Commentary

Is the Alameda Corridor in Trouble?

There are reports that the Alameda Corridor, the heavily used, 20-mile-long, grade-separated railroad intermodal corridor connecting the Port of Los Angeles and Port of Long Beach with the BNSF and Union Pacific main lines, has been seeing year-over-year maritime container volume drops, with a resulting decrease in rail traffic. The Alameda Corridor Transportation Authority (ACTA) oversees the corridor, which was built through a public/private partnership (PPP) and opened in 2002. One outlook is that perhaps “if current trends continue, ACTA will experience significant cash flow deficits beginning in 2024 … growing in size out toward 2038.”

Commentary

STB “Whack a Mole”

When I was working at the Surface Transportation Board, I often felt trapped in a game of “Whack a Mole.” That was because STB rarely had time or staff to do more than react to the latest rate case, stakeholder petition or Congressional request. There is a sense of Whack a Mole in some of the flurry of STB regulatory reform proposals, particularly STB’s tinkering with the industry Cost of Capital calculation.

Commentary

Railroad KPIs Suggest Continuing Weakness

KPIs are shorthand for linked Key Performance Indicators. Not all railroad industry KPIs are internalized data. In fact, the best KPIs come from non-railroad sources. Internal railroad data is important. But its value appears when cross-checked with other sources. Here, the prime research source is the Association of American Railroads (AAR) monthly report card.

Commentary

Forcing Round Pegs Into Square Holes

Frank Wilner’s excellent article in the September 2019 issue of Railway Age, “STB Moves to Rehab Antique URCS,” brought back many memories of my direct involvement in its development. To this day, I often spell the acronym for the Uniform Rail Costing System, URCS, backwards—SCRU—as many “experts” developing rail costs with it can produce these results!

Commentary

Assessing LNG-By-Rail Safety

Safety is important. Yet, we can do safety research and development a lot faster. It’s timely to ask why the regulatory process takes so long. Today in transport logistics, our society seems to lack a sense of urgency. As one example, it now takes regulatory agencies (and non-regulatory bodies like the National Transportation Safety Board) as long as 18 to 24 months to complete an accident investigation report. Why so long? It’s a mystery.

Commentary

FRA’s Batory: “Let the Facts Speak”

WATCHING WASHINGTON, RAILWAY AGE NOVEMBER 2019 ISSUE: At the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA), where challenges are voluminous and time is short because the nation’s top rail safety cop serves at the pleasure of the White House occupant, Administrator Ronald L. (Ron) Batory is pedaling furiously to accomplish priorities—cardinal of which is assuring demonstrable facts overwhelm opinion.

Commentary

Obfuscation is Challenging. Clearing It Up? More So

FINANCIAL EDGE, RAILWAY AGE NOVEMBER 2019 ISSUE: Recently, three events impacting the railroad community—shippers and carriers and regulators—rushed through the news wire:

Commentary

PSR: How Conrail Showed the Way

Before CN or CSX rolled out Precision Scheduled Railroading (PSR) under the leadership of the late E. Hunter Harrison, a much smaller terminal railroad company in the eastern U.S. was demonstrating aggressive cost reduction. It was Consolidated Railroad Corporation (Conrail).

Commentary

STB No Place for Transactional Decision-Making

One expects better from the scholarly American Enterprise Institute (AEI), which on Oct. 9 published an essay recommending folding the independent Surface Transportation Board (STB) into the politicized Executive Branch Department of Transportation (DOT).

Commentary

Creating a Pathway For Others

It’s not easy being a trailblazer. First born. First in the office. First woman. First black woman. I would be lying if I said I’d not seen and faced bias during my 25-year career working as an engineer and asset manager. However, despite these barriers, I succeeded. Unfortunately, this doesn’t mean others will. These barriers mean that many of our talented and driven Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) peers are still finding it difficult to make it, both finding a way “in” and climbing to the top.

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