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Ti The Railroad Industry

The document discusses the structure and significance of the railroad industry in the United States, highlighting the classification of carriers based on their annual revenues. Class I railroads dominate in freight transport, handling a significant portion of the nation's freight, particularly basic commodities that are not easily transported by other means. Additionally, while railroads have decreased in passenger transport, Amtrak is increasingly serving intercity passengers and is set to expand its commuter services.

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21 views1 page

Ti The Railroad Industry

The document discusses the structure and significance of the railroad industry in the United States, highlighting the classification of carriers based on their annual revenues. Class I railroads dominate in freight transport, handling a significant portion of the nation's freight, particularly basic commodities that are not easily transported by other means. Additionally, while railroads have decreased in passenger transport, Amtrak is increasingly serving intercity passengers and is set to expand its commuter services.

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uma_1446
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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ti The Railroad Industry

Interstate Commerce Commission as those with annual gross operating


revenues of $50,000,000 or more. These represent 94% of the rail
mileage, 91’i3t'.- of the railroad worlters, and 93% of tlte railroad traffic.
There are also approximately 446 Class ll and Class lll carriers, includ-
ing some 225 terminal, switching, and industrial carriers I l l.
Class ll carriers have annual revenues of less than 550n1illion but of
more than $10 million; Class lll carriers have revenues oi '~.l0 million
or less. Class l railroads generally perform intercity line haul service.
The smaller companies do some line haul and also offer feeder service,
perform terminal functions, and serve private industries. Class I rail-
roads have common carrier status and, by law, must offer good and
efficient service to all shippers and traffic, without discrimination as to
persons, places, or things. Private carriers usually perform intraplant
service but may be I00 tniles or more in extent and devoted to carrying
only one commodity, such as coal or ore.
in 1979 the railroads handled 02? billion ton miles of freight, or
36.6% of all the freight handled in the United States. The nest heaviest
carrier of freight is the truclt, which in that same year handled bib
billion ton miles, being 24.2% of the total ll, p. 36]. Figures l.l and
1.2 show the ton miles and passenger miles of traffic handled in the last
E5 years by the several types of transport.
These graphs demonstrate that railroads are important to society.
What the graphs do not show is the peculiar necessity of having rail-
roads to transport many of the economy's basic commodities. The im-
portant bull-t products-lumber, coal, iron ore, wheat, building materials,
and others—do not lend themselves to transport by airline or highway,
and only in a limited number oflocations can water transport be effec-
tively utilised; nor are these or other competing agencies equi|-ped to
handle efficiently in large quantities most of the products consigned to
rail movement.
Railroads no longer predominate in passenger haul, out Amtrak
trains are moving increasingly large numbers of intercity passengers and
are likely to continue doing so as available petroleum energy supplies
arc consumed. ftmtralt {the National Railroad Passenger Corporation}
was authorised October 30, li~l'i'0 to acquire the railroad passenger ser-
vice from the private carriers. The current Amtrak network, shown in
Figure 1.3, is operated under contract over the traclts of 20 participat-
ing carriers. Traffic for the past five years is given in Table I l.
Suburban commuter service is not presently included in Amtrak.‘
These services, rendered in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh,

‘Recent passage of the Hortheast Hail Service Act of llllll calls for creating an
Amtralt It.‘-olnmuter Service Corporation (an Amtrak subsidiary} lo assu me respon-
sibiliiy for commuter service in the Horthcast before 1933.

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