Improvement Seen in Rail Situation
United Parcel Service, the company whose complaints called attention to the railroads’ post-merger woes in early June, (6-21, p. 1), is still not satisfied with the level of service on either railroad.
“Nothing has changed,” said UPS spokesman Norman Black. “Some trains are still as much as 10 hours late. As of [June 14], we are still diverting 50% of our traffic to the highways.”
UPS is the biggest intermodal customer for both railroads.
But it didn’t happen. Almost immediately, NS ran into computer snafus, and both railroads experienced unexpected congestion, low train speeds and other difficulties.
“We knew by the end of Week 2 that there was a problem,” said Black. “We had no choice but to act in Week 3.”
The UPS action focused national attention on post-merger difficulties that forced some manufacturing plants to close as they awaited the arrival of materials on the rails. The situation conjured fears of a “meltdown” of the sort experienced by Union Pacific after its merger with Southern Pacific in 1996.
By July, the Surface Transportation Board, still smarting from criticism over its inaction in the UP situation, ordered the two railroads to provide weekly performance reports covering such elements as the number of cars on line, dwell time and train speeds, among others (7-5, p. 1).
This week, the Federal Railroad Administration, citing a correlation between service problems and safety issues, asked the STB to also require reports on the out-of-service ratios for locomotives. Those reports will be added July 21.
For the full story, see the July 19 print edition of Transport Topics. Subscribe today.
