Uday Schultz
I like trains. Opinions mine. he/him
blog: homesignalblog.wordpress.com
- I may write about this more formally at some point, but the degree to which NS's cut-service-and-hike-rates strategy completely kneecapped their Crescent Corridor partnership with states to decongest I-81 is nuts. After billions in govt investment, train service is now *slower* than it was before.
- (first quote: www.proquest.com/magazines/la... second screencap: www.norfolksouthern.com/en/ship-by-r...)
- Reposted by Uday Schultz[This post could not be retrieved]
- Earlier this fall, I noticed something odd going on with rail service on Los Angeles's C line. So, I wrote about it, because I could not have asked for a more perfect encapsulation of how schedule design can drive service outcomes. homesignalblog.wordpress.com/2026/01/03/a...
- All the Toronto streetcar discourse has had me looking at a lot of TTC stringlines, and I must say, it seems there's an incredibly opportunity for quick improvement there with some basic terminal ops fixes. Why was nearly every streetcar *entering service* on this random wednesday late?
- I will grant that surface transit ops are legitimately difficult, and fixes do often require support from a level of decision-makers above agency ops folks. But the existence of such constraints makes it *even more important* that agencies manage the controllable...
- A few years ago, I wrote a long piece about why NS wanted to bulldoze part of a neighborhood on Chicago's South Side to expand an intermodal yard. homesignalblog.wordpress.com/2023/07/18/c...
- (Tl;dr, the operational coordination issues that result from the fragmented ownership and middling ambitions of the US freight rail network makes trucking rail cargo from one rail yard to another in Chicago a load-bearing element of goods movement in this country)
- Anyway, yesterday UP and NS filed their merger application, or in other words a proposal to reduce that fragmentation. Whether or not the merger is a good idea is quite the fraught question (I come down on the "yes" side with some major reservations), but...
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View full threadThis is to say: had this merger happened a few years ago, the capacity pressure that required bulldozing housing in the first place would not have existed. It's incredible what re-configuring institutional incentives can do to the material world.
- Reading the UP/NS merger app alongside CP/KCS, you really get a sense for how railroad managements' read of the pax rail environment differs now vs 2021 In 2021, "expansion of psgr svc" made an appearance in the CEO's statement. Now? Just procedural assurances that the merger won't break anything
- Such an elemental yet overlooked reality of planning. If you don't: - Design a new route to add value to the network overall - Make changes to the existing network to incorporate the new asset ...you're kneecapping yourself. A key part of transit hist: homesignalblog.wordpress.com/2024/07/12/t...
