BNSF Railway said effective Sept. 14 it will accelerate schedules for domestic intermodal freight moving between the Pacific Northwest and the Midwest after capital investment to expand capacity on the routes.
The improvements affect services between Chicago and the Minneapolis/St. Paul area on the eastern end of the 2,000-mile route and Seattle in the West. One more weekly departure will be added in each direction to total seven days a week for westbound expedited service and six days on eastbound movements.
The intermodal service on the route has been slowed in recent years while expansion and maintenance projects were being put in place. Slower service resulted in issues such as a $41 million suit by Cold Train, a perishable goods freight service that failed when reliability degraded. That case remains before U.S. District Court in Spokane, Washington.
“From 2013 through the end of this year, BNSF will have invested nearly $3.5 billion in our Northern Region to maintain and improve our rail network to better serve our customers’ transportation needs,” said Katie Farmer, BNSF consumer products group vice president.
The Fort Worth, Texas, company offers standard and expedited services in the market, with 20% faster transit time for the latter service.
The Cold Train service began operating in 2010 with a 72-hour transit time for produce shipments from eastern Washington. Customers deserted the service when on-time performance dropped as low as 3%. The operators said the reliability and the increased transit time to 125 hours caused the business to fail.
A railroad spokeswoman told Transport Topics that claims the railroad deliberately sought to hurt the customer is “completely contrary” to its business principles.
