BostonUrbEx wrote:Anyone know what the chances are of a Chicago-New Haven route are? Assuming that the Conrail Shared Asset intermodal ports around NY/NJ are congested, does this present a viable alternative? I don't know if that area is congested or not, but I imagine so. Also, any chance of competing with CSX's Springfield/I-91 operation with a facility at East Deerfield?
New Haven is near-dead because of how much freight is discouraged on the New Haven Line. Conrail gave up the Springfield Line for a reason. Cedar Hill is still significant enough and has some minor unexplored options to chew on, but the days of it being a regional anchor are 35 years past and never coming back.
East Deerfield is definitely primed for a large upgrade once PAS is double-stacked. The I-91 corridor is a battle-ground. Since Worcester had to absorb all Beacon Park intermodal and is constrained by acreage, CSX has already filled out every nook and cranny of that site. To handle trucking growth to Eastern MA, Eastern CT, RI, Southern/Seacoast NH, Seacoast ME they are going to need to shift all those incredible volumes of IM trucks slamming the I-84 tolls away from Worcester to West Springfield. Which is why they're hot for MassDOT to do the truck clearance improvements to that yard and have sunk $10M of their own money into first-wave facility upgrades. To load-balance Greater Hartford needs to be served out of there via I-91 and (Connecticut) I-291. That's a given, because Worcester's future depends on that truck territory shifting west. It puts NS in good competitive position with ED being on I-91. Regardless of what you think of the Class 1s' one-on-one chances, the chess moves ED vs. West Springfield and Ayer vs. Worcester are eminently predictable once PAS has the car capacity to tap.
As for who else schleps off that? It's small-potatoes. The CSX and NS yards can run round-trips out to massive swaths of New England on single trucker shifts. And that's where all the cost savings come from: mega volumes + geographical location at/near major diverging highway interchanges + lowered labor costs on the trucking end by keeping their distance radius to single-shift instead of multi-shift like it was/is out of Albany and New Jersey + flexibility to do the trucking off-peak instead of snarled in traffic + implanting more truck shippers in range of the mega-yards. It's not a case where P&W, NECR, CSOR, and PAR...or CSX & NS...have ready-serve opportunities to do shorter-haul "satellite" IM lanes right down the street in Hartford, Cedar Hill, Readville and other Route 128-situated locales, New Hampshire, or even Portland to some truly massive degree. The volumes aren't there, and it's within that ideal single-shift trucker radius so there's still a little road-vs.-rail competition.
Rather, there's opportunity for more transloads. Smaller RR's doing their interchanging, then partnering up with a Tighe Warehouse-type company that does efficient short-haul trucking. But sign those on as this generation's on-line siding customers rather than banking big on IM yards with the smaller carriers. Obviously there's exceptions. Portland distance-wise, size/concentration-wise, and access-wise is a real IM prospect. Mid-size, but real volumes and real growth prospects...which is why Western Route double-stack is the consensus #2 Southern New England freight investment after PAS is done. Waterville a little bit too because of proximity to the Canadian lanes...but emphasis on the little bit. Certainly more of those Tighe-like transloads are nice to have and healthy growers to collect. And there are some yards ripe prospects for the RR's to invest in a spread of multi-modal shipping: Hartford Yard, Seaview a couple of examples that have location going for them.
But it takes focus. A lot of the smaller carriers can veer off-course thinking that because there's IM circulating in their neighborhood that they're an IM lane in-the-making. NECR's one example that's kind of fuzzy on what it wants to be. P&W Worcester an example that's maybe a little more focused since they're zeroing in on doing autoracks and doing them real well, doing aggregates and doing them real well, seeking opportunities for stuff like fuel that they can do real well. Discrete specialties more than the general-purpose that only the monster scale of the Class I's and their monster IM yards can truly do at maximum margins. Since the New England rail network (save for Northern Maine) has more or less been boiled down to the bare essentials with the carriers mostly tightened around the essentials as a healthy rallying point...there's plenty of opportunities. You wouldn't have Genesee & Wyoming and Fortress buying into New England Class III's if they didn't see potential growth and many potential chess move combinations they can play off Class I business decisions. You just can't have spazzes who think jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none is their ticket to success...where low-margin opportunities get chased down a wormhole, and systems are too weighed-down by declining branches where "winning" amounts to stop-loss and not improved growth margins. Which is why we've got two hot threads going about PAR's acquisition/reinvention opportunities. Laser-like focus matters for making it work in New England, as does being exceptionally good at reading the Class I's intentions. Thankfully we've got 2 of those now in reach of everyone, and both are well-engaged and hungry for growth and one-on-one competition where they've set up shop.