Union Pacific Davidson Yard in Fort Worth

Precision railroading or precision scheduled railroading (PSR) is a concept in freight railroad operations pioneered by E. Hunter Harrison in 1993, and adopted by nearly every North American

Class I railroad In the United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, st ...

. It shifts the focus from older practices, such as

unit train A unit train, also called a block train or a trainload service, is a train in which all cars (wagons) carry the same commodity and are shipped from the same origin to the same destination, without being split up or stored en route. They are dist ...

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 * Hub ...

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 ratios, 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 c ...

(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 Canadi ...

and implemented precision railroading there. In March 2017, he was appointed CEO of CSX Transportation 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 mode of transport, modes of transportation in a journey. Mixed-mode commuting is often used to combine the strengths (and offset the weaknesses) of va ...

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