Commentary

These Are Extraordinary Times

To critical healthcare workers, front line service providers, emergency agencies and personnel: Thank you for your ongoing dedication, determination and sacrifice in response to COVID-19. These are extraordinary times, and your heroic efforts are inspiring. I also want to thank those critical service providers working behind the scenes to ensure we have what we need every day. From railroaders and truckers to farmers and port workers and everyone in between, the supply chain is still working 24/7 to deliver for North Americans.

Commentary

Tank Car Industry: Essential and Safe

As federal, state and local governments across North America scramble to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, railroads and their suppliers—including tank car builders, repair shops, and lessors—are doing their part to get essential goods to where they are most needed.

Commentary

Managing Costs During A Pandemic

North American rail managers are good at managing costs, but 2020 might be their ultimate challenge. Let’s say you are in charge at a freight railroad. What do you do in such hard times with so many fixed costs? You can ratchet down variable costs. That’s easy. The tougher part is twisting a large part of those fixed costs into segments of variable costs. How do you do that? Let’s start by defining what these railroad costs are.

Commentary

FRMCS: Making 5G a Rail Reality

5G wireless communications will be a big part of the railway industry’s future. 5G systems will provide many new capabilities, higher reliability, lower latencies and ultra-broadband connectivity to support many new and important applications. But making 5G a reality and moving on from GSM-R or other legacy radio technologies is complex. The questions are, how soon, and what is the best route to get there? There are different aspects of the transition to consider.

Commentary

Collaboration, Communication in a Post-COVID-19 World

The past weeks have been unique in most of our lives. First, our special thanks go out to all of you employed in the essential business of rail transportation, both freight and passenger, for putting yourselves “in the front line” and risking your health to serve us all.

Commentary

“My Dad Is Essential”

Somnang “Sam” Pha is a Union Pacific track machine operator and BMWED (Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employes Division of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters) member presently working near Arlington, Ore., out of Blue Springs, Mo. Sam and his wife Kristina have four children, Lliyah, Khyson, Zayden and Isaiah. Kristina sent these photos to Union Pacific Senior Director Corporate Communications and Media Relations Raquel Espinoza, who has shared them with permission.

Commentary

Flexible, Creative and Keenly Aware

ASLRRA PERSPECTIVE, RAILWAY AGE APRIL 2020 ISSUE: As with every other business in the country, short line freight railroad operations are increasingly impacted by the COVID-19 crisis, and it will get worse before it gets better. Those that can in our workforce are working remotely. Operations, dispatching and maintenance workers are heroically doing what they can to make the trains run on time. Many of our customers are under severe duress that affects our train schedules, loadings and unloadings, and ultimately our revenue. As of this writing on March 30, about 15% of our short lines report they have employees who have tested positive for COVID-19 or are in self-quarantine.

Commentary

STB: Give Rube Goldberg the Boot (Updated)

WATCHING WASHINGTON, RAILWAY AGE APRIL 2020 ISSUE: Although shippers lacking effective transportation alternatives to rail are relatively few, the Surface Transportation Board (STB) exists to protect them from market-power abuse, as railroads earn substantial margins from the traffic.

Commentary

Praise for Our Railroad and Transit Employees

It has been a grim month in the United States and Canada, and almost everywhere else around the world. There will more grim months to come. But amid the deaths and crushing fear, our freight and passenger railroads, along with much of our transit, have kept going. Not many people need to go anywhere these days, but many of those who do still have a way to get there, even if not as often as they could a mere 30 days ago. Much of the credit for our remaining mobility goes to the employees who keep our passenger railroads and our local transit going.

Commentary

Applying the “Old-School Philosophy” of “Free Outages”

Soon after the coronavirus pandemic hit the U.S., a former passenger railroad chief engineer approached Railway Age with ideas for performing much-needed trackwork during a time when traffic is lighter than normal, and track time—difficult to schedule and manage under “normal” circumstances—is more readily available.

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