We’ve survived worse. Despite what the media seems to portray, better than 98% recover…
You’re more likely to die while you’re out motoring around instead of “staying in…”
As for the death of trains - that’s already been predicted several times in the past, yet they are still here.
I recall reading how John Wannamaker, the inventor the concept of the Department Store, once sneeringly referred to a rival as a “businessman,” while Wannamaker took great pride in being a “merchant.” There is a big difference.
Railroads need to be run by professional railroaders, not just businessmen with their eyes on the stock price 3 months hence.
Imagine what the results would be if we elected as President a person with no experience whatever in running a government? You can’t be a barber, or a teacher, or an Information Technologist without a credential in that field. But in railroading and in the Executive Mansion, people brand-new to the business are simply installed with authority, with resul
More likely it’s the last decade for much of American society as we’ve come to understand it. At least as radical as the change from Depression to postwar prosperity (that not-too-incidentally killed off most big steam in less than a decade) or the changes after 1828. Look for some segments to respond slowly, if at all, although I suspect the model for cruise ships and trucking … there will always be someone to buy up the capital assets and try to make a go of the marketing and operations, if there are enough greater fools to patronize it … will apply to mass social operations like wedding venues, open-floor eat-in restaurants, or kids’ party facilities. Look for weird expedient changes in education, too – probably not particularly for the better in already-ill-served ‘cohorts’.
More importantly, COVID-19 was the dry run for rapid response to an actual pandemic. Those of us who have studied this know that any ‘engineered pandemic’ won’t be just one, and won’t be deployed in a vacuum without other strategies or tactics being sequentially fired. Even accidentally-originating strains could easily progress to ‘Red Plague’ or Captain Trips status with distressing speed, the operative factor appearing to be delayed induction or appearance of symptoms to allow greatest possible undetected spread, combined with a targeting of key receptors or systems that are highly conserved and that can’t be externally modulated or blocked without severe related consequences (see HIV/AIDS as a comparable model). We badly failed in most respects, and while we have been failing repeatedly for many years, to be failing now on so many levels is both a wake-up call and a very useful set of ‘lessons to be learned’ about what to fix, what to emphasize, and wha
It has been said, however, that a good manager can manage anything, even with little knowledge of the nuts and bolts. That does assume that those being managed do have said knowledge.
No; what it assumes is that the manager has a good grasp of actual sound principles by which rational things are accomplished, and is willing and able to learn the relevant things he or she must know about the nuts and bolts.
The latter is the place where the Stanford grads usually come to grief. If you come in already knowing the answer, or the methodologies you intend to implement on the benighted, you’ll never figure out what you don’t know, and what you can’t know, in order to figure out what ought to be done and how to conduct and implement the myriad ‘midcourse corrections’ you’ll almost certainly need.
Note that this is a very different discussion, with very different parameters, than the discussion of what a good leader can or should do in a similar position.
(It is also a very different discussion from what a good, or adequately Agile, administrator would do. Some people make the very unfortunate mistake of assuming that administrators are managers. Some enterprises and organizations actually survive when that mistake is made.)
The present day theory of management is driving oversized square pegs through undersized round holes - without questioning why things are not meshing with the clockwork precision of a Swiss watch. They don’t believe the common sense answer even when it is presented to them.
I’ve gotten behind on checking all the blogs/posts. Just saw this one from 3 months ago on FF’s “Whatever happened to UP?” and thought it was brilliant:
Added 3 months ago
david vartanoff said:
About the train volumes. UP (and the other class 1s have, I believe suffered from the coal traffic habit. Coal was the perfect commodity for incompetent and poorly managed RRs to still make money. No way would a powerplant hire a fleet of 100+ trucks to move the coal, so it defaulted to rail. What this did was provide a steady income despite poor service. That,IMHO lead to managers who should have been seen as failures moving up because the coal didn’t defect to trucks. This created a layer of decision makers who need to be completely re-educated about customer service. Meanwhile,given the death of coal the RRs will be in increasingly dire straits unless they figure out reliable AND faster transit times.
Railroads are defaulting to the land-barge model more than ever as coal dwindles and the hedge-fund/predatory-investor driven PSR is now the norm. Even BNSF is tending that way, though not as bad as others. As an aside, I wish someone could come up with a more accurate name, as it is nothing about “Precision&rdq
Quoting Overmod: "No; what it assumes is that the manager has a good grasp of actual sound principles by which rational things are accomplished, and is willing and able to learn the relevant things he or she must know about the nuts and bolts. " And, he is willing to learn from those who know how much the nuts must be tightened on the bolts.
If it is true that PSR is the coronavirus of the railroad industry, how will they possibly survive? How do you stop the vulture capitalists when you have management in on it? Surviving the decade would be lucky.
Maybe it’s different in other areas? I live in a rural state where trains haul lots of grain, ethanol and aggregate. None of that goes by trucks long distance. If that traffic “can mostly be handled by trucks for a lower total supply chain costs”, why isn’t it?
[quote user=“Bruce D Gillings”]
Murphy Siding
Thought provoking concept but missing reality on several levels. Railroads will change, but they’re not going away in our lifetime. Bulk commodities like coal, grain, ethanol, chemicals, rock, etc. that are price sensitive but not time sensitive will continue to move in unit trains.
Wild numbers: a 110-car unit train would need to be replaced by approximately 450 semi-trucks. Figuring 80 feet per truck with 80 feet between them, you have a line of trucks about 13-1/2 miles long. Which state has an overabundance of highways that they are willing to have worn out by so much more truck traffic?
How much would it cost to purchase 450 semi-trucks and trailers? Quick look online puts it between $63 million and $79 million.
Multiply the above numbers times the number of unit trains hauled annually and the whole premise falls apart.
[quote user=“Bruce D Gillings”]
Regarding Murphey Siding’s post:
Incorrect. Utah, Montana, Nevada and I’m sure other states allow double-length bulk haulers. These include open-top bulk (low value) but now more and more pneumatic bulk (higher value). These are roughly double the payload of conventional single-length bulk haulers. Weight restrictions are based on pounds per axle, not on overall gross weight. I’ve tried to paste links to them but can only get a few to work.
That 110 car unit train is only 11K net tons of product. Aren’t the current regulations limiting trucks to 80K POUNDS maximum weight on the road? If you figure 10K pounds for the trailer that leaves 35 Tons per trailer of load. So a single 100 car unit train hauls what 314+ trucks would haul over the highway.
My point with double bulk haulers is that, with axle loadings being a part of the equation (as well as overall length and load factored in) the total weights on trucks goes up a lot. One driver can pull somewhere near twice as much with double bulks. I vacation in Montana every summer and see double bottom dumps hauling construction materials. Same in Nevada. I also believe dairy farmers can move much heavier loads in tankers in Wisconsin (don’t know the trailer configuration relative to axles) Will search for numbers later this evening.
Keep in mind that much current ‘autonomous’ technology has a far better, safer, and more immediately ‘implementable’ use than for expensive intelligent unattended vehicles. It can make practical the full use of modern high-horsepower truck engines and transmissions by making the equivalent of Australian road trains practical for many services … specifically bulk transportation of commodities between central locations on main roads or Interstates.
Much of the combination weight restriction follows the original law in Missouri (which killed the evolution of the Pickwick Nite Coach service and some of the ATSF megabus development) in restricting effective tire load on the road and overall braking safety. A load distributed over multiple trailers need impose little more shock or load than that of a single trailer, and much potential difficulty with bridge loading is at least common with ‘platooning’ models to make autonomous trucking ‘efficient enough’ operating on short headway to realize much of the operating advantage. The same selective braking and limited-excursion steering that makes backing a combination through complex routes under computer control can be adapted to facilitate intelligent lanekeeping, with all the ‘command’ guidance, braking, and accident avoidance being taken from or through the cab, initially through a now-economical driver team overseeing the front end. Much potential collision or blind-side interference is easily addressed – and automatically compensated for, in many cases – by control circuitry little more expensive than that currently incorporated for the purpose in modern automobiles. Braking of cour
Driverless trucks are still a long way off although “autopilot” where the driver may let the truck drive on its own under ideal conditions will likely happen very soon. But just the same… the truck will need a “driver” for the duration of its journey. Furthermore, trucks need to be fueled and loads need to be secured… these functions are currently performed by drivers, and they’re not paid extra for it… somehow the new technology will need to replace the driver in that capacity as well and at a price that approximates “free”. And lets not forget that all of this driverless technology comes at a huge cost that includes implementing the technology as well as upgrading infrastructure along hundreds of thousands of miles of roadway… that won’t be cheap, and the cost of all that will likely offset any savings of not having drivers for the forseeable future. Think PTC and how expensive that was/is to implement… driverless trucks will be that plus plus plus…
Ulrich: Could you explain what infrastructure is needed on highways to implement autonomous vehicles? Seems like the Tesla is already Level 2, not quite fully autonomous.
Much of the autonomous vehicle testing so far seems to have taken place in the southwestern U.S, or during summer conditions.
How do these autopilot systems fare when roads are dirty or snowy, or even when painted lines are worn to the point of being hard to see?
Hopefully this is the final decade…of railroads answering to Wall Street. With stock prices dropping and a looming recession the time and price are right to take what’s left private and allow the networks to grow and adapt with the proper (long term) investment.
As for railroads going away altogether, to paraphrase Spock, “We’ve been dead before.”
What lines?
While state and county roads do have at least a center line (not all county roads have edge lines), a good many (if not most) town roads do not. Then there’s the dirt/gravel roads.
And yes, those lines do disappear in the winter, covered by sand, if not snow/ice, or simply worn off.
A relatively common problem up on Tug Hill is drivers following their GPS and driving onto a snowmobile trail. You’d think they’d pick up on their mistake, but no, some of them get in pretty deep.
Roadside technology that is interactive with vehicles… How will a driverless truck navigate complex interchanges or situations like traffic, detours, accidents, construction, blindside backing, snow covered roads, fueling, etc? Short of having a brain of its own, it will need to be guided along its way. That’s where the complexity and costs comes in… Look at how complex and difficult PTC was and is… and trains run on rails and have their own dedicated right of way…AND PTC doesn’t even eliminate the need for crews… doing the same for trucks would require similar infrastructure enhancements… times a factor of 10 probably.