3rd time is the charm?
Press release from which that story came:
Text of the bill:
Jimmy Carter told me many years ago âalways watch for the weasel wordsâ. Here, words like âtimelyâ, âefficientâ, âreliableâ, and in particular âreasonableâ. (They work that last one particularly hard.)
Without specific expectations of improvements, these could easily be interpreted at whim. Thatâs complicated by it being fairly easy to determine cases where things have gotten plainly âunreasonableâ â the recurring spur to reintroduction of this sort of language in 49 CFR 11101.
But what actual metrics could be consistently involved across every railroad in the general system of transportation, with what enforcement and with what grievance procedures?
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Well a major employer near me would say less than a week to move a car from Galesburg to Streator Illinois would be reasonable. Or 3 weeks to get that same car from Houston to Kansas City then another week to Galesburg. Yeah thatâs been the transit time for the last year 5 weeks Houston to Streator. With 3 werks to get the cars to Kansas City.
From the original article: (Outcome dependent on who has the most $$ clout)
The Reliable Rail Service Act takes a commonsense approach to addressing high costs and unreliable service by clarifying the âcommon carrier obligation,â which under current law requires rail carriers to serve the wider shipping public âon reasonable request.â Current ambiguity around this principle has contributed to insufficient rail services and exorbitant costs for American products to get to market. Clearly defining the âcommon carrier obligationâ has taken on greater importance as the railroad industry faces consolidation and has undertaken Wall Street practices that reduce capacity on the rail network.
The bill establishes specific criteria for the Surface Transportation Board (STB) to consider when evaluating whether carriers are meeting their common carrier obligation to give shippers much-needed certainty that is currently lacking.
âFor years, dairy processors have struggled to use Americaâs rail system because of lack of reliability and reduced service schedules. The Reliable Rail Service Act is commonsense legislation that will provide greater clarity to the railroadâs common carrier obligations and ensure that they provide more dependable service at sensible rates,â said Dr. Michael Dykes, President and CEO of the International Dairy Foods Association. âIDFA applauds Sen. Baldwin and Sen. Marshall for introducing this legislation to improve transparency in the rail industry and restore the balance between carriers and shippers so the U.S. dairy industry can move products more reliably by rail.â
âSenators Baldwin and Marshall have proposed smart, and a much-needed reforms to help fix persistent freight rail service failures that are plaguing chemical manufacturers," said Chris Jahn, President and Chief Executive Officer of the American Chemistry Council.
Reliable rail service from the same legislative body that gave us Amtrak. H-h-h-h-m-m-m-m. Past experience with legislation and that old parable about the road to hell and intentions comes to mind.
I donât know if legislation helps but pretty clearly PSR has resulted in better OR at the cost of poorer service in some sectors and reductions in potential revenue streams.
Are we going to have the return of âMilk Runsâ from days of yore? The dairy industry of yore no longer exists and is just as industrial as the other aspects of agriculture have become.
I follow a couple of âfamily farm operationsâ on YouTube. One in Montana farms 10K acres with multiple row crops. The other one in Nebraska farms 2800 acres of corn and soybeans. Neither of these are the stereotypical man with a tractor and two row planter and combine. Both are multi-million dollar operations - the land cost, the machinery, the seeds and fertilizers, storage or direct to the buyer with harvested crops - you donât turn around without making a $10-$100K decision about some aspect of the farm operation.
Even dairy farmers are a much bigger operation, not necessarily acreage but # heads of dairy cows. They have expensive indoor feeding and milking palaces. So no one is talking about restoring the milk runs of 70+ years ago.
Canât comment on PSR because I have no clue how that works. Something is motivating railroad management to go that way. I suspect it is that most of their freight is not all that time sensitive and can take itâs liesurely time. The railroads tried to charge a premium numerous times in the past for high speed freight trains. Not a lot of people want to pay the fee. Kind of like the former Concorde Trans-Atlantic air service.
Also, higher speed trains wear out the rails more which in my rough guessing means the premium charged is probably in large part more than eaten up by increased maintenence on the tracks, increased fuel expended, reduced line capacity via intermixing different speed trains (someone keeps bringing that up in these forums). So I can see why in part railroads have dodged the higher speed freight train.
In my opinion as an observer of UP West, it is the weight that requires almost constant maintenance of their track here, not speed, which isnât present.
Speed doesnât âwearâ out track so much as it requires a higher level of maintenance to keep the line and surfacing ot the track to a much higher level than for slower speeds. Hitting a one inch cross level deviation at 70 MPH or higher creates a much different ârideâ than it does at 20 or 30 MPH.
Tonnage does âwearâ out the track and its supporting structures. The bigger hammer principle, heavier axle loading put more stress on the rail, ties, ballast and subgrade. Rail does âwear outâ, the more tonnage cycles it experiences the more internal flaws and/or defects are exacerbated with every passing axle.
In my experience the accumulation of the flaws and defects present themselves with the first significant cold night of the approaching Winter Season - enmass. Once sustained cold weather is achieved, things settle down until the Spring thaw starts all the low spots to start pumping mud.
My take on this is that the big customers, who get somewhat better service, are going to use the experiences of the smaller ones to get rate reductions. In the end service wonât be much better, especially for the smaller customers.
I do think the definition of what a common carrier is and expectations of being a common carrier is need to be defined. Railroads, as seen by many, have gone from being somewhat of a public utility to just another regular corporation. Instead of being companies that provide a service and make money doing so, they are viewed as companies that generate money while just happening to provide a service. Especially by Wall Street types.
That seems to be the theme of modern business. Generate cash first, provide a product or service second.
Jeff
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