Identifying and Using Low-Cost and Quickly Implementable Ways to Address Freight-System Mobility Constraints (2010)

Below is the uncorrected machine-read text of this chapter, intended to provide our own search engines and external engines with highly rich, chapter-representative searchable text of each book. Because it is UNCORRECTED material, please consider the following text as a useful but insufficient proxy for the authoritative book pages.

B-1 Highways Federal Highway Administration. Traffic Bottlenecks: A Primer—Focus on Low-Cost Operational Improvements. U.S. Department of Transportation, Washington, D.C. 2007. This document describes highway bottlenecks and investi- gates potential near-term and low-cost construction to alle- viate them. It defines bottleneck, explains the different types of freeway bottlenecks, and also explains their contribution to congestion. The report then provides 12 operational reme- dies based on information gathered through interviews and case studies. It also provides examples of how agencies deal with bottlenecks. Cambridge Systematics Inc. and Battelle. An Initial Assess- ment of Freight Bottlenecks on Highways. White Paper prepared for Federal Highway Administration Office of Transportation Policy Studies. Washington, D.C. 2005. This White Paper attempts to provide a way to identify and quantify highway bottlenecks that delay trucks and freight movement. This paper focuses on the impacts and cost of high- way bottlenecks on truck freight shipments. It describes high- way bottlenecks defined by three features: type of constraint, type of roadway, and type of freight route. It also explains the impact that congestion has on the national freight system capacity and performance. Cambridge Systematics Inc. Ohio DOT Ohio Freight Mobility, Access, and Safety Strategies. Project report pre- pared for Ohio DOT. May 2006. This report describes recent studies on the movement of freight in Ohio by trucks and describes the various types of bottlenecks. The document assesses the impacts of future change and makes recommendations to deal with changing demands and to improve Ohio’s existing freight corridors. It also identifies short-range improvement strategies in Colum- bus and Cincinnati, many of which are capital and operational improvements. Burke, N., T.H. Maze, M.R. Crum, D.J. Plazak, and O. Smadi. Dedicated Truck Facilities as a Solution to Capac- ity and Safety Issues on Rural Interstate Highway Corridors. In Transportation Research Record 2008. Transportation Research Board of the National Academies, Washington, D.C. 2007, pp. 84–91. The paper presents a specific case study conducted on high truck volume rural interstate highway segments to illustrate the safety, operational, and productivity benefits to construct- ing dedicated truck facilities in order to separate trucks from other vehicles. The analysis used the Highway Economic Requirements System (HERS) software. This paper explains what a dedicated truck facility is and how it benefits and improves safety and traffic flows. Government Accountability Office. Freight Transportation: National Policy and Strategies Can Help Improve Freight Mobility, GAO-08-287, Government Accountability Office Washington, D.C. Jan. 2008. This report explains how the movement of goods involves a wide array of public and private stakeholders and provides an example of goods movement from port of entry to the con- sumer. This report also describes 3 factors that significantly contribute to constrained freight mobility: growing freight, capacity restraints, and inefficient use of infrastructure. It presents challenges that public planners face when advancing freight improvement projects. The report also provides exam- ples and case studies on improving or enhancing freight mobility in areas of enlarged capacity and infrastructure use. Latham, F.E. and J. Trombly. Low Cost Traffic Engineering Improvements: A Primer. Report No. FHWA-OP-03-078. Federal Highway Administration, Washington, D.C. April 2003. This report presents low-cost traffic engineering improve- ments to improve safety and congestion, including types of actions, costs, and benefits. Much of the results presented in A P P E N D I X B Annotated Bibliography

this report were derived from interviews with transportation agencies and review or research of literature. This report gives a baseline for describing low-cost improvements as opposed to expensive capital improvements. It also presents numer- ous examples and case studies of actions implemented to alle- viate congestion and bottlenecks. Most of these improvements are operational and physical improvements. American Highway Users Alliance. Unclogging America’s Arteries: Effective Relief for Highway Bottlenecks 1999–2004. American Highway Users Alliance. Washington, D.C. 2004. This report addressed three objectives: 1. Identify the worst traffic bottlenecks in the United States, recognizing that some cities may have more than one. Focus in detail on those bottlenecks that create the longest delays for travelers, limiting consideration to interstate highways and other freeways. 2. Estimate the benefits to travelers and the environment by removing the bottlenecks, based on the actual improve- ment plans if they exist. The benefit estimation is driven by a set of assumptions and analysis methods. 3. Estimate the benefits that would be derived from remov- ing bottlenecks nationwide. Bottlenecks occur not only in the major metropolitan areas, but also in smaller ones. O’Laughlin, R., D. Thomas, and R.M. Rinnan. Chicago Downtown Freight Study. In TRB 87th Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers DVD. Transportation Research Board of the National Academies, Washington, D.C. Nov 2007. This report focused on urban freight delivery. The paper provides interviews and extensive field surveys to present the congestion problems and constraints and provides some solu- tions that have been effective. Many examples of improve- ments were described in this paper. Fifty recommendations were made and broken up into three categories: • Use of public right-of-way • New building designs and standards • Addressing deficient building and roadway infrastructure. Al-Deek, H., S. Ishak, and A.E. Radwan. The Potential Impact of Advanced Traveler Information Systems (ATIS) on Accident Rates in an Urban Transportation Network. Proc. Fourth Vehicle Navigation and Information Systems International Conference (VNIS 93), Ottawa, Canada, 1993. pp. 634–636. This paper describes how Advanced Traveler Information Systems (ATIS) has the potential to improve and enhance the transportation system performance. This paper reveals that the congestion-accident relationship is critical to the safety evaluation of traffic diversion with the ATIS. Government Accountability Office. Highway Congestion: Intelligent Transportation Systems Promise for Managing Congestion Falls Short, and DOT Could Better Facilitate Their Strategic Use. GAO-05-943. Government Account- ability Office Washington, D.C. Sep 2005. This report describes in detail the positive effects of ITS technology and the Federal role in deployment of the ITS infrastructure. Four case studies have been described por- traying the type of ITS technology being used. Studies show that ITS technology can mitigate congestion, and also lead to other benefits such as improved safety and reduced emis- sions harmful to the environment, when ITS is implemented properly. Facanha, C. and J. Ang-Olson. Comparison of Technological and Operational Strategies to Reduce Trucking Emissions in Southern California. In Transportation Research Record 1981. Transportation Research Board of the National Acad- emies, Washington, D.C. 2008, pp. 89–96. This report’s main focal point is achieving emission reduc- tions from trucks. Major plans for development of more effi- cient movement of cargo and environmental safety are being developed by Southern California Association of Govern- ments (SCAG) and other agencies. SCAG also developed technological and operational strategies and environmental programs for future improvement in truck emissions. This report also contains truck strategies that are evaluated and analyzed. Two operational strategies are also mentioned in this report, a virtual container jar and expanded incident management. Strategies discussed in this report are evalu- ated both in terms of emission reduction potential and cost effectiveness. Federal Highway Administration. Financing Freight Improvements. U.S. Department of Transportation. Wash- ington, D.C. 2007. This report provides 51 case studies of financing strategies used for different types of freight-related projects. They are categorized by state. Many case studies mentioned in this report could be categorized as low-cost improvements. Shafran, I. and A. Strauss-Weider. NCHRP Report 497: Financing and Improving Land Access to U.S. Intermodal Cargo Hubs. Transportation Research Board of the National Academies, Washington, D.C. 2003. This report presents 12 projects/case studies and direction on the most effective strategies for financing improvements to cargo hubs and intermodal freight facilities. The report then identifies the best practices for financing options. Sev- eral of the projects may qualify as low-cost operational and capital improvements. B-2

Rail Bryan, J.G.B., G. Weisbrod, and C.D. Martland. Rail Freight as a Means of Reducing Roadway Congestion: Feasibility Considerations for Transportation Planning, In Trans- portation Research Record 2008. Transportation Research Board of the National Academies, Washington, D.C. 2007, pp. 75–83. This paper provides a summary for NCHRP Project 8-42, which examined the feasibility and value of rail freight solu- tions as a means of reducing highway congestion. Some rail freight strategies for mitigating traffic congestion growth were defined and consist of rail freight enhancements and promo- tion of greater use of rail. This paper also provides case stud- ies for various rail projects. All of the projects described were captured by four categories: enhancement of rail freight capacity and service for intercity corridors, enhancement of rail capacity and service along urban corridors, plans to enhance throughput and capacity of regional rail freight system, and enhancement of rail freight options for service to ports/ terminals. This report also discusses the economic and insti- tutional factors affecting feasibility of diverting some truck freight to rail. Sun, Y., M.A. Turnquist, and L.K. Nozick. Estimating Freight Transportation System Capacity, Flexibility and Degraded-Condition Performance. In Transportation Research Record 1966. Transportation Research Board of the National Academies, Washington, D.C. 2006, pp. 80–87. This report describes enhancements to an existing model of freight system capacity. The three enhancements expounded upon are (i) allowing future traffic patterns to be uncertain, (ii) replacing the simple facility capacity constraints by volume- delay curves and a service quality constraint, and (iii) replacing the predefined paths by traffic assignment logic so that link and path volumes are determined in the optimization without requiring path enumeration. These enhancements allow easy assessment of the performance of a freight network under con- ditions where individual links and/or terminals have degraded capacity. This will provide improved estimates of capacity and capacity flexibility. Dirnberger, J.R. and C.P. Barkan. Lean Railroading for Improving Railroad Classification Terminal Performance Bottleneck Management Methods. In Transportation Research Record 1995. Transportation Research Board of the National Academies, Washington, D.C. 2007, pp. 52–61. This paper defines “Lean Railroading” with emphasis placed on the bottleneck management component. “Lean Railroad- ing” is an approach that adapts proven production manage- ment techniques to the railroad environment and can be used to guide improvement initiatives. Improved sorting processes and increased pull-down performance has potential to increase capacity without major capital, equipment or labor expense. Dirnberger describes the development of a quality of sort met- ric to reduce the occurrence of dirty tracks and measure adherence to a static track allocation plan if one is in place to help better manage interaction between the hump and the pull-down processes. This paper presents the Lean Railroading approach and discussed the bottleneck management compo- nent. Increasing pull-down capacity will help enable railroads to swap the time buffer for a capacity buffer. This will reduce dwell time leading to improved service reliability and network efficiency. Lai, Y., O. Ouyang, C.B. Barkan, and H. Onal. Optimizing the Aerodynamic Efficiency of Intermodal Freight Trains with Rolling Horizon Operations, 2007. This paper first develops a static model to optimize load placement on a sequence of intermodal trains that have sched- uled departure times. This model applies when full informa- tion on all trains and loads is available. The purpose of this paper is to extend a loading model to optimize the aerody- namic efficiency at the multiple train system level. This paper also describes the development of a rolling horizon scheme for continuous terminal operations. They use a rolling horizon scheme to balance the advantage from optimizing multiple trains together, and the risk of making suboptimal decisions due to incomplete future information. This study focuses on intermodal services of the BNSF Railway between Chicago and Los Angeles. An empirical case study is also included showing significant aerodynamic efficiency benefits from these opti- mization models. Attempting to optimize the loading of too many trains in this environment will reduce the ability to achieve the most efficient loading configuration because of imperfect information. Armstrong, J.H. The Railroad: What It Is, What It Does, 5th ed. Simmons-Boardman Books, Inc., Omaha, NE. 2008. This book presents factual information on the basic tech- nologies used by railroads and the operational functions they perform. A brief chapter is dedicated to each main topic, for example: locomotives, freight cars, signals & communications, terminal operations, intermodal traffic, and so on. Many care- fully drawn and helpful illustrations supplement the text. Association of American Railroads. Railroad Facts. Annual Editions, Policy and Economics Department, Washington D.C. The railroad industry’s trade association annually produces an indispensible collection of data on railroad scope, opera- tions, financial performance, investments, traffic mix, safety trends, and employment. The statistics are provided for the industry as a whole (usually for Class I railroads only), and for B-3

the largest firms individually. Some key information is shown in graphical form, while other items are presented as histori- cal series in tables. Burns, J.B. Railroad Mergers and the Language of Unifica- tion, Quorum Books. Westport, CT. 1998. Burns has written a useful and generally accurate history of railroad merger activity in the Twentieth Century and in his conclusions has attempted to put rail mergers in the larger con- text of business combinations and globalization at the turn of the 21st Century. His theme is that “merger was the common language of growing enterprises” (p. 175). The book has a good index and an excellent bibliography. Cambridge Systematics Inc. National Rail Freight Infrastruc- ture Capacity and Investment Study. Prepared for American Association of Railroads, Washington, D.C. Sep. 2007. This report, undertaken at the request of the National Sur- face Transportation Policy and Revenue Study Commission, examined long-term capacity expansion needs for the railroad industry. By projecting both likely capacity expansion invest- ments and anticipated traffic growth on maps of the U.S. rail network, Cambridge Systematics Inc. was able to highlight its forecast of congestion bottlenecks quite dramatically. The report also provides calculations of the capital requirements estimated to be necessary to overcome capacity bottlenecks and accommodate freight demand in 2035—an estimated total of some $148 billion in 2007 dollars. Conant, M. Railroad Bankruptcies and Mergers, From Chicago West 1975–2001: Financial Analysis and Regula- tory Critique. Elsevier, Oxford, UK. 2004. Michael Conant’s recent book on rail mergers in the last quarter of the 20th Century follows up on his earlier text, called Railroad Mergers and Abandonments (1964). The earlier book sought to establish both “the myth of interrailroad competi- tion” and the existence of significant excess capacity (by a factor of over three—p. 11) in the industry, but the recent vol- ume has a much narrower focus. In an introductory chapter, Conant makes a general case that economic regulation has led to resource misallocation, and he describes what has been accomplished in the way of reform. Two chapters address the Rock Island and Milwaukee bankruptcies, which have received little scholarly attention. Chapters describing mergers involv- ing the Illinois Central, Union Pacific, and the Burlington Northern-Santa Fe round out this study. DeBoer, D.J. and L.H. Kaufman. An American Trans- portation Story, the Obstacles, the Challenges, the Promise. The Intermodal Association of North America, Greenbelt, MD. 2002. This book covers the major modes of transport: highways, ports and waterways, railroads, and airways. Kaufman is a jour- nalist of long standing in the industry, and DeBoer is a former Federal civil servant and industry practitioner best known in the intermodal (truck-rail) industry. Each chapter provides an historical synopsis and current profile, while the final chapter addresses the challenges of future capacity constraints and solutions. Friedlaender, A.F. The Dilemma of Freight Transport Regu- lation. The Brookings Institution, Washington, D.C. 1969. This volume is a “background paper” for a Brookings conference of experts just before the time of the transport industry’s greatest peril. The book summarizes the experts’ discussion—much consensus on the need for policy changes, but little agreement on what those should be and how they could be achieved. It took the costly Northeast Rail crisis to begin changing legislative perspectives—including the notion that sacrosanct economic regulatory and competitive notions would have to be compromised. Gallamore, R.E. “Regulation and Innovation: Lessons from the American Railroad Industry” in José Gómez- Ibáñez et al., Essays in Transportation Economics and Policy: A Handbook in Honor of John R. Meyer. Brookings Institu- tion Press, Washington, D.C. 1999. pp. 493–529. This easily accessible “handbook” contains a collection of some of the best examples of work done on transportation economics. The piece by Gallamore tells how reform of regu- lation in the Staggers Rail Act of 1980 was critical in reversing the financial fortunes of railroads—and how the industry, using the cash flow dividends resulting from deregulation, was able to invest in new plant and equipment that embodied remarkably improved technologies—thus perpetuating and expanding the railroad “Renaissance” of the last two decades (1979–1999). Healy, K.T. Performance of the U.S. Railroads Since World War II: A Quarter Century of Private Operation. Vantage Press, New York, NY. 1985. This book is really two volumes in one: the first ten chap- ters describe the organization of the industry, provide histor- ical perspectives on passenger and express services, give the fundamentals of pricing carload and less-than-carload ser- vices, and discuss labor and management issues; it is a more sophisticated and less mechanical version of Armstrong’s resource manual. The remainder of the book details growth of the railroads by internal economic growth and acquisition since World War II. This material describes the setting and performance of a half century of railroad mergers. The book includes simple maps of some of the mergers he studied, and these have the virtue of showing merger partners in relation- ship to one another—as parallel acquisitions reducing com- petition or as end-to-end market extensions. B-4

Kahn, A.E. The Economics of Regulation: Principles and Institutions, Volumes I and II, The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. 1988. It is perhaps the most comprehensive treatment of the eco- nomics of regulation and the institutions which grew up around it. Volume I covers the principles developed in clas- sical public utility regulatory theory. It treats in depth issues of marginal cost pricing (short run and long run), price dis- crimination, economies of scale, and rate making under competition. Volume II turns to institutional issues such as protectionism, public utility performance, “natural monop- oly,” and destructive competition. In addition to railroad reg- ulation, Kahn deals with natural gas transmission, trucking, and telecommunications regulatory issues. Keeler, T.E. Railroads, Freight, and Public Policy. Brook- ings Institute, Washington, D.C. 1983. This book was written just after the awful decade of the 1970s, but before the Staggers Rail Act reforms had made their impact on railroad fortunes. The book gives an excellent dis- cussion of economic fundamentals within the regulatory par- adigm, and anticipates many of the post-Staggers policy issues such as Ramsey (or inverse elasticity) differential pricing. Appendices survey the economic literature on railroad scale economies and the so-called “natural monopoly” model, which Keeler helped popularize. Klein, M. Unfinished Business: The Railroad in American Life, The University Press of New England, Hanover, NH. 1994. This is a history by way of a memoir built from Klein’s earlier work on railroads, particularly his massive two-volume history of the Union Pacific. He profiles both Jay Gould (to most, a villain) and Edward H. Harriman (to almost every- one but Theodore Roosevelt, James J. Hill, and J.P. Morgan, a hero). Klein provides a brief case study of the most impor- tant technology accomplishment for railroads in mid-20th century America, dieselization. He also briefly addresses the streamliner era and prospects for high-speed passenger corridors. Martin, A. Enterprise Denied: Origins of the Decline of Amer- ican Railroads, 1897–1917. Columbia University Press, New York, NY. 1971. This is one of the finest books available treating the history of railroads in the modern era. Martin skillfully describes the background and content of the early railroad regulatory enactments—those in 1887, 1903, 1906, 1910, 1913, and the Federal takeover of railroads in 1917-1918. He tells how the “archaic Progressives” (including Presidents Teddy Roosevelt and William Howard Taft, Senators Robert La Follette and Albert Cummins, and future Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis) used regulation to stifle railroads at the very time they might have been evolving with important technologies and investments—to compete with the new surface transport mode powered by internal combustion engines and with vehicles operating over hard-surfaced public roads. Meyer, J.R., J.P. Merton, J. Stenason, and C. Zwick, The Eco- nomics of Competition in the Transportation Industries. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA. 1959. This book blazed the trail for modern academic quantita- tive studies of transportation performance and policy—for railways, highway construction, motor carriers, pipelines, intermodal truck-rail, and domestic airlines. MPS&Z, as trans- portation students call it, changed the paradigm for transporta- tion studies, which previously had been mainly descriptive texts profiling modes and institutions in the industry, or nar- ratives of regulatory legislation and case law. The work was among the first (if not the first) to describe long-run multi- variate statistical cost functions, and to develop statistical regressions for transport costing. In a sharp critique, MPS&Z illustrated how these “true” cost functions contrasted with expressions of conventional average cost accounting systems that relied on arbitrary allocation of overhead and common costs. Middleton, W.D., G.M. Smerk, and R.L. Diehl. Encyclopedia of North American Railroads. University Press, Blooming- ton, IN. 2007. The Indiana group has produced a truly encyclopedic work—testimony to both the complexity of the railroad industry and the industry of dozens of railroad writers who contributed articles for the work. Five overview essays set the stage: Keith Bryant on development of the industry, H. Roger Grant on its social history, John H. White Jr. on technology and operating practices in the 19th Century, William Middle- ton on technology and operating practices in the 20th Century, and journalist Don Phillips on post-war developments and controversies that closed out the century. Then the Encyclope- dia starts in with Accidents and plows on through to a biogra- phical sketch of Robert R. Young, who as an official of the C&O and Nickel Plate railroads famously published an adver- tisement declaring “A hog can cross America without chang- ing trains—but YOU can’t.” Middleton contributes Appendix A that is a statistical abstract of the industry, with many tables and charts. Appen- dix B has railroad carrier and regional maps. Appendix C is a comprehensive glossary of railroad terms, and Appendix D lists the “130 most Notable Railroad Books” compiled by the editors of Railroad History. It is a good list but incomplete and uneven in coverage. Finally, Middleton, Smerk and Diehl provide an index to help guide readers to articles that may not be easily found in the Encyclopedia’s alphabetical arrangement. B-5

Saunders, R., Jr. Main Lines: Rebirth of the North American Railroads, 1970–2002. Northern Illinois University Press, DeKalb, IL. 2003. Main Lines is the third of three books by Richard Saunders dealing with railroads in the 20th Century. The first, Railroad Mergers and the Coming of Conrail dealt especially with the Penn Central fiasco and start-up of Conrail. Saunders admits that it was soon “badly dated,” as “[a]gainst all odds, Conrail had been a success.” Saunders then went back to revise the first book heavily—publishing Merging Lines: The American Rail- roads, 1900–1970 in 2001. The third volume is Main Lines, which completes the story to the end of the century. This book is flawed and weakly sourced; Saunders does not have a good grasp of economics, which shows in the errors he makes in dis- cussions of avoidable costs and elasticities. The book uses overstated and opinionated language, as in this passage: “the sale of Conrail had been so ham-handed and so fraught with ideological zealotry that it mortally wounded most hope for privatization in the near future” (p. 240). Secretary Dole’s efforts to sell Conrail to Norfolk Southern in the mid-1980s were, perhaps, “ham-handed,” but the initial public offering of Conrail only two years later (in 1987) was an unqualified success for the government and the company, as was soon demonstrated. Stover, J.F. American Railroads, 2nd ed. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL. 1997. This book is the most accessible broad history of the con- struction and development of American railroads over their nearly 200-year history. Stover shows the interrelationships of railroads with most other landmarks of American history, wars, westward expansion, national governance, regulation, and technology. A useful chronology lists important dates in the story from 1794 to 1995, and a Suggested Reading section provides brief annotations. Stover, J.F. The Routledge Historical Atlas of the American Railroads, Routledge, New York, NY. 1999. The book features color line maps detailing the evolution of rail networks and the make-up of current railroad companies. Like the superior color-coded pull-out maps showing various rail gauges at the beginning of the Civil War in George Rogers Taylor and Irene D. Neu, The American Railroad Network, 1861–1890, Cambridge: Harvard University Press (1956), The Routledge Historical Atlas map of rail lines as they existed in 1861 immediately conveys the substantial advantage held by the North over the South in the extent and interoperability of their different rail networks. Two maps show the Congres- sional land grants, both accurately as they were legislated and in the distorted fashion as they were depicted in school textbooks. Stone, R.D. The Interstate Commerce Commission and the Railroad Industry, Praeger, New York, NY. 1991. In late 2008, as a severe economic crisis in financial and credit markets is playing itself out in the midst of a national election, we are witness to arguments for and against regula- tion of the banking and securities industry. Enormous volatil- ity in the stock market leads both experts and pundits to ask if there should be governmental restraints on short sales of stock; the credit crisis in home loans drives questions about re-regulation of banking practices such as bundling sub- prime mortgages and sales of derivatives. Richard Stone’s book unwittingly provides background for the current regulatory debates by telling the story of railroad regulation and deregu- lation from 1887 (the Act to Regulate Commerce—the so- called ICC Act) through a succession of historical periods up to the Staggers Rail Act of 1980. Task Force on Railroad Productivity. Improving Railroad Productivity. Final Report. The National Commission on Productivity and the Council of Economic Advisors. Wash- ington, D.C. 1973. This “blue ribbon” task force surveyed the railroad crisis as it was unfolding in the 1970s and recommended policy reforms. Alexander Morton was executive director of the study and authored most of the text. Improving Railroad Pro- ductivity received almost no press attention at the time, but it was important in crystallizing a consensus in the academic community and among Washington insiders on the urgent need for regulatory reform to avoid total collapse and nation- alization of the railroad industry. Meyer and Morton followed up on the Productivity Task Force Report with an important article for the Harvard Business School research series, The U.S. Railroad Industry in the Post-World War II Period: A Pro- file (Reprinted from Explorations in Economic Research, Vol. 2, No. 4, Fall 1975). Federal Railroad Administration. A Prospectus for Change in the Railroad Freight Industry. U.S. Department of Trans- portation, Washington, D.C. 1978. Passage of the Railroad Reorganization and Regulatory Reform Act of 1976 (popularly known as the 4R Act) was some- thing of a watershed for American railroads because for the first time in a century of regulatory history, it sought to lessen rather than increase regulatory constraints on railroads. The 4R Act, however, was a flawed and largely ineffective statute. It gave lip service to permitting flexible rates, adequate revenues, and more rapid regulatory determinations, but left in place the whole Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) apparatus, which for a while (until the appointment of Darius Gaskins as Chairman) worked to thwart reform. The ICC’s 4R Act deter- minations gave little relief to railroads in dealing with inflation- B-6

ary cost increases or gaining exemption from regulation where adequate competition existed. One useful section of the 4R Act mandated DOT to study deferred maintenance in the railroad industry and offer recom- mendations for ways of reversing unfavorable trends. These tasks were delegated to the Federal Railroad Administra- tion (FRA), which responded with a remarkable report. The Prospectus for Change calculated deferred maintenance at some $13–16 billion over the coming decade unless reforms were made in regulation. It went on to detail regulatory and other changes needed to keep the railroads solvent in the private sec- tor. The FRA’s Prospectus for Change should thus be remem- bered, along with the Meyer Task Force Productivity Report, as the intellectual underpinning and blueprint for the monu- mental Staggers Rail Act of 1980. Contrary to conventional “history,” the Staggers Act did not emerge full blown from Congressional committees or lobbyists’ position papers, but rather had its origins with unsung civil servants of the Federal Railroad Administration and Department of Transportation. Weatherford, B.A., H.H. Willis, and D.S. Oritz. The State of U.S. Railroads. A Review of Capacity and Performance Data, RAND, Santa Monica, CA, 2008. RAND has produced an exceptional analysis of the current railroad situation. Sponsored by UPS, the project appears to result from concerns as to whether the railroads will be able to expand efficient operations under the pressure of rapidly increasing future freight volumes. The study points out that capacity constraints encountered by Union Pacific in March and April 2004 affected its new expedited long-distance inter- modal service. These problems caused UPS to cease its new service, whereupon UPS shifted some intermodal freight back to the highways. “This example illustrates two impor- tant themes. The first is that railroad capacity constraints— resulting from trains running at different speeds and limited track, cars and locomotives, and crews—may lead firms to shift freight among modes. The second theme is that these private decisions have public costs” (p. 6). RAND concludes that “if railroads underinvest in new road [railway track, bridges, and signals], rail market share will continue to fall and the number of trucks on the road [highways] will grow at an accelerating rate” (p. 29). Wilner, F.N. Railroad Mergers: History, Analysis, Insight, Simmons-Boardman Books, Omaha, NE. 1997. Wilner attempted a comprehensive study of railroad merg- ers from shortly after the beginnings of the industry in 1830 through partition of Conrail in 1999, dividing most of the book into eras: the period before 1950; 1950 to 1979; and the 1980s and 1990s. Six essays from respected industry observers help provide context for legal, international and investment issues, and speculation about future challenges. Wilner’s text tables are useful for looking up filing dates and the like, but cannot be said to contribute much “Analysis” or “Insight.” Standard maps of U.S. railroads reproduced from the Rand McNally 1939 Railway Atlas locate each road on the national network, but fail to show how merger partners might overlap or extend the resulting systems. Wyckoff, D.D. Railroad Management. Lexington Books, Lexington, MA. 1976. Daryl Wyckoff produced valuable studies of managerial tasks in the trucking and railroad industries. This book pro- vides both historical context and organizational theory to describe the tasks of railroad managers. Topics include func- tional organization; centralization; responses in commercial, competitive, and regulatory environments; handling construc- tion and maintenance functions; labor and substitution of capital for labor; local vs. long-haul operations; profit center organization; and causes of organizational stagnation. Immel, E. and B. Burgel. Rail Capacity in the I-5 Corridor. Presented for the Standing Committee on Rail Transporta- tion, San Diego, CA, Oct. 2004. This research used simulation techniques to examine rail capacity issues on I-5 and access to the port of Oregon. The paper identified factors that impact rail capacity to include: • Speed and length of trains • Differing priorities • Many types of facilities in the same areas. The paper also identified measures of performance to include: • Average speed • Hours of delay • Delay ratio. Finally, the paper identified a number of potential improve- ment options to address the freight mobility constraints: • Increase track speeds • Expanded yard capacity • Adding controlled siding at certain sections • Install second main track at certain sections. Dennis, S.M. Changes in Railroad Rates Since the Staggers Act. Transportation Research Part E 37. 2000, pp. 55–69. This document describes factors that may have caused a huge rate reduction after the Staggers Act. The objective of this paper is to determine the relative importance of the various B-7

factors underlying the decline in railroad rates since the Stag- gers Act. Some factors contributing to the decline in rail- road rates are an increasing percentage of bulk commodities, increased length of haul, and increased private ownership of equipment. To determine the relative importance of these fac- tors, this paper uses a reduced form railroad rate equation. Some results from this study are that shippers saved approxi- mately 28 billion dollars per year, length of haul increased, private ownership increased, and equipment cited by some shippers accounted for only about 2 percent of the reduction in railroad revenue per ton-mile since deregulation. Deepwater Ports and Inland Waterways Government Accountability Office. Surface and Marine Transportation: Developing Strategies for Enhancing Mobility: A National Challenge. GAO-02-775. Government Accountability Office, Washington, D.C. August 2002. Over the next 10 years passenger and freight travel are expected to grow by a large margin; with the increase, the sur- face and maritime transportation systems face a number of challenges to ensure continued mobility. This report also provides important information about the increase of freight mobility. The amount of freight moved is expected to increase to 19.3 billion tons annually by 2010. It states that trucks move the majority of freight tonnage and are expected to continue moving the bulk of freight into the future; trucks remain the dominant mode in terms of tonnage. Inter- national freight is an increasingly important aspect of the U.S. economy and water is the dominant mode in terms of ton- nage. This report lists the following challenges: • Preventing congestion • Accessibility • Addressing transportation’s negative effects on the envi- ronment and community. Three key strategies mentioned in this report are: 1) Entire maritime and surface transportation systems should be the main focus. 2) Include usage of all tools to achieve desired mobility. 3) Provide more options for financing mobility improvements. Maritime Administration (MARAD). Report to Congress on the Performance of Ports and the Intermodal System. U.S. Department of Transportation. Washington, D.C. June 2005. This report provides an assessment of the conditions of commercial ports. These assessments include the performance of major components of the intermodal system. MARAD emphasizes the unexpected surge in cargo during a military deployment and how the freight transportation infrastructure is expected to handle it. Port capacity is one of many issues this report touches on. Agile port projects help increase capacity on the same waterfront acreage by using sprint trains to take intermodal cargo directly from the dockside and move it to an inland location. Recommendations have been pro- vided to guide port transportation system policies for the future. These improvements consist mainly of regulatory and policy changes. Pfiegal, R. and A. Back. Increasing Attractiveness of Inland Waterway Transport with E-Transport River Information Services. In Transportation Research Record 1963. Trans- portation Research Board of the National Academies, Wash- ington, D.C. 2006, pp. 15–22. Innovative information systems have a positive impact on freight mobility, affecting safety and efficiency. This paper describes a telematic service to support traffic and transport management called River Information Services (RIS). RIS will improve the information processes of inland navigation. The setup of RIS includes electronic navigation charts and vessel tracking and tracing systems (automatic identification sys- tems). E-Transport applications make use of the RIS core system and provide advanced services, namely electronic ship reporting and collision avoidance. Austria is the first country to implement this new technology to provide a safer and more efficient mobility. Special Report 279: The Marine Transportation System and the Federal Role: Measuring Performance, Targeting Improve- ment. Transportation Research Board of the National Acade- mies, Washington D.C., 2004. This report identifies waterway infrastructure needs based on collected data, studies, and surveys provided by MARAD. The few issues and recommendations that stood out consisted of: • Deeper and wider channels to accommodate more and larger ships; • Modernized locks and dams to increase service reliability, capacity, and speed • New information and navigation technologies to integrate the supply chain and security and safety systems; and • More efficient use of land for marine terminal operations and environmental protection. A number of concerns were repeated in this report includ- ing insufficient capacity; delays in the dredging of harbor chan- nels; modernizations of locks; and absence of systematic and comprehensive efforts to strengthen marine safety, security, and environmental protection. The corresponding actions to these concerns are to have a more balanced set of tools to make national transportation investment and policy decisions that B-8

recognize the increasing integration of the transportation modes. Also collaborate with industries and Federal agencies to undertake an applied research and technology program aimed at furthering capacity, environmental protection, etc. Lastly the report expressed the need for developing a further understanding of the operations, capacity, and use of the sys- tem, and of freight systems in general. Knatz, G. National Port Planning: A Different Perspective. In Transportation Research Record 1963. Transportation Research Board of the National Academies, Washington, D.C. 2006, pp. 52–55. This paper addresses the implications of growth for the Ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles and how decisions made to address cargo growth there can have national repercus- sions. An analysis of statewide port capacity can guide port planning and provide a clear understanding of capacity issues. Identifying and prioritizing infrastructure improvements cannot be accurately done due to the lack of or failure to examine the port system as a whole. Four fundamental prob- lems are identified: • Congestion problems in urban areas surrounding the nation’s largest ports have mobilized communities to seek locally imposed limits on port expansion. • Port infrastructure requires a significant amount of time to plan and construct in today’s environmental climate. These events need to be planned well in advance. • Federal dredging projects are hampered by an obsolete funding formula for cost sharing that was developed on the basis of the vessel fleet of the early 1980s. • The fundamental principles of coastal protection legislation are being questioned. Le-Griffin, H.D. and M. Murphy. Container Terminal Pro- ductivity: Experiences at the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. Proc. National Urban Freight Conference, Long Beach, CA. This paper describes a study that examined the productiv- ity of the Los Angeles and Long Beach ports and compares them with other major container ports in the U.S. and over- seas. The paper noted that with the increasing demand for international trade and global logistic services, there is the need for substantial investments and improvements in phys- ical capacity and operational efficiencies to enhance produc- tivity of terminals. The paper identifies a range of internal and external factors that influence the productivity of container terminals. The external factors include the size and type of ships accommodated by the terminal as well as the landside capacities and performance of intermodal rail and highway systems serving the ports. The paper also identifies strategies to improve productivity: • Reduced container dwell time—containers coming off ships first do not receive as much free time as before with the result that carriers have started removing those containers from the terminals sooner to avoid storage fees. • Extended hours of operation—increasing the number of hours and shifts that terminal gates remain open • Inland container yard—moving some containers to holding sites outside the terminal areas where there is more land available for storage. Dekker, S., R.J. Verhaeghe, and A.A.J. Pols. Economic Impacts and Public Financing of Port Capacity Investments. In Transportation Research Record 1820. Transportation Research Board of the National Academies, Washington, D.C. 2003. pp. 55–61. This report focuses on the public/private financing of port investments to improve efficiency and reduce congestion. Large-scale infrastructure is described as seaports and airports. This report emphasizes impacts of large-scale infrastructure projects; examples are costs due to congestion, air pollution, and noise. The Case of Rotterdam Port Area Expansion is also discussed in this report. The efficient or inefficient use of space determines the need. Because of low land prices in the Rotterdam port area, container transshipment is growing and involves higher distribution and storage requirements. This report includes a decision-making framework process for the Maasvlakte investment. The report identified these invest- ments: investments to improve physical capacity of the port itself and investments to improve hinterland connections. Klodzinski, J. and H.M. Al-Deek. Transferability of an Inter- modal Freight Transportation Forecasting Model to Major Florida Seaports. In Transportation Research Record 1820. Transportation Research Board of the National Academies, Washington, D.C. 2003. pp. 36–45. This paper focuses on the development of a transportation forecasting model to better predict future capacity issues. The report identifies operational improvements that need attention, which are accessibility for heavy trucks to access port terminals. Improvements to infrastructure of seaports transportation operations are discussed. Soriguera, F., F. Robuste, R. Juanola, and A. Lopez-Pita. Opti- mization of Handling Equipment in the Container Terminal of the Port of Barcelona. In Transportation Research Record 1963. Transportation Research Board of the National Acad- emies, Washington, D.C. 2006. pp. 22–51. This paper analyzes the internal transport system in a marine container terminal and investigates the effect of the type of handling equipment used. Congestion at ports is caused not only by ship and wharf, but also by port activities. Using research from Port Planning and Development, the authors B-9

state that the transfer capacity between ship and wharf achieved by the wharf cranes exceeds the capacity of the port handling equipment to move, stack, and deliver the cargo. Therefore the capacity of the handling equipment between the wharf and the storage yard is critical. This paper describes the basic functions of a marine container terminal as loading, unloading, storage, reception, and delivery of containers through the gates. Global Insight Inc. Port Tracker: Monthly Trade Logistics and Intermodal Outlook. National Rail Federation, Wash- ington, D.C. 2007. An econometric forecasting model for major U.S. ports was developed by Global Transportation Service. The data were collected from both public and private sources. Some of the highlights included in this newsletter are: • The slowest traffic month of the year is Feb. 2007 and Van- couver is rated medium for congestion. • All uncovered U.S. ports are operating without congestion from the harbor to gate. • Rail performance has improved. • Monthly container volumes are higher than last year’s. This document contains container volume highlights. U.S. ports are operating congestion free, while truck and rail per- formance is more than adequate for the slow season volume. They rate the West and East Coast ports according to their congestion. Yonge, M. European Union Short Sea Shipping: European Union Transport Initiatives to Achieve Sufficient Mobility in Order to Sustain Economic Growth. Ft. Lauderdale, FL: Mar- itime Transport & Logistics Advisors. 2004. Short sea shipping is seen as an opportunity to maintain, if not enhance, the European Union Flag Maritime transport sec- tor as well as maritime employment of EU state members. The benefits of short sea shipping are that infrastructure costs are low unlike rail and highway and energy consumption is virtu- ally insignificant and environmentally friendly. Water trans- port and rail modes are encouraged to keep up with the growth. This report suggests that the only way to keep up with the increasing demand is through short sea shipping. This report also describes EU’s TEN-T (Priority Projects) that include short sea shipping, roadway, railway, inland waterway, airports, seaports, inland ports, and traffic management. These projects would: • Produce significant time savings • Reduce CO2 emissions and other emissions • Rebalance the modal split • Stimulate intermodal trade • Reduce road congestion • Improve welfare. Konings, R. “Ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles Trans- portation Study.” In Transportation Research Record 1820, Transportation Research Board of the National Academies, Washington, D.C. 2003, pp. 26–35. The article mainly focuses on the creation of the trip gener- ation model used to study recommended improvements to the Ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles. Data were collected and assumptions were made about the truck and automobile traffic at and near the terminal. The distribution of trucks and automobiles over the network was developed by doing a driver survey at 13 container terminals during a 4-hour period. They also conducted traffic counts to separate the vehicles of those that reported to the union halls and then to the terminals, from those that reported directly to the terminals. It references a developing system that could potentially be a low-cost, quickly implementable solution to ease freight con- gestion. It is an appointment system for container pickup. This system is within eModal, the Internet system that most of the container terminals and many harbor trucking companies use. In the trip generation estimates, they defined a changing oper- ation parameter of increased street turns as a result of the use of the eModal system. B-10