QB 52.32: It sounds like you have insight into the implementation of CSX pricing policies and I wish you success. I just wonder about the cost/benefit analysis for shippers and wonder whether CSX and other railroads try to capture too much of the short term benefit from shipping by rail, making long term advantages of investing in facilities for carload shipping too small for clients' attention.
rr503 wrote: ↑Sun Nov 10, 2019 1:53 am I honestly cannot think of any railroad who stated that they'd pursue any traffic that'd pay for its carriage + the marginal cost of capacity. CSX certainly has been striking a different note lately -- including, recently, distancing them somewhat from the OR metric in recognition of its reductive quality -- but I would say this has yet to translate into good shipper scores or significantly increased traffic. I'm optimistic, but cautiously so. Talk is cheap, and the economy seems to be slowing a bit.
As you wrote, talk is cheap, so if you want to understand that railroads will not simply pursue market share or revenue gains that takes capacity reducing reliability and can't justify capital investment, just look at recent history and their behavior moving forward.
Review this thread and you will see that, yes, CSX has been getting much improved good customer scores. One very large railroad customer just publicly acknowledged preference for CSX's PSR implementation vs. those slower implementations underway. In terms of significantly increased traffic, it's happening where it can justify capital investment (see above).
Something I'm going to enjoy watch unfold over the next decade or so is how PSR interfaces with train length in what seems to be like likely scenario of one person train ops. There is a not-insignificant set of infrastructure, reliability and dwell costs incurred with increased train lengths; I'm curious as to whether reduced fixed costs of operation will help swing the needle towards shorter, faster traffic.PSR has proven that with technology and targeted supporting capital investment you reduce costs and increase capacity and reliability with fewer, bigger trains. I don't see one-man crews as changing the dynamic visa vi assets and capital investment to swing the needle towards shorter, (questionably) faster. Instead, that would take a watershed governmental transportation regulatory or promotional change, perhaps a technology-based change.