I'd like to add a point to Mr Benton's last post. Back in the day, railroads were expected to eat passenger losses in return for their being able to profit from freight. This proposition has expired along with the advent of deregulation. So, these days, any state or locality that wants to start or increase passenger service will expect to pay a class I for the track usage. So, passenger service may end up being even more profitable in the future.
Col Perkowski believes that current traffic downturns are just due to business cycle declines. He is undoubtedly right in part, and of course our trade war with China doesn't help.
But the Class I's, with the exception of BNSF, have all decided that they want high margin freight, and will not compete for lower margin but still profitable freight. I am assuming the reason for this is the preoccupation of Wall St and hence railroad management with the operating ratio statistic. After all, if they can run fewer trains for only high-margin freight, their operating ratio will improve. Also, I don't know that I understand all of PSR but it looks like what it means is that railroads will run fewer trains to suit their operational convenience, rather than providing good service.
The policy of discouraging all but high-margin freight is bound to be self-defeating. This freight is most susceptible to being switched to truck to get better service. Also, it seems to me that a better approach than cherry-picking customers is to increase the efficiency of low-margin freight.
In particular, intermodal is described as low margin. The average length of truck haul is around 500 miles. The only railroad that seems to be looking for this medium-length traffic is FEC.
In the past, efforts to run fast trains to compete with trucks have failed. (I'm thinking specifically of the Santa Fe's attempt in the 1970s to run a freight each day on the Super Chief's time.) This attempt failed for 2 reasons: 1) running trains that fast could be done but it disrupted the rest of the railroad, and 2) Shippers wouldn't pay extra for the fast service.
Intermodal has become more efficient since then, and PTC provides at least the potential to improve flexibility and traffic capacity. Also, roads have become more congested and dilapidated, and there is a chronic truck driver shortage. So, it looks like a good time to try to make intermodal more profitable, instead of not competing for sub-500 mile traffic.