Is St. Paul the new Chicago? Earlier this year when the railroad industry was criticized for delayed rail shipments, top executives cited the unusually harsh winter conditions, difficult operating conditions and blamed Chicago, in particular.It’s July now and the rail industry is still dealing with slowdowns in the Midwest for grain shipments. And while the Chicago gateway is more fluid than it was this winter, another chokepoint has cropped up.“Unfortunately even though the extreme winter conditions are over and gone, we are still experiencing congestion/bottlenecks at Chicago and St. Paul. Chicago has improved, but is still congested. More recently we have experienced severe congestion/bottlenecks at St. Paul,” CP President Keith Creel said.“We estimate that there may be a backlog demand of up to approximately 10,000 to 12,000 cars on our railroad. In addition, we expect that over the course of the next five weeks we may see an additional demand for approximately 2,000 grain cars attributable to the 2013 crop year,” he said.Last month, both CP and BNSF were ordered by the Surface Transportation Board to implement plans to resolve the backlog of grain car orders and address grain car delays on their networks. They were also directed to file weekly status reports with the agency.CP says it has increased its U.S. grain loadings by more than 25 percent since April. CP said it would supplement the new regional carrier Rapid City, Pierre & Eastern Railroad’s grain car supply by approximately 300 to 400 grain cars per week, as needed, and to meet the estimated demand for the remaining 2013 crop year, planned to move up to 2,000-2,500 CP-supplied grain cars per week, including cars to the RCP&E.In a July 7 filing with the STB, CP said it was working with RCP&E on several fronts:• Scheduled daily train service to and from Tracy, Minn.;• Allocated capacity to move grain empties from Chicago as well as directing grain empties in route for delivery to the RCP&E;• Allocated capacity to move outbound traffic from the RCP&E for movement to final destination;• Created daily internal scorecards and tracking of performance allowing for immediate corrective action;• Established a weekly operations call to review car placements and to identify improvement opportunities; and• Made a commitment to run extra trains to move loads and empties when required, as well as deliver unit trains of grain empties to the RCP&E when required.CP said it is developing a new system to replace its current grain car request system. It has met with BNSF and is actively engaged in discussions to increase fluidity through St. Paul and is in regular discussions with other railroad owners of the Belt Railway Company of Chicago and BRC management to improve fluidity of the Chicago Terminal. It is also working with its customers and other railroads to possibly reroute traffic around congested areas.BNSF, meanwhile, said it filled more than 2,600 car orders during the week ended July 3. The railroad said it reduced the number of past due cars by approximately 9,000 since the high in March of 2014.BNSF reported past due grain car orders of 7,388 for the week ended July 3, down 12 percent from the previous week. A car order is considered past due when it is greater than three days past the desired customer date. Its active grain fleet is 25,070 cars, with 56.6 percent of it under load.BNSF has taken short-term and long-term actions to improve velocity across its network and reduce the backlog of grain cars. The steps include:• Aggressive coordination between train operations and maintenance activity to maximize the throughput of traffic;• Ensuring equipment and manpower are located where they can best support increased velocity and volumes and remedy critical service situations;• Moving grain hoppers that have been in shuttle service for which certificate commitments have expired into non-shuttle service;• Hiring and training 405 new train, yard and engine employees from January through June 20, 2014 to work along the Northern tier, where most BNSF grain originations occur and many grain products and processor sites are located;• Adding more than 200 locomotives to the network since the beginning of 2014;• Assigning field supervisors from across the system to key locations to assist in streamlining communication, coordinating train flows, and managing critical resources;• Undertaking several employee programs to further increase crew availability, including a vacation buyback program and incentives for eligible TY&E employees to stay past their eligible retirement date for 6 or 12 months.Longer-term steps include bringing online 500 new locomotives and 5,000 cars, and spending more than $3.2 billion in maintaining and expanding its network in 2014. A significant portion of that investment, including key capital expansion projects, is focused on the Northern region of the network, across which significant volumes of grain traffic move.While many of us are enjoying the lazy days of summer, it’s another crunch time for the railroads. They are in the national spotlight once again and know they need to deliver. Stay tuned....we'll see how they do.
---By Kathy Keeney
Kathy Keeney is Publisher of the Rail Group. The granddaughter of a railroader, she has been writing about railroads for more than 25 years. She is a past president of The League of Railway Industry Women and served on the board of directors for the American Short Line and Regional Railroad Association and for the Washington Chapter of WTS.
Kathy Keeney is Publisher of the Rail Group. The granddaughter of a railroader, she has been writing about railroads for more than 25 years. She is a past president of The League of Railway Industry Women and served on the board of directors for the American Short Line and Regional Railroad Association and for the Washington Chapter of WTS.