Transcript Moving Freight and Passengers in the 21st Century

The 2011 Rail Conference:
Moving Freight and Passengers
in the 21st Century
Seaports and Freight Rail
Eric D. Johnson
Executive Director
Washington Public Ports Association
An Overview of Seaports:
Governance
 Nearly all of the nations major seaports are
publically-owned enterprises
 The governance model varies:
 Division of state
 Regional city organization
 Departments of cities
 Independent local governments
Operations:
 Ports build and maintain the transportation
infrastructure that enables water-borne
commerce to move to and from highway and
rail modes:




Marine terminal docks
Near-dock rail
Near-dock roads
Shipping channels
Business Models:
 Lease land, buildings and equipment to
private companies
 Occasionally a port operates its own terminals
 Most ports subsidize these investments in
order to create jobs and regional prosperity
Overview of North America’s Rail Network:
 We have
competing
gateways,
especially
for Mid-west
cargo
Class I Railroads
US Operations
Railroad
U.S. Route
Miles
Revenue TonMiles (billions)
Operating Revenue
($ millions)
Number of
Employees
BNSF Railway (BNSF)
32,140
594
14,124
37,095
Union Pacific Railroad (UP)
32,094
479
14,117
47,117
CSX Corporation (CSX)
21,190
209
8,179
27,752
Norfolk Southern Corporation (NS)
20,623
159
7,969
28,323
Canadian National Rail Service (CN)
6,898
43
1,911
5,857
Canadian Pacific Railway (CP)
3,154
20
699
2,428
Kansas City Southern Railway Company (KCS)
3,076
29
860
2,735
*Association of American Railroads Railroad Facts 2010 edition
National Rail
Commodity Flow
Port Related
Canadian Commodities
Emerging Themes:
 Canadian Competition
Emerging Themes:
 Panama Canal widening (completed in 2014)
New York 
Norfolk
 Mobile
 Houston
 Charleston
 Jasper County
 Savannah
 Jacksonville
Eastern U.S. and Gulf
Ports are
Making Strategic
Investments for
Competitiveness:
Deeper shipping channels
Larger terminals
Inland corridor improvements
Emerging Themes:
 Direct Trans-Atlantic routes through Suez
Canal
 Asian – especially Chinese – demand for raw
materials
 Shifting manufacturing trends
 Southward in Asia
 Southward in U.S.
AMTRAK
• Passenger trains operate
on freight lines in most
corridors
• Passenger trains use
much more capacity than
freight trains due to
speed/schedule requirements
Importance of
Rail Yards
• Disassemble and
reassemble trains for
ultimate destination
• Location where crews
go on/off duty
• Holding area for trains when destination not
ready to receive (staging)
• Locomotive and railcar maintenance
Unit Trains
• Trains of 100 + railcars of single commodity going
point to point
– Trains lengths up to 8,600 feet
– Trend is towards longer trains
• Most efficient operation
• Pricing incentives to shippers due to efficiencies
• Length of trains demands longer track
configurations at origin/destination and sidings
Emerging Themes:
 Scale of investment in key rail corridors leads
to multi-state public/private coalitions.
Examples:
 Heartland Corridor (Norfolk Southern)
 National Gateway (CSX)
What does it mean?
 Our nations seaports exist in a dynamic
economy
 Many key factors and variables are out of our
control
 We rely on timely investments from the Class I
railroads
 Public partnerships with the private sector are
more important than ever
Questions?
Eric Johnson, Executive Director
Washington Public Ports Association
PO Box 1518
Olympia, WA 98507
360-943-0760
[email protected]