I have a general philosophy about hedge funds. I’ll trust them about as far as I can throw them. The way I see it, hedge funds have no business trying to be in the railroad business.
A question that’s been bugging me of late has to with what the short line scene will look like in 2016. I’m looking strictly at the commodities where most non-Class I carriers earn their bread and butter — the so-called merchandise sector, that is, everything but intermodal, coal, and automotive, from parts to finished vehicles. And the trends are not encouraging.
The good news is that fast public transport services are making a comeback in America’s urban cityscapes, taking the form of electric light rail transit (LRT), regional passenger rail (“commuter rail”), and even Bus Rapid Transit. And Amtrak’s intercity rail passenger services—which overwhelmingly use surface alignments through urban and suburban areas— may be gradually getting better in both speed and frequency on some routes in future years.
North America’s marathon journey to renewing its passenger trains could gain a measure of inspiration this summer, when the world’s expertise in deploying and operating high speed rail will be concentrated on this continent for the first time in at least 75 years. For a week in July, the world’s best and brightest high speed train designers, developers, and operators will gather in Philadelphia for the 8th World Congress on High-Speed Rail. Branded as “Highspeed 2012,” this meeting of minds will be a co-production of the International Union of Railways (known by its French acronym, UIC), the industry association based in Paris, and the American Public Transportation Association (APTA).
They’ve done it! On Feb. 17th, Cincinnati finally broke ground on its streetcar project.
The 23d Annual CSX Short Line Workshop was yet another standard-setter in terms of content, delivery, and overall message. The emphasis throughout was more on customer service than the mechanical aspects of running a railroad—a welcome change. And I think CFO Fred Eliasson summed it up best when he said to the group, “A strong service product is the foundation for achieving price, productivity and growth targets.”
Customarily, in almost any urban area, you’d expect your strongest rail transit advocates to be rallying around an official rail plan as it heads toward a possible ballot initiative. But in Austin, Tex., today, that’s definitely not the case.
Three Class I railroads—Union Pacific, Norfolk Southern and CSX—and Berkshire Hathaway, parent company of BNSF Railway, have been named by Fortune magazine as among the world’s “Most Admired Companies” in 2011. UP,
In case you haven’t figured this out already, the urban rail transit mode currently in vogue these days is … streetcars! And this is a good thing, because they were generally an extremely popular and cost-effective mode in their stride, and should never have been ripped out of North America’s cities (or anywhere else for that matter). Big mistake.
Norfolk Southern is increasingly an intermodal railroad. As of Feb. 18, nearly half of total revenue units year-to-date — 412,077 out of 911,473 or 48.6% — were intermodal boxes (an intermodal container or trailer is one AAR revenue unit as is one conventional carload). A year ago intermodal was 43.7% of the total. Where’s it coming from?