Jim and group, I'll comment on that, if our moderator will allow a little more discussion on this off-topic... The reason for boxes not being steel-wheel interchanged in Chicago is that with the way the industry is presently structured, the western roads have little incentive to do this, unless the traffic is in a trainload lot. After hauling a trailer 2200 miles cross-country, it's generally too much effort to route this to a connection for the additional 800 miles to the east coast. For eastern roads, steel-wheel is a no-brainer; since intermodal has evolved into a very long distance mode (average length of haul is about 2100 miles), most boxes originating on the east coast are destined for the west coast anyway. BNSF at Hobart could make up a Harrisburg or N Bergen block as easily as one for KC or Memphis, and it would become the rule if their tracks went there. The missing ingredient is the true transcontinental railroad. I think we'll get there eventually, and we would be already if not for the botched mergers of the past decade, particularly UP-SP. At this point, shippers and regulators are understandably apprehensive about the unleashing of another 2 or 3 years of transportation chaos. (These events have raised legitimate questions about whether mega-railroads are inherently unmanagable, but that's another topic.) We've had truckers with coast to coast authority for at least four decades, but we still don't have a transcontinental RR. When UP bought Overnite about 20 years ago, there was some speculation that it would use it to bypass eastern connections entirely, just ground the trailer in Chicago and drive it to the coast. Getting back to the Chicago barrier, reblocking those transcon groups would take a couple of hours, not a day. If they're concerned about congestion and vandalism in Chicago, they can do it in the boonies, as UP is alrready doing with international boxes at Rochelle IL. Once we have UP-CSX and BNSF-NS, rubber interchange will for the most part disappear. Paul B ----- Original Message ----- From: Jedalberg_@_aol.com To: doctorpb_@_bellsouth.net ; erielack@lists.elhts.org Sent: Saturday, July 01, 2006 10:51 AM Subject: Re: (erielack) Marion IMF One would hope that this service will generate enough business to cause the operation to continue and grow. Schneider has big potential in its own right, and if this is not an exclusive Schneider-CSX franchise, perhaps others will ride it. I hope the railroad performs-----! Re: intermodal in Chicago. The Chicago rubber crosstowns really serve as the intermodal classification yard. Generally, there is not enough traffic coming in on a specific train going to a single destination, say Croxton.(double stack from the west coast is the exception). Even if the train was interchanged, say from the UP to NS, all blocked for destination, it would still have to be switched at the receiving (Chicago) terminal to the proper outbound trains, generally not an easy /fast task. Probably lose a day.Most intermodal trains come into Chicago in tha AM, most departures are in the PM, with varying cutoffs, but in a general sense, you have about an eight hour window to get the box across town. As to the future, there has been some press about the Interstate System anniversary: one fact is that about 40% of the traffic is trucks. Traffic is not going to do anything but increase in the coming years. (I recently drove down to Knoxville on a Sunday, and to pass the time, counted northbound trucks, every ten miles-number averaged over 100, or about 5000 trucks, in the time I was driving..All heavy trucks, big co's, small co's, roger roadhog, , all long haul .A couple of years ago, number was about 3500.) This may bode well for rail intermodal, if the railroads can perform. The numbers may permit more run-through operations, bypassing Chicago, like the Schneider operation, and speed up the service. We'll see. Jim Dalberg The Erie Lackawanna Mailing List Sponsored by the ELH&TS http://www.elhts.org ------------------------------
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