Are railroads today working at near capacity, or is there signifcant room for additional business? I would think there’s alot of room for additional business… even here (36 miles outside of Canada’s biggest city) one can stand at trackside for hours and never see a train… Positive train control may really help in squeezing more productivity out of the existing infrastructure by enabling trains to run faster and closer together… Where are we with overall capacity utilization?..40%?..70%… 90%?
There are many ways and reasons US railroads can carry more. Just as things are, more crews can move more trains…but soon they’d have to buy more locomotives. PTC could help by being able to move more trains in a given space and time. More tracks, bigger cars, mightier locomotives, new better track, more track…dedication by management and stockholders to want to earn money by operating railroads instead of just making money. And all that is just the beginning!
Depends on the lane or route, location along it, mountain grades and helper districts, the season, the current economic cycle, and to what extent the route is not yet up to the state-of-the art with regard to track, bridges and tunnels, and signal systems,etc.
A couple years ago, there were some routes - BNSF’s Southern Transcon, UP’s Overland Route, anad NS’s Shenandoah Valley Line come to mind - that were at or close to capacity, while there were others that had a lot of vacant space as you note. But Railway Man - among others - has pointed out here before that just because there seems to be unused capacity out in the country, the real “choke point” is likely in an urban area at one end or the other of the line, where all available capacity is being used.
RWM and others have also said many times that PTC is no panacea for capacity, and may well have the opposite effect - such as the bigger safety margins will claim time and space that would otherwise be used for more capacity. There was a study by a consulting firm to the AAR - Oliver Wyman, I think - which got a lot of publicity last year to that effect.
One of the FRA’ study’s from 2 - 3 years ago had the current percentage of capacity utilization and projections for like 20 and 30 years into the future in a map format. If we can find that on-line, it would provide a quick overall view of the present situation and future limitations.
Funny you should ask, anyway - just last weekend I was musing about he tremendous capacity of a double-track rail line, in the context of wartime transport needs. Real quickly: US freight transport volume is about 1 ton per person per year, so for around 350 million population in the US, that’s 350 million net tons (500 million gross tons or MGT), or about 1 million net tons (1.5 MGT) per day. Over 24 hours that’s about 42,000
I truly wonder how affective PCT will be. I mean the signaling system is already in place, would there need to be an adjustment of the lengths of the blocks?
Since this issue came up, I was wondering what they truly meant by adding capacity. It made me think about whether or not that dispatchers truly run the trains as fast and as close as possible or some internal feeling just keeps them at a safer speed and keep further apart than they need to be.
I would just listen to Paul. I do not think you are going to find a better explanation.
Was it not mentioned a few months ago that terminal times are the biggest problem when it comes to shipping times and capacity issues? Of course the routes themselves and the size of the trains come into play.
Dispatchers do not control the speed of trains…they line signals and clear routes for trains to run on. Dispatchers model boards have two indications for a signal…Lined or Not Lined.
The signal system sets the train spacing distance…not the dispatcher.
The speed of trains is governed by the type of train it is and the maximum allowed speed for that type train. The power that is assigned to the train and whether that power is sufficient to get the train to and maintain it’s maximum authorized speed.
I have yet to see a Rule set for the implementation for PTC, with that being said, I suspect if and when the system fails on a particular line segment (AND IT WILL FAIL from time to time) the paranoia surrounding PTC will severly restrict line capacity for the duration of the failure. Even when PTC is operating properly I cannot envision it adding capacity to existing signaled territory. I may be able to add some capacity to territories that are now Dark (DTC/TWC rules).
PTC is a very heavy price to pay for several human failure incidents…Incidents that someway, somehow will be replicated in the PTC enviornment. There has never been anything that is 100% certain with the human animal - except death. The inventiveness of the human animal is able to defeat ANY system that is designed for it’s own protection.
[quote user=“BT CPSO 266”]
I truly wonder how affective PCT will be. I mean the signaling system is already in place, would there need to be an adjustment of the lengths of the blocks?
Since this issue came up, I was wondering what they truly meant by adding capacity. It made me think about whether or not that dispatchers truly run the trains as fast and as close as possible or some
PTC appears to be a big factor in achieving capacity, speed and safety elsewhere in the world, why won’t it help the U.S. railroads?
For another explanation, here’s a link to AAR’s June 2010 “Background Paper” on Positive Train Control: (4 pages, approx. 97 KB, so it’s not too bad to download and read). See esp. “The “Business Benefits” of PTC” section at the bottom of pg. 2 and the top of pg. 3, which references the April 2010 Oliver Wyman consulting firm study that I mentioned above:
http://www.aar.org/KeyIssues/~/media/aar/backgroundpapers/positivetraincontrol.ashx
- Paul North.
North American railroads and non-North American railroad do not share the same missions in the transportation industries of the countries they serve and they do not share the same types of private ownership.
Off of the rail related news that reaches me on this side of the ponds (Atlantic & Pacific), outside of the brilliance of various countries HSR services, all I hear are about various collisions with a high loss of life.
HSR services are not built for and do not handle the kinds of traffic that make the private US/North American rail system profitable and not looking to a country’s tax payers to keep it funded.
Paul, please tell us more about PTC, HSR, and accidents from overseas…rarely if ever do I get such reports. I do live in a Gannet town so I’m lucky if I get my paper delivered much less that it might contain news stories.
It’s not always a question of how much more business the railroads can handle, but how much more traffic their customers can handle.
According to a local RR forum here, CSX is all bound up in and around NY. One problem is the capacity of one of the ethanol receiving facilities - they’ve got two or three trains waiting to get in most of the time.
We’ve discussed terminals here before. If the terminals are overwhelmed, it doesn’t matter how much traffic you can put on the mainlines - it’s not going anywhere.
Really? Please point me to just one PTC system that is in actual operation anywhere in the world that offers more capacity or speed than could be achieved with a reasonably modern CTC or cab-signal system.
Safety, yes.
RWM
RWM: Read April Trains.
We will be very lucky if (1) PTC can even be made to work; (2) doesn’t cause the entire rail system to melt down within a week, (3) and doesn’t murder capacity. It will make trains run slower and farther apart, not faster and closer together. Again – if it can be made to work. I know quite a bit about PTC professionally. I’m seriously concerned.
The question about capacity is not quite the correct question. If you don’t mind, the question should be “Can railroads economically add significant room for additional revenue?”
First, railroads have NEVER maintained excess capacity, not by choice. The ICC forced a lot of very poor-quality spare capacity onto the railroad system after 1929, spare capacity which due to lack of maintenance dollars was nothing but a parasite on the useful capacity and value of the system. Once the Northeast and Granger meltdowns forced reality onto the ICC and Congress, the useless junk was stripped out, and railroads immediately returned to matching their capacity to the market, just as they had done a century ago.
Second, the question is about economically adding capacity. You probably don’t know this, but they’ve been adding large amounts of new track capacity almost every year since 1980, with the rate accellerating after the mid-1990s. This consists of siding extensions, yard track extensions, junction
Believe whatever you want. It’s not my concern. I’m just here to share what I know, because I enjoy it. The arguments I need to win aren’t found here.
RWM
Then if Trains is merely marketing propaganda: 1) where should I be looking for the truth? and 2) what are you doing here wasting your time and talents on us?
Most indications are that the railroads basically grow at the growth rate of the economy, perhaps a bit more.
Do we expect a spike in growth now that it seems that fuel prices are rising…and we will again have the rush to efficiency?
What are the long term effects of fuel costs on imports, hence intermodal container?
There seems to be talk about coal tonnage dropping as other power sources are either mandated or found to be cheaper. What will that possible reduction (or shifting of coal to export) have on overall tonnage and capacity?
It seems as if the 2-3% slow growth outlined above will have significant issues on the terminal facilities and gateway locations such as St. Louis, Memphis, and Chicago, perhaps Kansas City (dont know that much about KC). If these choke points continue to be a factor, then perhaps the shifting of coal will free up capacity. Dont know, just thinking out loud here.
Ed
Well, not to be flippant, but the obvious is that lines that are coal-heavy will not be coal-heavy when coal declines. So what? Railroads have gained and lost important traffic before, over and over again. But they’re still here, are they not?
To sharpshoot trends and make capital investment decisions on the basis of what the trends seems to show is a granular exercise. It is specific to individual line segments and highly sensitive to many assumptions that potentially are entirely wrong. The outputs of these analyses are only as good as the accuracy of the assumptions that are used, and are constrained geographically and chronologically. They do not lend themselves to generalizations and in fact, making generalizations from them is foolish as it consists of adding together all of your inherent errors. Instead of smoothing out error, you’re actually doubling down on it. If you’re looking for generalizations, I think I will quote J.P. Morgan when asked what the market will do: “It will fluctuate.”
As to international intermodal, fuel costs are an infinitesimal cost of the preponderance of the goods that are stuffed into those containers. The cost of labor in China, and domestic consumer discretionary income and consumption preferences matter much more to traffic volumes.
I don’t expect to see any radical shifts in coal in my remaining lifetime. Sure, when we look back 25 years from now (should I live so long …) we will be able to identify change. But on a day-to-day and even a year-to-year basis, change will not be terribly obvious except on a very idiosyncratic basis, such as specific branch lines that serve one or two mines.
RWM
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I don’t have a simple answer on that. I wish I did. I read everything I can get my hands on and I’m still uncertain on many things.
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I find this a helpful way to think about and communicate about railroad problems that the next day I will have to do in a meeting or a document or a presentation. Also sometimes it seems kind of relaxing.
RWM
Several comments/ observations/ questions regarding PTC, for which I’m not finding answers, from someone who’s not in the trenches on this like RWM and BaltACD, and so is somewhat uninformed (lest someone think I’m being contradictory or argumentative here):
- “By all that’s holy”, the blocks and signal spacings are already supposed to be set-up and located to accomodate the “worst-case” plausible scenario of a fast, heavy train having to stop on a downgrade with bad rail adhesion conditions, etc., so there should be no need for PTC to lengthen those blocks or signal spacings.
Can PTC be used to shorten those blocks and spacings for other less adverse conditions ? In theory, yes - but apparently that would be hugely complex and expensive, to a scale not yet implemented. Note that instead, the initial “roll-out” of PTC is widely expected to be an just an “overlay” to the existing signal system, which means “in addition to”, not “in place of”. Therefore, PTC will likely have to accept and adopt the existing blocks and signal spacings - but what will be different is that PTC will be a “super-enforcer” of those blocks and signal indications to prevent potential violations.
- That may be why the ‘in a perfect world’ concept of “precision dispatching” = train control and track occupancy authority to within just a few feet - won’t be happening early on. PTC will still have to accept and use the existing block lengths - typically on the order of 10,000 ft. or so long - on an “all or nothing” basis, the same as the existing systems. For example, if the last car’s axle of a preceding train is hanging back into a block b
Thanks for the info Paul, good stuff. [:D]