PRECISION SCHEDULED RAILROADING AND CAPITAL PROJECTS: Tuesday’s panel discussion on Precision Scheduled Railroading, featuring three current or former Canadian National executives and Howard Green, author of the biography of former CEO Hunter Harrison, offered mostly anecdotal evidence on what constitutes the operating philosophy and how Harrison made it work.
This led to a question for the panel: Can it work without Harrison in charge?
“This is about running a business,” said Mike Cory, CN executive vice president and chief operating officer. “The principles of precision railroading – of not doing something twice, of running a machine as long as you can to get the most productivity out of that – I think everybody tries to do that.
“It’s the leadership and the wherewithal, the thick skin that it takes to navigate your way around all the obstacles … and to be able to come back again. … You keep coming back to the well and find a way to make it happen.”
And Dave Ferryman, a former vice president of engineering at CN, offered an explanation of how and why precision scheduled railroading matters for the people attending a rail contractors’ convention.
“Maintenance of way was really find a way,” said Ferryman, now vice president, commercial and technology at EVRAZ North America, which makes rail and other steel products. “… It was about ways to get materials quickly to the field and really create our own material supply chains. …
“It wasn’t always necessarily what the best, cheapest product out there. The purchasing group definitely has to be aligned with the engineering and transportation under PSR. … In a lot of cases, we designed to build bridges on offset alignment because trying to do it under traffic just took too long. It might have cost more in the end, but we got more bridges done in a year doing it that way, and we didn’t interfere with the operation as much. …
“So there are a lot of things on the engineering side that you have to think about: How you create capacity for revenue moves, and how you get work done quickly.”
WASHINGTON WATCH: With the conference beginning just days after the opening of the 116th Congress, the possibility of an infrastructure bill, and what it might mean for railroads, was understandably on the mind of many in attendance.
“Infrastructure is usually bipartisan,” BNSF Executive Chairman Matt Rose said during his Monday morning “fireside chat” session. “And when you say the word infrastructure, that sounds pretty good, and it should be good for all the constituents in this room. But the freight railroad industry, we really have to watch what that means. Because if we move away from our No. 1 principle, which is user pay – i.e., if we just start building all these highways and taxing the railroads – it’s actually not good for us.
“So given the climate up there right now, and given the fiscal reality, I don’t see a lot more money coming out of the federal government for infrastructure. Which for the freight rails is just fine. The returns we’re generating as a freight railroad industry can cover all the capital that needs to be done.”
Participants in Monday’s government affairs panel, “Transportation Legislation and Policy Priorities in the 116th Congress,” generally considered it unlikely that an infrastructure bill would pass any time soon.
“Count me a skeptic on an infrastructure bill,” said Andrew Brady, assistant vice president, government affairs for the Association of American Railroads. “They’ve been saying we were going to get one for the last two years, and I’m pretty sure the well is fully poisoned at this point. And let’s not forget that in six months, the presidential season starts. … There’s not going to be a lot of appetite for working together.”
David Woodruff, Canadian National’s assistant vice president and head of U.S. public and governmental affairs, was skeptical, as well, but did say there was at least one reason to think there might be some action: Democratic legislators who captured previously Republican seats, particularly in suburban areas, “need to be able to go back and show they were actually able to do something, they were actually able to govern.,” he said. “I think an infrastructure package of any caliber, of any type, is a good and an easy way to do that. … Itt’s a very poisoned well, it’s a lot of effort to do it – but I think politically, there’s a very strong desire to demonstrate there’s some sort of path toward getting something.”
PTC, CANADIAN STYLE: As part of Sunday’s panel discussion of positive train control, John Leonardo, Canadian Pacific’s general manger, wayside train control, touched base at one point on the beginning stages of the technology’s Canadian counterpart.
“We’re now starting negotiations on what’s called ETC on the Canadian side – enhanced train control,” Leonardo said. “We’ve started some meetings with the key players.” Those include the Railway Association of Canada, the Canadian equivalent of the Association of American Railroads; Canadian National; CP; Metrolinx, the Toronto-area agency which includes GO Transit; other Canadian commuter railroads; and VIA Rail Canada.
The process is “really, really early on,” Leonardo said. “We want to learn what we’ve learned from this side of the border. We know our biggest challenge right now will be the communications network. We do not have such a network in Canada to support the kind of communications we have on this side. So we’re looking to build that and want to make it agnostic to whatever kind of system we put in. …
“It will be a very different approach than it is on the U.S. side. It most likely will be a risk-based approach – depending on the risk you are exposed to, that’s the kind of system you’ll probably put in.”
