WASHINGTON — U.S. railroads continue to show overall year-to-year traffic growth led again last week by grain and coal loads, the Association of American Railroads reports. For the week ending May 6, railroads tallied 515,305 carload and inter…
http://trn.trains.com/news/news-wire/2017/05/11-aar-traffic-numbers
I really hate these two data point comparisons. It’s hard to tell if the changes are signal or noise.
Signal to noise ratio:
IMO Brian’s posts are more of the latter. Most of us are intelligent enough to see what’s going on.
I agree. I have found the AAR’s Freight Rail Traffic Data website to be much more informative: https://www.aar.org/data-center/rail-traffic-data
The interactive graphs (weekly and monthly) allow you to isolate commodity groups and compare absolute carload stats between 2017, 2016, 2015, and 2014. The annual graph shows revenue tonnage for 2006-2015.
Weekly coal carloads are up in 2017 vs. 2016, but are still significantly below the levels seen in 2014 and the first 8 months of 2015.