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Post Info TOPIC: Railroads said poised for a rebound


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Railroads said poised for a rebound
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Railroads said poised for a rebound
PITTSBURGH - A year ago, the symbol of the state of the rail freight industry was the lines of empty cars parked along tracks across the country including at the Conway Yards because they had nothing to haul, the Beaver County Times reports.

Those cars are starting to move again, and officials in the industry are hopeful that the rail freight business is ready to rebound completely.

Were seeing small increases in many segments, and were hoping that positive track continues, said Rudy Husband, spokesman for Norfolk Southern Railway, which operates the Conway Yards. Were hoping that the worst is behind us.

Figures from the Association of American Railroads show reason to be hopeful. The industry association tracks freight traffic each week; in the last week of February, it said traffic had reached its highest levels in more than a year. That improvement continued a week later, with segments like metals, lumber and automotive products showing double-digit improvements over the year before.

The industry really bottomed out seven or eight months ago, said Dan Keen, the associations assistant vice president for policy analysis. Since then, things have slowly improved, especially in the recent weeks.

The parked cars that made news a year ago are a good illustration of the state of the industry today, Keen said. A year ago, nearly 28 percent of the industrys cars were in storage; that peaked in July at 32 percent.

Thats roughly 500,000 cars that werent in use, and thats an unprecedented number, Keen said. When things are going well, you might have about 30,000 cars in storage.

At the beginning of this month, the industry had about 418,000 cars in storage, or about 26 percent of all cars available.

At any other time, that would be a disastrous number, Keen said. Considering what weve been through in the last year, were happy to see that kind of improvement.

One portion of the industry that has been slower to rebound is employment. The Surface Transportation Board, an agency of the U.S. Department of Transportation, tracks employment figures in the industry; the January 2010 numbers, the most recent available, are almost 9 percent behind the figures from the year before, and down slightly from December 2009.

Norfolk Southern had to deal with last years slowdown by cutting workers. Husband said a year ago the railroad cut 35 workers from the Conway Yards and close to 900 systemwide. Husband said he didnt have recent employment figures available, but he said employment levels would improve along with the business.

Across the system, weve been seeing slow improvements, and were optimistic about whats to come this year, Husband said. As things continue to rebound, well continue to build the business back towards the levels we reached prior to the recession.

Norfolk Southern Chief Executive Officer Wick Moorman said the same thing upon last weeks release of the companys 2009 annual report.

We go into the new year with positive momentum, Moorman said in a statement. Our traffic levels increased sequentially in both the third and fourth quarters of 2009, and were confident many of the cost efficiencies we achieved in 2009 will remain in place as we see rail traffic continue to increase.

Traffic for major North American railroads is starting to recover from the recession that held down business through much of 2009. The Association of American Railroads tracks carloads and intermodal units trailers and containers that can be shipped by train, truck or ship each week. In March, those figures have reached their highest levels in more than a year.

(This item appeared March 22, 2010, in the Beaver County Times.)

 

March 22, 2010


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