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Is the IHB Hunter’s real target?
From what I have read, CREATE is doing what it was intended to do; Harrison is a nitwit.
He is right that it’s underfunded and slow to come to fruition, but I think he’s jumping the gun. He should push his political connections to get money for it.
It sounds logical that EHH would want IHB, since it seems he’s been trying for years, but would he buy the entire NS JUST for the IHB? Would he buy NS, take over the IHB, then spin off what was NS into a separate company after “Harrisonizing” it? That seems like a lot of work. This whole deal stinks. The more I learn about it, the less I like it.
CREATE is working, but needs funding. Such funding will certainly not come from Hunter Harrison or folks that follow his line of thinking, as all they care about is shoving the money back to shareholders to improve next quarter results. CREATE is a long term solution and long term be damned.
A bit of historical background, if memory serves: in an odd marriage the IHB was 51% owned by the NYC (thus accounting for the 25.5% owned by NS and CSX after the Conrail division of spoils) and 49% by the Milw. Rd (thus the CP stake) and for the most part was under the operational control of the Central during that time. Perhaps someone can comment further.
A couple of things are at play here. 1) The CP Mainline north of Lake Superior and East of Lake Huron does not originate enough traffic to make it pay for itself. 2) Harrison is notorious for wanting to schedule trains over his railroads. He’d like to run ALL of his trains over the Soo and Milwaukee Road into Chicago and then on toward Detroit Windsor and eventually Mississauga/Toronto or Montreal. Unfortunately two things stop him: 1) Getting trains reliably through Chicago and 2) The height of the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel. The Tunnel can be rebuilt to allow double stack containers to pass, however this would be moot without fixing Chicago.