Jim Blaze takes a technical look at the Class I’s responses to the STB’s inquiry on intermodal from his experience dating back to 1968.
ASLRRA PERSPECTIVE, RAILWAY AGE, AUGUST 2021: The New Jersey School of Architecture offers a master’s degree in infrastructure planning. In preparing for his course on infrastructure, Professor Alex Marshall used Google’s Ngram Viewer, which can search millions of books and publications to determine when a word was first used. He found that the word “infrastructure” made its first appearance in French publications in the 1880s in conjunction with railroad engineering.
FINANCIAL EDGE, RAILWAY AGE AUGUST 2021 ISSUE: Ah, the summer doldrums. While many were hoping for carefree days and a return to normalcy, sadly, the world continues to fret and struggle with the coronavirus and its Delta variant. However, in the shadows of this looming global crisis, the world of North American rail is all atwitter with political activity and other news-grabbing headlines.
Aug. 5, 2021, saw SupplyChainBrain publish its list of its “100 Great Supply Chain Partners of 2021.” The list includes many shippers, 3PL logistics companies, ocean carriers and intermodal organizations as well as trucking
OCT. 6, 2021 UPDATE: If Democrat Karen J. Hedlund is to become a member of the Surface Transportation Board (STB) and succeed Republican Ann D. Begeman, she is still waiting, even though the Senate returned from its August recess on Sept. 13. Utah Republican Mike Lee has once again blocked her confirmation. His probable cause is explained below.
Canadian Pacific, CN and Kansas City Southern have been battling for votes in KCS’s upcoming shareholder vote on August 19 to approve or reject the CN transaction. CP has been actively telling investors to vote no, while KCS and CN have been pushing for approval. It remains uncertain if there will be a decision from the STB on a CN/KCS voting trust prior to the shareholder vote. We continue to believe that there is a 60% chance of approval for the voting trust, but remain wary of the political climate.
Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic wiping out much of America’s passenger rail ridership, Union Pacific carried approximately 130,000 passengers across its network daily. In fact, UP has 106 Amtrak schedules and 225 other commuter partner schedules across its 23-state network.
Sorry for the bother, but while you were out, away, on vacation, taking your first trip in 18 months, or otherwise engaged, someone dropped the other shoe and from a significant altitude. The bigger fish was dipped, battered and tossed into the deep fryer. The wolf was at the door with a muzzle full of jokes.
Editor’s Note: This opinion piece is in response to my invitation for “reasonable, fact-based, non-political opinions on Precision Scheduled Railroading by experienced railroaders from both the agreement and non-agreement sectors, to encourage
Regarding the “point-counterpoint“ debate originally published in Fortune about Precision Scheduled Railroading and reproduced in Railway Age, with Brannon and Gorman on the “for” PSR side, and Rep. DeFazio (D-Ore.) not exactly on the “against”