KCS on Oct. 16 placed an embargo on certain types of merchandise traffic to help ease a logjam of cars in Mexico as well as those waiting to cross the border at Laredo, the busiest U.S.-Mexico gateway.
Union Pacific, the largest interchange partner with KCS de Mexico at Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, placed an embargo on southbound traffic on Sept. 30.
Those embargoes, which affected traffic bound for Monterrey, San Luis Potosi, and Mexico City, were lifted this week.
“As intended, the embargo eased the congestion and bottlenecks we had been experiencing, allowing us to resume a closer-to-normal service plan for Mexico-bound trains. In addition to the embargo, a focused action plan and the resulting improved metrics have allowed us to remove the embargo effective Nov. 1,” Mike Naatz, KCS chief marketing officer, wrote in an Oct. 31 customer advisory.
Besides the embargo, KCS leased 30 additional locomotives, redeployed crews, and changed operating plans at yards in Monterrey, Nuevo Laredo, and Laredo.
KCS says those efforts paid off in reduced car inventories at all three Laredo border terminals, lower terminal dwell, faster transit times for Mexico traffic, and a reduction in Mexico-bound car inventory in the U.S.
In the spring and early summer, KCS trains got tangled up in congestion on Union Pacific in the Houston area. The congestion on trackage-rights routes cleared over the summer, sending a heavy backlog of traffic into Mexico.
The volume was compounded by strong growth in cross-border traffic, which was up 13 percent in the second quarter and 20 percent in the third quarter. Cross-border intermodal traffic grew 30 percent in the third quarter, while energy products shipments to Mexico more than doubled.
The January 2019 arrival of the first of 50 new General Electric ET44AC locomotives will help KCS handle expected continued strong growth in cross-border intermodal, automotive, and petroleum products shipments, KCS executives said last month.
I suspect that there’ll be continuing problems in the Houston area now that UP had unwittingly decided to adopt the looney bin concept of Precision Scheduled Railroading. I also have to think that at some point that CPRS will make a move and take the KCS.
Jim, good question. I thought the Trains article a couple months ago about KCS gave a good overview of the entire system as a whole. Believe they stated that the intended, or increase use of a second TX-Mexico crossing with another route to Monterrey is in the works going forward with some strategic investment to get secondary track up to better standards.
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What seems to be a big issue for KCS and will always be is Houston itself. Believe it is all via trackage rights to get from one side to another side of a very big metro area. Someone please correct me if I’m mistaken. How do they ever improve that situation without a massive investment in another track somewhere, somehow?
Plus, I don’t think it really matters anymore where you live when it comes to NIMBYism, Whether it is BNSF trying to increase traffic on underutlized rail line in Minneapolis to give some relief on its northern transcon through the city or a second bridge outside of Spokane to relieve a bottleneck, or UP trying to add more double track in Columbia Gorge, or CSX trying to improve clearances in DC and Baltimore let alone just trying replace aging tunnels, and so on. Trying to add rail capacity through Houston would probably be a huge undertaking from my novice take of things.
Jim Norton,
Did you not read the article? It all stemmed from the congestion on the UP lines that KCS has trackage rights on during Spring and Summer, basically the old snowball affect.
Can they not handle growth?