I keep reading in these forums how railroads in the United States will be expanding in the coming years and how they will want to use underutilized routes because of more traffic than they can handle.
I can not understand, however, what I just read on the railpace.com website that rail freight, including intermodal, was down a lot in the first quarter of the year 2007.
Norfolk Southern and the CSX keep saying how they want to expand their intermodal base in the Northeast but they dont seem to know what they are doing or get out of their own way. I remember a lot of CSX derailments in the past couple of months and railpace said that Norfolk Southern has lost more UPS traffic since the beginning of the year.
Are these companies ever going to get their acts together and realize what they should be doing? I read that a very low percentage of containers that came into New York or New Jersey were shipped by rail but these railroads seem to now be OK with that.
Back when Conrail was first taken over, these companies seemed to be racing to get run through agreements with the UP and BNSF and were competing for traffic and attempting to get trucks off of the road. Its been a while since they have done anything important.
There are many projects including larger ports and new rail connections are being created and the Port Authority has invested millions of dollars to help these projects get done and smooth railroad operations in the northeast.
Now nothing has been done with these and rail traffic has been declining. I understand that slight shifts in traffic may be to blame for these things happening but you would think that either railroad could have picked up some new business to offset the losses. I dont want to hear any more about 1 day of floods or weather effecting the trains.
Will the railroads in the northeast ever get their acts together in order to compete with trucking companies in the northeast region? Will they be able to save congestion on the highways like someone said without having to make I-81 into 16 lanes? At this time, I think I would have to give it a big fat Playmania "NO!"
I can not understand, however, what I just read on the railpace.com website that rail freight, including intermodal, was down a lot in the first quarter of the year 2007.
Norfolk Southern and the CSX keep saying how they want to expand their intermodal base in the Northeast but they dont seem to know what they are doing or get out of their own way. I remember a lot of CSX derailments in the past couple of months and railpace said that Norfolk Southern has lost more UPS traffic since the beginning of the year.
Are these companies ever going to get their acts together and realize what they should be doing? I read that a very low percentage of containers that came into New York or New Jersey were shipped by rail but these railroads seem to now be OK with that.
Back when Conrail was first taken over, these companies seemed to be racing to get run through agreements with the UP and BNSF and were competing for traffic and attempting to get trucks off of the road. Its been a while since they have done anything important.
There are many projects including larger ports and new rail connections are being created and the Port Authority has invested millions of dollars to help these projects get done and smooth railroad operations in the northeast.
Now nothing has been done with these and rail traffic has been declining. I understand that slight shifts in traffic may be to blame for these things happening but you would think that either railroad could have picked up some new business to offset the losses. I dont want to hear any more about 1 day of floods or weather effecting the trains.
Will the railroads in the northeast ever get their acts together in order to compete with trucking companies in the northeast region? Will they be able to save congestion on the highways like someone said without having to make I-81 into 16 lanes? At this time, I think I would have to give it a big fat Playmania "NO!"
