Why is Rail Frieght dying in NE?

Why is the rail freight industry shrinking? How does the cost of rail freight compare to the cost of truck freight? The MBTA has been slowly expanding commuter rail yet at the same time rail freight everywhere seems to be just about on its last leg. Doesn't make sense to me.

Rail freight is dying because industry is dying. All you have to do is take a walk along Boston Harbor and you will see there is very little industry there. As for the entire greater Boston area, well, residential real estate is much more lucrative than industrial and what, if any major industries, exist there. I guess the best way to think about it is -- what does New England make? Tourism really, it's the number one industry, followed by office workers in southern New England.

Look at Nashua, the city has exploded in terms of size but a lot of the work up there is R&D and high tech, etc., etc. Not the kinds of companies that need heavy freight. Simply put, it's economics. Office workers need commuter trains but when was the last time Boston needed the three freight railroads it used to need? 1958? Earlier than that?

Seems like much more than that though. Business that literally abut main rail lines, business that have not shrank at all, no longer get rail freight. Its as if rail freight costs more per pound of product than truck freight. Does it? I have no idea. You are right that industry is shrinking, but the freight industry seems to be shrinking at a significantly larger rate.

High tech business, which is about all that's left, use trucks because it is simply more efficient in this day and age.

Rails today (outside New England) carry mostly containers of consumer goods, and heavy commodities.

Loose car railroading is practically a thing of the past, with solid trains of hoppers, containers, etc. instead of the endless mix of boxcars which used to carry so many varied cargoes. Those have all gone to trucks, over magnificent roadways supported by our taxes.

The future of New England railroading is passengers... either commuters or tourists.

Clearly the # of sidings and branches switched has declined precipitously over the past decades due to the change from heavy industry to lighter industry or even service oriented businesses. But Container service, autos, and bulk materials seem to be doing well. Even produce shipments via reefer from the W Coast are up with UP-CSX expedited service. Trash exports out of New England are up. GRS would likely ship more tonnage if the track and service quality west of Fitchburg was improved. I've heard one RR mgr indicate that much Northern New England tonnage to/from the US is routed through Quebec via SLR to CP or via VRS/NECR to CP to avoid GRS.

I sit in an office building high above Boston Harbor and watch the shipping in and out of the city. A lot of days I never see a single commercial ship. Most of the ships I see coming in and out are carrying LNG or petrolium of some kind.

By constrast, I was in Halifax a few months ago and they had a huge amound of shipping in and out and a container facility that put Boston's to shame.

The other thing you notice when you stare out the window is the overall lack of industry. South Boston used to be all industry now it is just a glimmer of what was once there. The biggest thing in South Boston now is the Federal Court House and the convention center. And when you think about it, Boston's last remaining rail yard -- Beacon Park -- isn't all that big.

I know what you are saying 1008 as there are huge warehouses in Mansfield that have tracks/sidings going by their back door and they get trucks bringing their product in the front door. When I was at Petco (which seemed ideal for rail delivery) I asked and the person I asked felt that it was cheaper to truck it in. With the increase in fuel cost, I wonder how long this will be true. Larry B. 16trouble

I think it really depends on volume. With a company like Petco it would seem that only bringing the bulk materials to a central warehouse by rail would make any sense. Supplying each store via rail? The cost would probably bankrupt both Petco and the railroad. Think about all the property taxes the railroad would have to pay on the land under all those sidings. Then who would pay for the sidings? If you couldn't service all your stores via rail then what? Some would be going by truck others by rail -- it makes no sense and would cost a ton of money.

Rail's advantage comes in volume -- coal, grain, intermodal. When you get into LCL it just doesn't make any sense. The same way it doesn't make any sense for someone who lives in Mansfield to take public transportation to get to Framingham.

I think the best example is how this worked in the reverse. The P&W did an experiment with shipping coal to West Springfield and then trucking it up to the coal-fired power plant to Mt. Tom. The experiment didn't work because it was just too much to ship it by truck both in terms of time and cost.

The other thing to remember about this example is that the reason they wanted to ship it to West Springfield in the first place was because of problems they had with Guilford's service.

So, to answer your question I think there are a number of reasons. Economics, both in terms of the economics of the entire region to simple supply-chain costs. And the rail companies themselves. If the economics of having a massive network of raillines were there the companies would have them. This was the case in the 19th century when horse-drawn wagons couldn't handle long-range freight service with any kind of reliablity but when the truck was invented that was then end of that. It is an era that will never come back.

Trucks win the battle of single-load cost and efficiency. Even if fuel prices rise they would have to rise to the point where it is more economically feasible to build, maintain and pay taxes on sidings and where you would be willing to lose flexibility to save money. I think what would happen instead is that someone would invent an alternative fuel truck.

So, barring some major industrial development in New England -- like a completely revamped container port for Boston, Providence, Portsmouth or Portland (all four would be nice) or a series of coal-fired powerplants -- I don't think you are going to see a massive increase in rail traffic.

As has been pointed out by others in other forums, the only significant rail freight in New England is related to the forest products industry: lumber and paper outbound, processing chemicals inbound. Plus a couple of unit coal trains. Very little heavy industry here, distances too short for rail to be effective. New England has been high tech for many years, and you don't need a boxcar to ship software.

PBM

A recent photo posted on NERAIL tells you why. Please read the caption:

http://photos.nerail.org/showpic/?photo ... bydate%3A3

As another poster stated, it's because industry and manufacturing are drying up. Trains come to Boston full of goods and leave empty. A freight railroad doesn't make a whole ton of money moving empty cars around.

Regarding the other poster's comments about the port. Boston's ports are severely underutilized, and part of that is probably due to lack of marketing/development, and lack of direct double-stack rail connections. However, some freight does come in through Conley terminal. Until February, I also worked in a building in the Seaport and saw a trickle of container trucks coming out of the facility.

Its as if rail freight costs more per pound of product than truck freight. Does it? I have no idea

My aunt works in AR for the only current freight customer on the Concord, NH to Lincoln NH line. She told me that if they have to truck stuff in, it costs 5-10x as much as it does to ship it by rail. I think most New England industries' issue with rail transport is not cost, but reliability.

I have to take an opposite position.

I think that there is enough freight in and out of New England to support an integrated truck/rail system that uses distribution centers located all over the northeast. If you go out on the Mass Pike and sit at a rest area for an hour, you will count over 500 trucks passing one way. There are 500 going the other way too. If you could move 5% of that to rail, you would generate a pig/container train with about 300 cars in each direction, each day.

Locate these distribution facilities next to exiting tracks. Basically, you need a couple of sidings, a paved parking lot, and some loading/unloading equipment. That vacant lot shown in the picture in Nashua would be perfect. Trailers are loaded at a local industry, trucked over to the distribution facility, loaded on a flat car, and moved to a major yard for consolidation into a single train. The opposite happens for the reverse move. This happens twice a day.

Since Guildford and CSX won't want to send out a loco to pick up a couple of cars, allow the ditribution facility mainline access to move their own cars a loco to the main yard. The crew, loco, etc. belong to them, and they have operating rights on the host RR. The host RR could recieve some payment for this use. It is up to the distribution Co. to pick up and deliver 6-12 cars on each trip to the main yard.

At start up, distribution facilities are partially funded by state and local funds to get the trucks off of the highways. When the system starts to turn a profit, part of that goes back to the state to fund another new distribution center. Every major highway has a number of crossover points with all of the major rail lines in the area, and I will bet that there is an abandoned industrial park near every one of them where you could locate a distribution center. As you run out of active connections, then you add back in abandoned ROWs or lines with no freight at this time.

It won't happen overnight, and it won't happen without some help from your taxes, but I would rather fund something like that versus another lane on Rte.128.

Engineer999

Engineer999 You make valid points but here is the underlying issue -- why replace something that is already working just fine. As you said if you sit on the MassPike and watch all the trucks you can see that there is a lot of frieght coming and and out of New England. But the same can be said for anyplace in the country. The Interstates are filled with truck traffic.

I think the railroads can pick off a great market share but to think that they are going to somehow going to upend the trucking system and take over most the freight, well, it just ins't going to happen.

As for Boston's port being under utilized, yes it is. But that is the way the powers that be want it. A recent study of the port showed that office development increases in value the closer you get to the water. Given that office development gives you less in the way of polution and long-term problems (the state has already had to pay a lot to clean up the harbor once.) it makes no sense to build large industrial facilities in the port. This isn't a lack of foresight on anyone's part, this is part of a concerted effort -- just get ahold of harbor use studies and you will see the goal is to build walkways, parks and other things that enhance office and residential development.

The other issue with opening up the harbor is the depth of the tunnels underneath it. If I remember correctly there are serious draft issues.

More about the port of Boston... Boston has been in decline for years. The tunnel draft is a real issue, as is the Mystic Bridge clearance. Ships have followed the general trend of every other mode of transport- namely bigger is better. Railroads have fewer, more concentrated lines with relatively few intermodal hubs and larger cars for bulk commodities. Airlines have hubs and are looking at mega-jets. Ocean shipping has the ULCC crude oil ships and massive post-Panamax vessels (that can't even fit through the Panama Canal). Bigger container vessels mean fewer ports. They are designed to run between massive ports. Boston has the unenviable position of being smack in the middle between New York and Halifax. Halifax has very low costs and is the closet port to Europe. NY has massive capacity and access to the largest market in the US. Boston... well, it's traditionally had lousy (read expensive) labor agreements, suboptimal berthing and ship capacity, poor rail access, and no other competitive advantage. Thus it has been relegated to feeder-port status. No amount of effort will bring it back.

Hello:

Common sense tells you that the high union costs in NE pushed heavy industry to the southern USA and then that productivity is now being imported from China.

When I lived in NE from late 1967-78 I saw the exodus big time. VERY SAD!

JJ