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Precision railroading or precision scheduled railroading (PSR) is a concept in
freight railroad Rail freight transport is the use of rail transport, railroads and trains to transport cargo as opposed to human passengers. A freight train, cargo train, or goods train is a group of Railroad car#Freight cars, freight cars (US) or goods wagon ...
operations pioneered by
E. Hunter Harrison Ewing Hunter Harrison (November 7, 1944 – December 16, 2017) was a railway executive who served as the CEO of Illinois Central Railroad (IC), Canadian National Railway (CN), Canadian Pacific Railway (CP), and CSX Corporation. He died on Decemb ...
in 1993, and adopted by nearly every North American
Class I railroad In the United States, railroad carriers are designated as Class I, II, or III, according to annual revenue criteria originally set by the Surface Transportation Board in 1992. With annual adjustments for inflation, the 2019 thresholds were US$5 ...
. It shifts the focus from older practices, such as unit trains,
hub and spoke A hub is the central part of a wheel that connects the axle to the wheel itself. Hub, The Hub, or hubs may refer to: Geography Pakistan * Hub Tehsil, Balochistan, an administrative division ** Hub, Balochistan, capital city of the tehsil * H ...
operations and individual car switching at hump yards, to emphasize point-to-point freight car movements on simplified routing networks. Under PSR, freight trains operate on fixed schedules, much like passenger trains, instead of being dispatched whenever a sufficient number of loaded cars are available. In the past, intermodal trains and general merchandise trains operated separately; under PSR they are combined as needed, typically with
distributed power In rail transport, distributed power (DP) is a generic term referring to the physical distribution—at intermediate points throughout the length of a train—of separate motive power groups. Such "groups" may be single units or multiple consist ...
. Inventories of freight cars and locomotives are reduced and fewer workers are employed for a given level of traffic. The result is often substantial improvement in railroad
operating ratio In finance, the operating ratio is a company's operating expenses as a percentage of revenue. This financial ratio is most commonly used for industries which require a large percentage of revenues to maintain operations, such as railroads. In railro ...
s, and other financial and operating metrics; at the cost of less-reliable service, particularly to smaller customers, long-term capacity issues, increased derailments and other safety risks associated with longer trains, and crew fatigue.


History

Harrison first introduced PSR at the
Illinois Central Railroad The Illinois Central Railroad , sometimes called the Main Line of Mid-America, was a railroad in the Central United States, with its primary routes connecting Chicago, Illinois, with New Orleans, Louisiana, and Mobile, Alabama. A line also ...
(IC), where he became CEO in 1993. He implemented it at
Canadian National The Canadian National Railway Company (french: Compagnie des chemins de fer nationaux du Canada) is a Canadian Class I freight railway headquartered in Montreal, Quebec, which serves Canada and the Midwestern and Southern United States. CN ...
after they acquired IC in 1998. After retiring from Canadian National, Harrison was recruited to take over leadership of the
Canadian Pacific The Canadian Pacific Railway (french: Chemin de fer Canadien Pacifique) , also known simply as CPR or Canadian Pacific and formerly as CP Rail (1968–1996), is a Canadian Class I railway incorporated in 1881. The railway is owned by Canad ...
and implemented precision railroading there. In March 2017, he was appointed CEO of
CSX Transportation CSX Transportation , known colloquially as simply CSX, is a Class I freight railroad operating in the Eastern United States and the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec. The railroad operates approximately 21,000 route miles () of track. ...
and began implementing PSR on its large network, but he died eight months later. In 2021, CSX has become the first railroad to move away from PSR.


Criticism

Precision railroading has been criticized on many fronts. Shippers complain about poorer service and delays. Railroad workers have raised concerns about safety due to reduced inspections and staffing. Under PSR, service is typically eliminated on shipping lanes and origin-destination pairs that have low traffic levels.
Intermodal terminal Intermodal passenger transport, also called mixed-mode commuting, involves using two or more modes of transportation in a journey. Mixed-mode commuting is often used to combine the strengths (and offset the weaknesses) of various transportati ...
s have been consolidated, with the railroad relying on trucks for the last hundred miles. Fewer workers are needed, even with higher traffic volumes. As a result, over 20,000 railroad workers have been laid off in 2019. The surface transportation board estimates large freight carriers employed 30% less workers in 2022 as compared to 2018. PSR advocates claim that shippers benefit in the long run from reduced costs and more reliable schedules. However, PSR has been criticized as being focused on short-term financial benefits at the expense of long-term capacity. In particular, Precision Scheduled Railroading is impacting safety due to increased train length, up to three miles in many cases. This leads to a higher risk of derailments, and crew stress and fatigue because of the difficulty of operating trains of this length, for which the North American railroad network was not necessarily designed.


References

{{reflist Rail freight transport Logistics