Well, this writing doesn’t exactly say the freight it leaving the river for the rails, but that’s the logical place for it to go. River tonnage has had a steady 16 year decline. That’s a good thing.
http://www.peer.org/news/news_id.php?row_id=632
Over that time railroad productivity has increased dramatically. Competition has forced most of the savings through to customers - and the result - a steady decline in barge business.
The barge traffic on the Upper Mississippi has been decreasing, but I do not think it is all rail competition that is doing it. Barge is still the cheapest option for a shipper, but availability of barges, water levels, and the river does not go everywhere.
We still see grain traffic move by truck to Winona, where it is then barged many times. The rate structure favors barge traffic. When the water level is low, or the river freezes up; rail movement is still available…
Jim
In 2005 the water level at Dubuque and Davenport Iowa was the lowest in recent memories. Many barges were partially loaded for transport to St. Louis. I do not know if that was a large factor or not. Perhaps someone has some statistics they would share.
I have many threads about the growth of large capcity unit train elevators being built fairly close to the IL River. This indicates to me that traffic is being diverted from the river to rail. Has the river’s draw area in IL, IA and MN gotten narrower in the last thirty years? The grain people at the C&NW in the 1970s use to say the river was about 150 miles wide. That was why some many branches got abandoned in eastern Iowa and southeastern Minnesota.