Railroading in 2020

Trains Magazine General Discussion
1

Let’s assume the trends over the past 20 years or so hold and Intemodal grows at 5-7% a year while the rest of the RR traffic base grows at 1-2% a year.

By 2020, the majority of rail traffic will be likely be intermodal.

Since intermodal traffic is highway competitive, it may be allowable to have a RR “monopoly” in a geographic area. For example, it may be allowable for CSX and NS to merger their intermodal operations without causing any public harm.

So, in 2020, why not allow parallel mergers such as NS & CSX or UP & BNSF provided the RRs agree to regulation of their bulk commoditiy rates? The operational efficiencies and improved capacity from optimized/directional traffic flows might outweight any reduction in bulk commodity profitablility.

What do you think?

2

ahh… 2020 predictions. I can’t even remember what shirt I wore to work yesterday…

In 2020…

  • The goverment still will not allow any monoplys… That means no BNSF+UP & no CSX+NS
  • Amtrak will still being around
  • KCS will not
  • Canadian National will buy KCS & something in Mexico. There new slogan will be, “We’ve got your NAFTA right here buddy!”
  • The UP will be allowed to merge with CSX. The name of the “new” railroad will be… Union Pacific (duh!). A huge meltdown will take place in… oh I don’t know, how about Buffalo?
  • The BNSF will be allowed to merge with NS. Not because the UP merged with CSX; it will be due to the BNSF execs forgetting what Heritage paint scheme they are on.
  • The Brighton Park Intnerlocker (Chicago) will still be the busiest non-interlocked junction.
  • Rail America will buy every short line from San Diego to Maine. Instead of using different names for each shortline they will give the railroad one name, “The Somewhere to Nowhere Railroad”.
    -The new BNSF+NS will not work because the suits will not be able to decide where to put the “horsey”. The Santa Fe will split with the Transcon, rebuild/buy & rebuild the Erie main line from Chicago to New Jersey and proclaim that they should have done this back in '74. The BN & NS will have no other choice but to stay together. Instead of using the stallions head for the logo, they will use the stallions ***.

Just meesing around,
CC

3

I gots an idea for UP+ CSX it’s Union Seaboard X(for all the roads like SP…lalala)

4

Union Pacific+anybody=Union Pacific

CC

5

I think only Amtrak, UP, BNSF, and other major railroads will still be in operation because lots of railroads are becoming exempt.

From, The name might be Fred

6

Other major railroads… Those might be the only three left.

CC

7

In 2020 we’ll all be trying to catch the last Dash 9’s and SD70M’s…

8

True. I can see it right now: farewell to the BNSF Dash 9 in Heritage II on an intermodal. Once there were thousands of them, majestic beasts roaming the plains [:)]…

-Daniel Parks

9

by 2020 UP may finaly get the Sunset line double tracked – but the traffic will have moved to the Alaska ports and the Can-Am rail link[;)]

dd

10

There probably will still be a KCS unless the gov’t decides to grant common access to the Ft. Worth/Meridian “speedway.”

Regional (def. non-commuter, non-Amtrak passenger) RR’s will be a strong lobby in Congress.

11

Possibly, but will the government and the bulk commodity shippers want to risk the possibility of more captive shippers and entire regions being captive to one railroad? I doubt it. We already have two bills seeking competitive access and re-regulation in the Congress including those seeking to remove the railroads anti-trust exemption. Mergers are going to be increasingly difficult to justify on any grounds. Plus, there is a pretty faitr grounswell hitting the Congress just now of stateas and communities becoming angered at what they see as Class 1 railroads spinning off lines which become short lines and immediately seek scarce public funds for rehabilitation. More communities want the Class 1s to pay some of this cost. The ultimate result may be legislation or STB Regulations affecting the spin off process or even a re-examination of the Staggers Act.

LC

12

I received in the mail today (bought on Ebay) a book called : "A Railroad For Tomorrow ",by Edward Hungerford(out of print),published by Kalmbach. Its a very good book that talks about the railroads in the 1960’s…written in 1945.From what I have read so far,it has been pretty accurate as to what the railroads were like in the 1960’s.As for the topic at hand,maybe a book will come out about the future of railroads, just as this one did.

13

Yes. And the nickname will be “Mr Ed.”

Mitch

14

[(-D][(-D][(-D][(-D][(-D][(-D] TOO FUNNY !!!

15

Thanks Chad. Here’s some more stupidity…

In the year 2020… The UP will have designed a freight car that when applied with grafitti by a tagger will fight back. The freight car will have sensor and quickly spray the UP logo on the tagger. The tagger will then be charged a licensing fee by the UP.

CC

16

Who are you kidding? UP will be around when the epocolipse takes place. UP’s not going anywhere. By the way, NS’s horse isn’t a stallion. It’s a Thoroghbred.

17

Will this be an adaptation of the new Amtrak missle defense system modified with a spray paint gun?

18

I say 2-mat-o, you say toe-mat-o… I stallion, you say “Thoroghbred”… I say it’s all dog food either way! [:D]

No, ya can’t kill 'em if ya wanna collect from 'em. [B)]

CC

19

Look, we already have to contend with UP management. A boxcar that sprays the sprayer? Sounds like hypocrisy to me!

20

Let’s say we assume a growth in the middle of your given range, i.e. 6% for intermodal and 1.5% for other traffic. That’s 7.5% percent/year total growth. That means that in 20 years railroads will be carrying 425% of current traffic. Looking at the BNSF, for example, the Oct 2004 issue of Trains said that some of the heavily trafficked sections of the Transcon carry 80 trains a day. How many tracks would be required to handle an average of 340 trains a day? This, of course, assumes all RRs are equally cursed (or blessed depending on how one looks at it) by the 325% growth. Could their double track Transcon and yards handle that, or should the BNSF start planning now for triple tracking the whole shebang along with greatly increased yard capacity? Could they even do it? Maybe that’s why the DOT is looking at increased use of the Panama Canal as an alternative to increased RR capacity.

On the other hand, if their traffic maintains a 7.5% growth rate year after year for 20 years, you’re saying the RRs will outpace the growth of the economy by about 4% per year. In fact, RRs historically have a record of consistently disappointing investors by lagging growth of the economy and their stocks have suffered as a result. Currently RR stocks (except for the UP) have reached or neared 4-year highs. Perhaps they’ve finally reformed.

Personally, I think the RRs had better start thinking of a radical redesign of their entire infrastructure.