the plane, just as each car is around 1 of 150 or so in the train.
The real purpose of airline hubs is to aggregate enough people on each line segment flight to make it pay, because there’re usually not enough passengers from any one airport to fill an entire plane to another airport. [Where that does occur, an airline - like SouthWest, or AirTran, etc. - will do just that instead, and avoid the whole hassle with hubs. On the railroad, they call a direct operation like that a ‘block’ of cars - or if they’re enough of them, a '‘unit train’.] So, the plane stops at a hub and unloads all of its passengers from 1 or 2 cities, who then intermingle with passengers from elsewhere - and a planeload of them from many other origins then get aboard for the flight to 1 or 2 destination cities at most.
Now that may be it, Gabe - the Origin-Destination pair analysis. Actually, you’re going through 3 hubs - the one you acknowledge, Charlotte - and 2 others, Ft. Lauderdale and Indianapolis - that you perhaps did not recognize. Although the inbound or outbound trip at each one is likely by car instead of
Railroads do try to avoid yarding and that is why they will try to sell shippers on unit train service when possible. The Tropicana Fruit Trains, the UP-CCX Gateway Express. the many coal and ore trains direct from load to unlead are all good examples. Another example, with avoidance of Chicago in the bargain, is the the NS partnership with KCS on the Meridan Speedway. Ditto NS’s partnership with Pan Am/Guilford, avoiding CSX’s Selkirk Yard. Your analogy is a good one, and railroads make money by keeping customers and getting new ones.
The “Map of the Month” in the Jan 2004 issue is called BNSF’s Hub and Spoke (It is not yet in the subscriber area of this website). It is based on a BNSF merchandise traffic flow map from the late 1990s. The map shows BNSF had 10 strategic yards operating as hubs. These were Pasco, Stockton, Barstow, Denver, Lincoln, Tulsa, Kansas City, Northtown, Galesburg and Memphis.
I would have thought that Chicago, St. Louis and New Orleans would be major hubs, but not so. Northtown and Galesburg each have 6 spokes radiating to different endpoints in Chicago, one for the city and 5 for adjoining railroads.
The ‘takes’ of Paul and Gabe are pretty interesting. Gabe is pretty much self interested and I do not mean that in the rude way. Simply put he wants to utilize one of the Big Aluminum Cigar Tube to get from point A- to point B as quickly, and comfortably as possible. The alternative would be to be shot out of a Cannon, admittely a quick trip but certainly lacking in creature comfort ( the prefered method for airline management- it would eliminate all those human job functions that are needed now to get their customers from one place to another.
Paul’s analogy of Rail Operations in comparison with the HUB and SPOKE operational method is a good way to examine it. The H&S system utilized by the airlines is useful to them and their bottom lines. By operating from one ‘dedicated’ HUB to another, their costs are contained by having operations contained in one location rather than spread out among a nuber of small( read:expensive) locations. By Hubbing and Spoking the customers (passengers) they are more loikely to expose THEIR airline to potentially more passenger dollars than handing that individual off to another airline. They might get their passenger closer to the preferred destination so that party can utliize a car rental to final. Also at the smaller Hubs they might be able to hand off that passenger to an inhouse feeder airline to the final destination. Once a passenger is in the clutches of a major airline it is akin to trying to escape from a transportation LaBrea Tarpit; all their ticketing and travel links work their own possibilities first.
One could substitute the Railside of the argument with the airline side and it would in a lot of cases have a similar outcome, particularly when the railroad does the routing for the customer.
Some years ago there was a commpon analogy withing the airline passenger community that if one were going from any Delta Airline city in the world to HELL they would have to c
Isn’t it because this is an apples and oranges comparison? I’d have to believe, that the goals for both the airlines and the railroads for using hubs is the same-efficiency. How they measure efficiency might be a whole different matter. The grain shipper pays a lot less attention to the comfort of his grain than you do to your shipment of yourself, and your time.
It’s my take, that railroads are shipping commodity freight at commodity pricing. The airlines, are trying to ship specialty freight (you) at commodity pricing, thinly disguised as something else. If they had a chance, I believe airlines would ship passengers in the equivilent of flying cattle cars. (They’d probably try to have you pay extra for the hay as well.) Given that the railroads are making money, and the airlines aren’t, I think the railroads are doing it right.
Oh there’s a lot of orange to apples difference in rail and air hubs. First and foremost is that air is single line hub while rail is usually mulit line hub. Rail is geographical, at least in origin. Chicago was a first point choice where, menatlly at least, east met west. All rails (individual companies) aimed at Chicago from east, west, north and south right from the begnning, and thus in rail history, it became the important point it has been and still is. Each airline, being a single carrier with usually one region or market looming larger than others in its system, can choose its hub for whatever reason wherever it wants to. Montains, rivers, even political boundries, will often dictate rail hubs more than other things. Particular commodities may dictate a hub for that commodity but not for other. Should such hubs, like Chicago, be eliminated or otherwise changed? Depends on commodities and the players. Buffalo is a good example of a so called hub which remains(ed?) so by and after Conrail despite the EL main and a secondary PRR route around the often clogged or weather clogged hub. Tradition and practice play a big role, after geography and commodity, in how railroads operate and think.
With certain airlines now attempting to charge for carry on baggage and use of the rest rooms, I would say we are at cattle car air transportation today…I am surprised they haven’t changed the planes configurations for ‘standing room only’ so they can pack more bodies into the silver tubes.
Passenger pricing is a little more complicated than commodity pricing now matter what the mode. You determine the average number of daily passengers who would utilize the service, determine all your costs in manpower, equipment, depreciation, charter and license fees, et al, plus your government subisidies in hopes of at least breaking even. On some routes you may have a thousand daily passengers, others only 500 or maybe 20000; but you can usually count on a constant average number. Commodities you negotiate the minimum for the commodity price and graduations up or down from there. That sounds too simple, and it is, but it is just a start.
A few months back the Wall Street Journal had an interview with the CEO of RyanAir. He said that ‘standing room’ accomodations was one option they were considering to pack a few more people on and thus lower the fare/ raise the profit margin a little bit more. He also said another option was less restrooms - encourage the passengers on the short flights to use the airport’s facilities, thereby cutting costs and servicing time for the planes. I kid you not . . . - Paul North.
One major difference between airline hubs and rail hubs is that there’s a very hard limit to the amount of (and use of) air space at an airline hub. A railroad can add track on an existing right of way or even develop an entirely new connection to/within a hub. Nobody has come up with a way to expand the amount of atmosphere over or around an airport.
Incidentally, TARMAC (Tar-MacAdam pavement) is what the Brits built ramps and runways from back during WWII. Anyone who has flown, or bent a wrench, on an aircraft refers to that big, flat expanse of concrete as a RAMP! Jet aircraft, with their scorching exhausts, pretty well put an end to the use of tarmac for airport pavement, at least on the aircraft side of the flight line fence. Of course, our technologically-challenged media types still haven’t noticed…
It seems to me that Mr. North had the reason above that there is only a surface resemblance. At the hub, passengers are both self propelled and self sorting; and railroad cars are not.
Some key factors for hubbing have been mentioned: maximizing load by consolidation, a major traffic origin/destination, physical (mountains, water) and commercial (corporate ownership, “gateways”) geography. Railroads consolidate traffic over minimized line infrastructure whereas the only air infrastructure is the airport; and planes are generally free to take a more direct route. As long as general freight cars or blocks need to be sorted at a midpoint or regional hub, it makes sense that intermodal and unit trains will share the same routes rather than under-utilize some bypass route, a “Peoria Gateway.”
Obviously there must be a lot of technology-challenged people in the US Navy and the US Army. I was an aircraft US Army crewchief during the Vietnam era stationed at Lakehurst Naval Air Station, Lakehurst, NJ. This is the same place where ther Hindenberg burned. With the exception of the floor in Hangar 1 where the Hindenburg was stored, (the floor was brick), everything was concrete. The area where we pre-flighted aircraft was called a Tarmac whether it was made of tarmac or not, and we were not required to salute there. That is where I met my 1st General, and did not salute. Hooray for me. It was then, and still is – called a Tarmac. Outside of flying commercial, I have NEVER heard it called a ramp.
BTW – I fly a LOT, both when I was in the military and now retired in Italy. I have also turned a wrench or two and all that neat stuff way back when.
Hubs are why OTR trucking took over for Freight except for commidites that you do not NEED IT RIGHT NOW and stuff if your on a rail line all ready you can deal with a 2 week shipment time if your a loose car reciever. Why do you think Produce is for the most part Truckload now and also Meat called we get it there Fresher. That and we do not use a HUB SYSTEM. We have the Pickup and Delivery Point and that is it. Multiple Pick ups NOT A PROBLEM need it there faster called a team truck will get it there. However will cost more. Now Airlines I hate them BIG TIME since when is it fun to jam 200-650 people onto a tube and fly them in a seat that is smaller than my babies CAR SEAT.
In a lot of cases, trucking still operates from hubs as part of logistics. Chairs, tires, and dresses come in on trucks from different sources to a distribution center - a hub, sometimes held for a destination, and sent out together as a full load to a discrete destination.