2012 MATC Fall Lecture Series: Jim Noble

Larissa Sazama Author

11/08/2017 Added

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2012 MATC Fall Lecture Series

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[00:00:00.437]Hey, good morning, everybody.
[00:00:01.629]My name's Charlie Nevers, and I am
[00:00:03.716]here at the University of Missouri in Columbia,
[00:00:06.269]director of the Transportation Infrastructure Center.
[00:00:09.118]And really what we're very proud to have as part
[00:00:11.721]of our presentation this morning on railroad initiatives
[00:00:17.254]is some of the work that Dr. Jim Noble really led,
[00:00:20.498]and was really strong behind.
[00:00:22.340]It was really one of our real great success stories
[00:00:25.319]in the work that we've done.
[00:00:26.493]And so we're really pleased that, to be able to share
[00:00:28.470]with you some of the work that we did
[00:00:30.353]on rail freight passenger analysis in Missouri,
[00:00:34.625]and how successful it was and why it worked.
[00:00:37.301]And so let me introduce Jim to you.
[00:00:40.145]Jim is a faculty and a professor in the area,
[00:00:43.221]in the School of
[00:00:47.079]Industrial Engineering and Systems Management.
[00:00:49.425]Or, I get those back and forth, but he's,
[00:00:54.457]we work real closely with the systems people
[00:00:57.459]in our business, because much of what we do
[00:00:59.246]in transportation is systems oriented.
[00:01:01.564]So we have really close partnerships
[00:01:03.566]with that part of the college.
[00:01:06.189]In this case, we also have worked with others
[00:01:08.024]from the private industry, as well.
[00:01:10.178]So I'll give the phone over, or the mic over to Jim.
[00:01:12.714]And Jim, tell us a little bit, too, about CELDi.
[00:01:15.670]Sure. To start, too,
[00:01:16.793]so we'll know what that is.
[00:01:17.880]Sure.
[00:01:18.880]But it's great that you're all with us,
[00:01:19.882]and Jim, it's all yours.
[00:01:21.047]Okay.
[00:01:22.236]Well, it's great to be able to be here today,
[00:01:24.761]and be able to share (audio buzzes)
[00:01:27.699]in Missouri.
[00:01:28.925]This particular project, as Charlie said,
[00:01:31.280]is looking at freight and passenger rail,
[00:01:34.039]and how to improve those both.
[00:01:35.975]Our team, myself leading it, with Charlie,
[00:01:39.479]and then several students there noted,
[00:01:41.979]Sean, Stella, and Andres.
[00:01:44.107]And, as he mentioned we have a I-U-C-R-C,
[00:01:47.462]N-S-F-I-U-C-R-C called Center for Excellence
[00:01:51.219]in Logistics and Distribution.
[00:01:53.460]And CELDi is a consortium of nine different universities
[00:01:56.324]scattered around the U.S., that looks at logistics
[00:01:59.390]and transportation and distribution issues,
[00:02:02.288]ranging from the East Coast, we have Virginia Tech
[00:02:04.565]and Clemson, and the West Coast,
[00:02:06.927]we have Cal-Berkeley and Arizona.
[00:02:08.986]And then Missouri here in the Midwest, and Arkansas,
[00:02:11.668]and Oklahoma, and I probably forgot a few.
[00:02:13.680]But we do applied research to solve problems,
[00:02:17.142]develop new tools to address logistics problems
[00:02:20.439]that are out in industry.
[00:02:23.168]And then, lastly, I did want to mention here
[00:02:25.476]that Phil Borrowman from Hanson-Wilson was a consultant
[00:02:29.546]that assisted us, particularly when we started looking
[00:02:31.725]at rail improvement alternatives.
[00:02:34.829]And so, what I wanna do is go through this,
[00:02:36.435]and our overall agenda is I wanna give you
[00:02:39.523]a kind of a context that we saw ourselves at,
[00:02:42.525]when we started addressing this problem.
[00:02:44.598]And then what our objective was in addressing it.
[00:02:48.371]And then, do a little bit of a systems analysis background,
[00:02:51.524]and then get into the alternatives,
[00:02:52.887]and how we analyze those, and then give you a little bit
[00:02:55.402]of the implementation story that's occurred
[00:02:57.730]over the last couple years.
[00:03:02.075]So, for starters, you know, we think about
[00:03:03.920]what's happened over the last 10 years in rail.
[00:03:06.870]There's been a very strong resurgence of rail activity.
[00:03:11.771]You know, we see infrastructure expansion,
[00:03:14.158]as noted in that particular picture there.
[00:03:19.174]We see a lot of efforts to try to make rail
[00:03:22.521]much more energy efficient, or probably,
[00:03:25.127]the driver for energy efficiency has also driven
[00:03:28.980]people to use rail more.
[00:03:31.212]That's resulted in a lot of intermodal growth,
[00:03:34.281]in terms of the need for rail to be able to support that.
[00:03:38.668]And that all kind of comes together to look
[00:03:41.323]at some capacity issues.
[00:03:42.895]So I'm gonna illustrate a few of those things
[00:03:44.328]a little bit further, first we start thinking about fuel.
[00:03:47.909]We've seen kind of a double spike,
[00:03:50.258]over the last five or six years.
[00:03:51.889]We've had, in '08 we had that large spike in diesel,
[00:03:54.789]it got almost up to $5 a gallon.
[00:03:57.490]Then we had a drop, but then it's gotten back up
[00:04:01.281]and kind of steadied off and kind of,
[00:04:02.923]a little above $4 per gallon.
[00:04:04.547]So we have historic highs in our fuel costs,
[00:04:08.366]which definitely drives transportation to using rail,
[00:04:13.144]and trying to reduce that cost
[00:04:15.037]associated with transportation.
[00:04:18.234]Also, particularly, and I note this a lot
[00:04:20.400]in our other research that we do,
[00:04:22.464]looking at logistics and the structure
[00:04:24.559]and networks around that.
[00:04:26.534]If you look historically,
[00:04:28.729]you know, we produce a lot of things in the U.S.
[00:04:30.855]And so there's a,
[00:04:33.888]production to the consumer, those distances were shorter.
[00:04:37.769]And so, that predominately necessitated, you know,
[00:04:41.805]you could do things with trucks.
[00:04:43.648]As we've seen things change to more of an import model,
[00:04:48.991]in the U.S., that's dramatically impacted
[00:04:51.586]the kinds of facilities we need at the ports.
[00:04:55.723]And it's dramatically impacted the rail infrastructure
[00:04:58.223]that's necessary in the intermodal associated growth
[00:05:01.021]with the containers associated with that.
[00:05:03.277]And so, that is driving a lot of what we see in rail,
[00:05:07.159]and the need for it.
[00:05:10.093]The intermodal traffic, and if we look at that,
[00:05:13.868]this is kind of just a graph reflecting that
[00:05:15.935]over the last 30 years.
[00:05:18.795]We've seen it grow a lot, you know, it peaked there in 2006.
[00:05:23.682]Then we had the decline, economy decline that occurred
[00:05:27.114]in '08, '09, and '10.
[00:05:30.584]And then the resurgence now, where we're getting back
[00:05:32.452]close to historic highs once again,
[00:05:34.786]in our overall intermodal traffic areas.
[00:05:38.624]And so, you know, when we start looking at the issues
[00:05:42.527]that are gonna be associated with this project,
[00:05:44.718]these are drivers for that.
[00:05:47.441]When it, along with just the intermodal amount of traffic,
[00:05:51.126]you can see here in the overall revenue ton miles.
[00:05:54.438]Pretty much the same graph,
[00:05:56.198]just a little different timescale on it.
[00:05:58.249]So we have an increase in the revenue ton miles,
[00:06:01.489]up through 2008, then we have that peak or that dip,
[00:06:06.759]and then, it recurring back to those same levels,
[00:06:09.626]here in the most recent quarter.
[00:06:14.208]The graphs down at the bottom right looks at here,
[00:06:16.439]as we had this increase, and then we've had a reduction
[00:06:20.607]or decline in the average line-haul speeds.
[00:06:23.987]It went down, back, you know, up to the peak in 2007, '08,
[00:06:28.556]it was down kind of in this, 22 miles per hour,
[00:06:34.200]average line-haul speeds.
[00:06:36.171]As we saw the decrease
[00:06:39.672]in revenue ton miles in '09 and '10,
[00:06:43.217]then the line-haul speeds go up,
[00:06:45.251]because obviously if you have more capacity on the line,
[00:06:48.291]then you don't have the congestion issues.
[00:06:50.517]But then as we see ourselves in this graph,
[00:06:52.340]the data right now doesn't go out current as I wish it did,
[00:06:56.583]but that line's going back down, as we've had these
[00:07:00.290]rise in the overall utilization of the rail,
[00:07:04.642]bringing the line-haul speeds back up.
[00:07:06.306]The bottom line is, we've got congestion,
[00:07:08.831]when we're operating at our economy's level.
[00:07:12.809]And as we look toward the future,
[00:07:15.102]that spells some definite problems.
[00:07:17.289]I mean, if we look at right today,
[00:07:19.568]today being kind of in the last three or four years,
[00:07:22.993]we have some significant areas that are near
[00:07:26.496]or at capacity, around the United States.
[00:07:30.706]One of those being, and here we have Missouri
[00:07:33.269]right in the middle, and so those little line right here
[00:07:35.952]is one of, the yellow line, is one
[00:07:38.450]that will show up in our study, at being at near capacity.
[00:07:43.432]And then, the system, Cambridge Systematics projected,
[00:07:46.953]in 2035, if there are no improvements made
[00:07:50.688]to the U.S. rail infrastructure, then you would have
[00:07:54.217]this massively red map, which would definitely cause
[00:07:57.407]a lot of problems all around the U.S., in terms of that.
[00:08:00.936]And so, this rail congestion is a big issue.
[00:08:04.797]Which was somewhat the motivator behind this project.
[00:08:08.350]There was an article in the Kansas City Star,
[00:08:10.991]done back in '08, looking at some of the data,
[00:08:14.478]particularly related to passenger rail, here in Missouri,
[00:08:18.232]and said it wasn't doing very well.
[00:08:20.481]You know, we have extremely poor performance.
[00:08:25.338]We have a loss in passengers.
[00:08:28.597]On a percentage basis, we had the highest loss.
[00:08:32.072]And so, that was one of the motivators
[00:08:33.944]that drove this study, is just look, okay,
[00:08:36.491]how can we look at this overall system,
[00:08:38.976]and try to improve both the freight flow
[00:08:43.870]as well as the passenger on-time performance,
[00:08:47.266]and service there.
[00:08:49.529]So here's our study objective, as I just basically said.
[00:08:51.788]It is to go through and look at the Kansas City
[00:08:55.504]to St. Louis Union Pacific line, and try to improve
[00:08:59.375]both the on-time performance for passenger,
[00:09:02.764]as well as the freight delay.
[00:09:04.598]We want both of those.
[00:09:05.831]And how can we come up with a list of those?
[00:09:08.190]Over the course of time it had been discussed quite a bit.
[00:09:11.305]And MODOT engaged us to look at this
[00:09:14.930]as a kind of third party, to run analysis,
[00:09:17.855]and looking at the data, need to come up
[00:09:19.585]with some suggestions on how this could be done.
[00:09:24.207]So, scope-wise, this is the passenger rail service line
[00:09:28.295]that we're looking at between St. Louis and Kansas City.
[00:09:36.373]And it's run, the blue line there is run by Union Pacific.
[00:09:40.373]Now it's important to realize that that particular line
[00:09:43.624]is within a broader context.
[00:09:46.779]And so here's the broader context of the UP system map.
[00:09:50.298]And so we're talking basically about this area
[00:09:52.224]over in St. Louis to Kansas City,
[00:09:55.067]which has passenger rail on it.
[00:09:59.530]And if we dive in a little bit further to it,
[00:10:01.694]we see that, you know, there's really
[00:10:03.419]kind of three legs here, and it's important
[00:10:05.387]to differentiate those, because that really affects
[00:10:07.601]what's going on in this situation.
[00:10:09.992]The blue line is what we call the Jefferson City subdivision
[00:10:13.612]between St. Louis and Jefferson City,
[00:10:16.121]and it's a double track, for the most part.
[00:10:18.412]It is now.
[00:10:20.004]When we started the study, it was not double track
[00:10:21.776]all the way, it had a few little stops that were not.
[00:10:24.412]But predominately, it's a double track.
[00:10:26.999]The black line is a single track, as well as the yellow.
[00:10:30.828]And UP is running their rail,
[00:10:34.936]basically the yellow line is eastbound,
[00:10:37.560]and the black line is westward bound.
[00:10:41.219]But when it comes down to Amtrak,
[00:10:43.354]Amtrak is on the black line only.
[00:10:45.249]So they're going with the flow when they go westward.
[00:10:48.321]When they're going eastward, they're going upstream
[00:10:50.283]against freight, on a single rail line.
[00:10:55.321]So as you can imagine, that causes some potential issues.
[00:11:00.139]And then, it's a further component of this to think about,
[00:11:03.439]is the fact that that particular link
[00:11:06.045]between Kansas City and St. Louis is part
[00:11:08.221]of the high-speed rail corridor designation.
[00:11:12.121]So, and then we start looking at some of the improvements
[00:11:14.953]that are gonna be done to it.
[00:11:16.465]There's been some federal investment in that.
[00:11:19.173]But that's the, was the original plan here,
[00:11:21.461]from the U.S. D.O.T.
[00:11:23.474]So that's kind of the context, in terms of looking
[00:11:26.086]at this problem and where we're going.
[00:11:28.006]So let's start, you know, a little time
[00:11:29.539]looking at the data, and then look at some
[00:11:31.157]of the alternatives and the analysis
[00:11:32.690]that we did on those alternatives.
[00:11:35.874]So the project started, and it has two phases,
[00:11:37.756]I should say it up front.
[00:11:38.989]It had a 2006-2007 phase that we did,
[00:11:42.911]and then it had a 2009 phase of analysis.
[00:11:48.594]And so, in 2006-7, we looked at the complete 2005
[00:11:53.009]Amtrak data, and we were just trying to get some feeling
[00:11:56.742]for, what are the issues associated with that.
[00:11:59.110]So if we look at this, we see on the westbound line,
[00:12:02.162]so that's going to be going from St. Louis to Kansas City,
[00:12:05.754]you see, we have the Amtrak on-time data.
[00:12:09.241]And so, when we, if we define on-time
[00:12:11.733]being less than 20 minutes late, then,
[00:12:17.199]we see, departing from St. Louis,
[00:12:20.131]basically, you know, kind of at a 90% level,
[00:12:22.733]so an average lateness of just five and 1/2 minutes.
[00:12:26.716]But then as it goes from St. Louis to get to Jefferson City,
[00:12:31.464]then we leave, we're leaving Jefferson City
[00:12:36.637]significantly later, at this point in time.
[00:12:39.715]You know, and so our on-time performance has dropped.
[00:12:42.568]If we stick with the 30 minutes, then we're at 70%.
[00:12:45.952]If we're doing 15, we're at 44%.
[00:12:48.745]Average lateness around 30 minutes overall.
[00:12:52.137]And so, we're losing our on-time performance
[00:12:56.133]between St. Louis and Jefferson City,
[00:12:58.263]as we're going westbound.
[00:13:01.281]Once it gets on the, what we call the Sedalia subdivision,
[00:13:05.097]then it's, it's a little bit of loss,
[00:13:08.007]but it's more or less the same.
[00:13:09.987]It's able to flow with, basically, the UP
[00:13:13.736]trains that are going westbound.
[00:13:17.268]So that's gonna be important
[00:13:18.365]when we start looking at improvement possibilities.
[00:13:21.532]When we look at the eastbound, we see the reverse basically.
[00:13:25.388]So here we're leaving Kansas City going to St. Louis.
[00:13:28.566]We leave basically on time, and then,
[00:13:32.325]but by the time we get to Jefferson City,
[00:13:34.850]we, our on-time performance is at best 50%.
[00:13:38.350]And so, it's quite poor, we've gone up
[00:13:40.332]to 42 minutes of delay in that stretch.
[00:13:43.716]And so, that obviously presents the opportunities,
[00:13:46.670]when we start thinking about the eastbound traffic.
[00:13:53.666]So we took that data, and we started breaking it down.
[00:13:56.863]Where does all of these delays,
[00:13:58.837]where do they actually occur?
[00:14:00.944]And so, this is the 2005 delay.
[00:14:04.011]We had a total of 107,000 minutes worth of delay
[00:14:06.890]associated with Amtrak, during that time period.
[00:14:11.122]And we can see where those delays occurred.
[00:14:14.662]Starting from, well, let's start over from St. Louis.
[00:14:17.639]So we see a significant percentage of,
[00:14:21.392]oh, let me take a step back.
[00:14:22.805]The green numbers are the delay associated with the line,
[00:14:27.041]that occurs somewhere between the stations.
[00:14:29.532]The red numbers are the delay, percentage of the overall
[00:14:32.255]delay that occurs at a given station.
[00:14:34.911]So those are events that could happen
[00:14:36.309]that are station-oriented.
[00:14:38.395]So we have a 12% of the overall delay
[00:14:40.413]between Washington and Kirkwood.
[00:14:42.419]We have Jefferson City to Hermann, 13%.
[00:14:45.387]We have the Sedalia to Jefferson City, 16%.
[00:14:48.670]And then Lee Summit to Warrensburg, 19%.
[00:14:51.281]So we have, you know, four or five different segments,
[00:14:53.389]where we have significant delay occurring.
[00:14:55.719]And, you know, that's a function of a schedule.
[00:14:57.939]That's a function of the infrastructure
[00:15:01.549]that's obviously got to support that,
[00:15:03.412]and that's what we're gonna look at.
[00:15:04.822]We did a study, and just for completeness,
[00:15:06.364]I'll show you that picture, as well, of 2008.
[00:15:10.160]And so, in 2008, there was a little bit more
[00:15:12.764]overall delay, so 123,000 minutes.
[00:15:15.739]But the location of those delays are predominantly the same.
[00:15:21.169]You know, the amounts changed slightly around,
[00:15:24.342]but wasn't a significant change, really, in that regard.
[00:15:28.215]So the issues were basically the same.
[00:15:30.875]And when we look at the improvement alternatives
[00:15:32.922]that we recommended based upon the study in '06-'07,
[00:15:37.305]they were just starting to be implemented in '08-'09.
[00:15:40.279]So, wouldn't expect them to have affected anything yet.
[00:15:45.538]We also looked at, okay, what kind of delays
[00:15:47.528]are actually occurring?
[00:15:48.853]There's a coding associated with that.
[00:15:51.238]So we have, here we have three different years
[00:15:53.219]worth of data.
[00:15:54.795]The '05 and '08 are full years, the '09 is a partial,
[00:15:59.049]part of the year, at that point in time.
[00:16:02.122]Now we basically saw the same thing occur.
[00:16:05.973]The FTI or the freight train interference,
[00:16:07.915]from the Amtrak perspective, had the greatest
[00:16:10.061]percentage of the delay associated with that.
[00:16:11.919]So getting behind either a coal train going one direction,
[00:16:15.025]or an empty going the other way, or whatever.
[00:16:17.610]So that would be the biggest issues.
[00:16:20.293]Then we see the DSR coded,
[00:16:23.380]which is the temporary speed restrictions,
[00:16:25.398]is a significant portion of delays
[00:16:27.190]that are occurring, as well.
[00:16:28.417]That's really our big.
[00:16:29.719]And then we find some passenger train interference.
[00:16:31.969]So Amtrak trains are actually interfering with each other
[00:16:34.310]a little bit, at stations and things like that.
[00:16:37.907]So, you know, those, that's the issue.
[00:16:39.889]So the issue is when we start looking
[00:16:41.464]at infrastructure improvements, how can we mitigate
[00:16:45.353]against those interferences?
[00:16:46.904]One thing that's interesting to note,
[00:16:48.104]and this is an '09 effect, is, and this is actually
[00:16:50.901]an encouraging delay to have.
[00:16:53.270]This NOD basically says, you're delaying yourself
[00:16:56.304]because you're ahead of schedule. (chuckles)
[00:16:58.405]And so, that is actually the one delay that's okay,
[00:17:00.753]in the grand scheme, I mean obviously it's not,
[00:17:02.893]I mean, you'd prefer to have it perfect.
[00:17:04.707]But that's the one that has, you know, lines and things,
[00:17:07.009]one you have a decrease in the overall
[00:17:09.162]freight load on the rail.
[00:17:11.449]And you also have some improvements
[00:17:12.854]that are starting to be played out.
[00:17:14.837]And so, you start some ahead of schedule delay occurring.
[00:17:21.563]Okay, so from there, we took that data,
[00:17:24.202]and we made this messy graph. (chuckles)
[00:17:25.903]Actually, this graph is more looking at all the issues.
[00:17:31.137]And so, it's purposely messy, because it reflects
[00:17:33.670]all the factors, well, many of the factors
[00:17:35.488]that go into how we have, how we,
[00:17:39.616]what the sources of the delay are.
[00:17:41.356]So, the theory of constraints, which is an approach
[00:17:43.542]developed by Eli Goldratt, it's looked at a lot,
[00:17:46.109]used a lot
[00:17:47.446]in all kinds of different logistics kinds of domains,
[00:17:50.340]and many different kind of problem-solving scenarios.
[00:17:52.736]And so this is what we call a current reality tree,
[00:17:54.584]which is basically just an influence diagram
[00:17:56.438]of what's causing issues.
[00:17:58.756]And so, spent a lot of time talking to people
[00:18:01.073]within Amtrak, within Union Pacific,
[00:18:04.067]and trying to figure out, you know, what are the issues
[00:18:05.807]going on, and then starting linking those together.
[00:18:08.254]So at the very top, we have two different delays.
[00:18:10.195]We have our Amtrak delay and our freight delay,
[00:18:12.679]up on the right.
[00:18:13.683]And so then we start questioning, okay,
[00:18:15.738]what are the factors that are affecting it,
[00:18:17.036]as you work your way down?
[00:18:18.894]You know, we have congestion issues.
[00:18:20.619]We have things being held on the sidings,
[00:18:22.621]things being held by dispatchers.
[00:18:25.233]We have equipment failures,
[00:18:27.082]I mean there's a range of detailed things.
[00:18:29.991]But you know, when we started working down to the issues
[00:18:33.053]that we saw as kind of more of the root causes,
[00:18:37.769]we see, well, dispatcher priority
[00:18:40.821]could be an issue that was played out
[00:18:44.067]on some of the scenarios that we talked about.
[00:18:46.374]I mean, you could have crew scheduling,
[00:18:48.128]in terms of a crew goes dead, and so therefore,
[00:18:51.632]you have to go and a train, a freight train
[00:18:54.302]is held until a crew can get to it.
[00:18:56.928]Maintenance issues, in terms of making sure
[00:18:58.584]that the lines are good.
[00:19:00.735]The geographic conditions, which is really an interesting
[00:19:02.642]component of it, is that between St. Louis
[00:19:05.728]and Jefferson City, you have rail that's running
[00:19:08.428]along the river.
[00:19:10.276]Well, as you think about that, that's level area,
[00:19:13.720]but in general, you'd have, the infrastructure,
[00:19:16.372]you have a lot of water.
[00:19:17.950]And so, when you're running heavy coal trains,
[00:19:19.817]those are gonna tear up the rail a lot more,
[00:19:21.713]than well, then you see the Jefferson City,
[00:19:25.587]other places, just where you've got solid ground.
[00:19:27.883]So the geographic conditions actually increase
[00:19:29.994]the maintenance conditions that you have potentially,
[00:19:32.702]which then cause the temporary speed restrictions,
[00:19:35.309]which then cause the congestion,
[00:19:37.310]which then cause the delays.
[00:19:38.800]So you start having this cascading effect.
[00:19:41.479]And so the goal is to kind of try to break down all of those
[00:19:44.671]different components that go into that.
[00:19:46.502]And the core problem, at that point,
[00:19:48.193]and this is a good problem,
[00:19:50.114]but is just the increased train load.
[00:19:52.019]You know, the more load you have,
[00:19:53.601]and you're running close to capacity,
[00:19:55.955]then your geographic conditions cause, you know,
[00:19:57.881]your maintenance issues will be more,
[00:20:00.354]your dispatching issues are more complex,
[00:20:03.412]and so all of those things play out
[00:20:05.042]and make this a little bit more difficult
[00:20:06.522]problem to address.
[00:20:08.046]So that gave us a broad picture to talk from,
[00:20:11.901]to think through, what are the issues?
[00:20:13.867]So from there we started trying to generate alternatives
[00:20:16.903]to improve the system.
[00:20:20.551]And these were worked in conjunction with Union Pacific,
[00:20:23.790]with Amtrak,
[00:20:25.503]together with Hanson-Wilson,
[00:20:27.352]and coming up with, how do we go about addressing
[00:20:30.239]these delays in the different places,
[00:20:33.056]in terms of the physical infrastructure improvements
[00:20:35.232]that could be done.
[00:20:36.692]So we see things, you know, improving sidings.
[00:20:38.278]Actually, here we have a connecting two sidings.
[00:20:41.656]So actually just double-tracking an area.
[00:20:44.377]Extending another siding.
[00:20:47.399]Taking this bridge, well, like I said,
[00:20:49.767]from Kansas City down to Jefferson City,
[00:20:51.787]that's a single line.
[00:20:53.160]So we have some sidings, but many of them are too small
[00:20:56.182]to hold a freight train.
[00:20:58.416]So that would make the passenger trains again
[00:21:00.572]have to use those when you had a meet event.
[00:21:03.036]On the Jefferson City to St. Louis side,
[00:21:05.982]you've got the bridge,
[00:21:08.711]one bridge that was a single lane, at Osage.
[00:21:12.338]And so that was one that, obviously you have
[00:21:15.361]a choke point there.
[00:21:17.027]At this point in time, you also have the Gasconade bridge
[00:21:21.028]that only had a single line over it.
[00:21:24.241]You had two bridges there that were single,
[00:21:26.815]that would require congestion
[00:21:28.175]relatively close to each other.
[00:21:30.126]You had a long stretch over here in this area between,
[00:21:34.710]where you didn't have a crossover on the double line.
[00:21:38.520]So particularly as trains are going in and out
[00:21:40.250]of St. Louis, there's, need to be able to have
[00:21:43.714]more flexibility for that.
[00:21:45.734]So those are the alternatives in general that we highlighted
[00:21:50.158]and came up with, got with Hanson some cost estimates,
[00:21:53.708]and then did some analysis on those.
[00:21:57.246]So just briefly, looking at some of the alternatives,
[00:21:59.514]that we ran a bunch.
[00:22:00.846]But we have multiple ones for each one.
[00:22:02.539]But just kind of, you know, here's an example
[00:22:04.209]of the California siding where, you know,
[00:22:06.605]you have this small siding already that's just 3500 feet,
[00:22:10.166]so it's not long enough to put a train in.
[00:22:12.141]So we extended, you know, we had different options
[00:22:14.060]of how to extend it, whether to extend it east or west,
[00:22:16.173]or whether we move it totally.
[00:22:17.981]And this is one that actually ended up being implemented.
[00:22:21.339]In the end I'll mention that, but I guess I already did.
[00:22:23.463]So we tried to find a spot where we had
[00:22:25.639]the least number of crossings,
[00:22:28.095]in terms of putting those new sidings in.
[00:22:31.972]Example of Strasburg, trying to extend it
[00:22:34.113]a little bit to the left.
[00:22:37.293]Should make that one a bit more usable.
[00:22:41.200]Here's one where we're connecting.
[00:22:43.186]So this is the long stretch here.
[00:22:45.086]So we're basically adding seven miles,
[00:22:48.390]or six, seven miles of train to make this
[00:22:50.737]a double track here, which is,
[00:22:53.024]it's actually an area where a lot of the passenger
[00:22:56.042]and freight trains would meet, and so.
[00:23:00.523]Here's the, you get the river bridge.
[00:23:02.463]So it was basically a matter of going in on the Osage
[00:23:04.295]and adding in the extra line, looking at what would fit.
[00:23:09.000]This one actually required the bridge structure
[00:23:12.575]in order to support that, versus the Gasconade Bridge
[00:23:16.537]was actually set up so it was already ready
[00:23:19.283]for the second line, but it was not installed yet
[00:23:22.099]at this point in time.
[00:23:23.949]So those are some of, I think I got
[00:23:25.067]maybe one more alternative.
[00:23:26.137]And then the last one would be the Webster crossover.
[00:23:27.767]And so, it had a single crossover, but it wasn't universal.
[00:23:30.956]So taking that one out and putting in one at Webster.
[00:23:34.134]So that would be another improvement area.
[00:23:38.872]So, we took all of those possible solutions, or ideas,
[00:23:44.364]and we developed a large-scale simulation model for this.
[00:23:47.693]There's different kinds of simulation,
[00:23:49.871]ways to simulate things.
[00:23:51.512]This particular simulation is a discrete event simulation
[00:23:54.929]that we developed from scratch, to capture the rail logic.
[00:24:00.722]So it was a fairly significant endeavor
[00:24:02.680]to come up with one that addresses all the congestion issues
[00:24:07.047]so you don't have trains running into each other,
[00:24:08.969]and keeping separations and all that kind of thing,
[00:24:11.737]but doing it at a,
[00:24:16.136]a medium-high level,
[00:24:18.572]so we're capturing the congestion issues,
[00:24:21.736]but we're not modeling, you know, all of the direct
[00:24:24.706]physic logics of trains, which some of the other
[00:24:27.986]simulations that are out there addressed.
[00:24:31.081]So we had to model both the,
[00:24:34.995]here the dual-track, and here, here's an example
[00:24:37.543]you can see where the bridge is not there.
[00:24:39.402]This is, the Gasconade's not there.
[00:24:42.356]Oh, the Osage.
[00:24:44.593]Then you've got the array of sidings,
[00:24:46.563]as they're going across,
[00:24:48.213]and then, here's the eastbound, which is,
[00:24:51.399]doesn't have passenger rail, but it does have
[00:24:55.318]the freight rail that's going in at Jeff City
[00:24:57.431]and go on to St. Louis.
[00:24:58.527]So we modeled the whole thing from both the yards
[00:25:01.417]in both St. Louis to Kansas City.
[00:25:04.377]Once, if I animated this, I guess maybe
[00:25:07.013]I should do that at some point, I could run it for you.
[00:25:09.597]But you see trains running back and forth in this,
[00:25:12.577]and so we can simulate a month worth of activity
[00:25:15.729]in a couple minutes, in this way.
[00:25:18.190]And so then we can go in and make modifications
[00:25:20.600]to the infrastructure, and see how that would impact things.
[00:25:24.460]So the main thing we were looking at is congestion.
[00:25:27.672]Where do we have delays?
[00:25:29.562]And so, we find those delay points,
[00:25:33.233]and then from there, we come up with the data
[00:25:38.191]to show whether at that point it's significant enough
[00:25:40.286]that it needs to be addressed.
[00:25:44.177]So, running the simulation,
[00:25:46.163]back in 2007 for those scenarios,
[00:25:48.941]what we did is we looked at the amount of delay reduction
[00:25:54.703]that would occur from a given infrastructure improvement.
[00:25:58.834]And so, we used as our baseline, if we went through
[00:26:01.030]and double-tracked the whole thing,
[00:26:04.122]you know, that would be our best scenario. (chuckles)
[00:26:07.308]A very expensive scenario, but we could,
[00:26:08.867]you know, that would be the best scenario.
[00:26:12.072]And so we said, that's the baseline.
[00:26:13.822]Because you may still have delay in that,
[00:26:15.370]just because of timing events, you may still have delay,
[00:26:18.880]that occurred based upon various stations
[00:26:21.312]and loadings and things.
[00:26:22.792]And so, that's our base scenario.
[00:26:25.573]And then we looked at how much of that delay,
[00:26:28.054]of that best, you know, you have the current scenario
[00:26:30.709]versus the base, how much of that can we recover
[00:26:33.860]by putting a given investment in?
[00:26:37.417]So we looked at extending a California siding,
[00:26:41.181]which these are all organized by the Sedalia subdivision,
[00:26:44.225]which is between Kansas City and Jefferson City.
[00:26:46.654]So, you know, that, we see the percentage
[00:26:49.829]of reduction in delay that can occur.
[00:26:52.679]But what we see that's little bit interesting
[00:26:54.956]is that, as we look at the Sedalia side,
[00:26:58.962]the most delays, reduction in delay occurred
[00:27:03.266]predominantly on the Amtrak side,
[00:27:05.273]that's where the savings occurred.
[00:27:07.198]So we have, you know, three times the amount of savings here
[00:27:09.832]for the California siding.
[00:27:12.504]A significant amount if we increased that siding there.
[00:27:16.279]Then we did some combinations of those.
[00:27:20.959]And if we go down to the Jefferson City subdivision,
[00:27:23.301]we see the reverse occur.
[00:27:25.171]That the improvement alternatives
[00:27:27.875]for the Jefferson City subdivision,
[00:27:33.120]predominantly were in the Union Pacific
[00:27:36.409]and on the freight trail, freight rail.
[00:27:39.664]So that was helpful, when we start looking
[00:27:43.465]at recommendations, because it ended up being,
[00:27:47.131]more that was one, and Amtrak was the perspective
[00:27:49.404]of where should we put public money,
[00:27:52.603]and where should private money go,
[00:27:54.086]relative to the needs and the things that need to be done
[00:27:58.145]to improve overall service.
[00:28:01.713]So we took those numbers, combined with the cost
[00:28:04.498]to implement them,
[00:28:06.753]and put them on a dominance frontier curve,
[00:28:09.486]which I think is useful to be able to see what's going on,
[00:28:12.204]sort them out.
[00:28:14.160]So here we basically have an example,
[00:28:16.304]for the Union Pacific percentage delays,
[00:28:22.551]if we, so it would be the one column here.
[00:28:26.250]So we're taking these percentage delays,
[00:28:29.954]and then mapping those together with the cost to do those,
[00:28:33.727]and find out which ones dominate.
[00:28:35.616]So for example, this J4, which is extending California,
[00:28:39.410]I'm sorry, wrong one.
[00:28:40.793]J4 is the Webster crossover.
[00:28:42.859]And so, here we get a 20% reduction in delay,
[00:28:45.957]at a cost of, I don't know, three, three or so million.
[00:28:52.167]And so, all of these other alternatives in here,
[00:28:55.771]you're getting less delay and paying more money.
[00:29:00.061]So effectively they're dominated out of consideration.
[00:29:02.720]Because not till you get up to J3,
[00:29:04.777]which is doing both of the bridges,
[00:29:07.276]that you find that you are getting more of a delay reduction
[00:29:13.005]relative to the cost.
[00:29:15.765]Now that's not to say that some of these in between,
[00:29:18.126]you know, these are kind of up on this edge.
[00:29:20.686]But I think it's a useful way to look at things
[00:29:22.926]from a,
[00:29:25.222]where are you getting the efficiency out of your investment.
[00:29:29.794]We did the same thing for Amtrak.
[00:29:33.306]Delay percentage.
[00:29:34.817]And so, here we see the extending the California siding,
[00:29:37.828]the dominant solution relative to the cost.
[00:29:42.021]And then down to the siding and connecting,
[00:29:46.594]making an extra track, basically,
[00:29:48.438]was the next dominant solution.
[00:29:50.737]Everything else fell out below those.
[00:29:53.937]So that helps to give us insight in terms
[00:29:55.843]of where we want to put the resources.
[00:29:59.573]And then, we finally looked at kind of the amount of delay
[00:30:03.408]per investment, and the benefit-cost ratio,
[00:30:07.619]basically, on this.
[00:30:10.437]How much delay you get per million dollars invested.
[00:30:13.989]And so, when we look at those,
[00:30:17.075]we've got the percentages.
[00:30:19.267]Well, this is just a ratio, it's not a percentage.
[00:30:21.780]So we're getting, basically, close to 4%
[00:30:24.462]of delay savings per million dollars that are invested,
[00:30:27.604]or extending this from the Amtrak perspective
[00:30:29.596]of about 1.5, for the UP perspective.
[00:30:32.922]And so, these end up being our economically
[00:30:35.884]efficient options.
[00:30:37.808]So we have kind of the dominant solutions,
[00:30:40.160]and the economically efficient.
[00:30:41.685]And so, we can combine those two together,
[00:30:43.577]and come up with our final recommendations.
[00:30:49.885]And so, we recommended extending the California siding,
[00:30:53.859]so you're connecting the two lines.
[00:30:55.776]Actually, this was on the edge of things,
[00:30:59.029]but the main line on the Osage Bridge is a major constraint,
[00:31:03.044]and so we did look at that.
[00:31:05.227]The Gasconade Bridge was actually, we kept it
[00:31:09.205]in the analysis, but it was actually being worked on
[00:31:12.042]while we started the analysis.
[00:31:13.572]And so, it was already working on it,
[00:31:15.974]so we took that one out.
[00:31:18.377]And then we also thought that, when it come down to it,
[00:31:20.291]this is kind of looking back to the current reality tree,
[00:31:23.277]but there were some possibly maintenance scheduling things
[00:31:26.422]that could be addressed, that could improve those areas.
[00:31:32.374]So, the result of that, in 2007,
[00:31:36.674]was that the bill was sent to the,
[00:31:40.338]actually we made a similar presentation
[00:31:42.474]to the House Transportation Committee in Missouri.
[00:31:45.576]The bill was sent through, $5 million was allocated
[00:31:48.847]to basically, to the California siding.
[00:31:52.480]The federal match was secured, and then in,
[00:31:56.164]it was April of 2008 or '09, look at my notes
[00:32:00.793]just to remember, somewhere in that range.
[00:32:03.212]The California, they broke the ground,
[00:32:05.953]and they went ahead and put that siding in,
[00:32:09.610]at that point in time.
[00:32:14.116]Then, we reset,
[00:32:17.417]and did a little bit more analysis.
[00:32:18.766]Now, I'll do this roughly quick because it's very similar.
[00:32:22.416]We looked at some other scenarios,
[00:32:24.308]MODOT was interested in looking, or Amtrak was looking
[00:32:27.120]at some other possible scenarios, together with UP,
[00:32:29.718]in terms of how we can improve things.
[00:32:32.229]At this point in time, we basically have
[00:32:34.942]a pool of federal funding that's coming down
[00:32:37.561]that could be looked at.
[00:32:39.171]So we analyzed a couple of different scenarios.
[00:32:41.395]We looked at, you know, really, you look
[00:32:43.385]at the locations of things, kind of the same scenarios.
[00:32:45.881]We have a new siding over here,
[00:32:48.257]it may sounds like the Warrensburg,
[00:32:50.014]you know, you could look at.
[00:32:51.668]Some enhancements, big things we could do.
[00:32:54.720]We have another one, another siding.
[00:32:56.237]We already did the California siding,
[00:32:57.701]which is kind of right in this area,
[00:32:59.324]between Jeff City in this area.
[00:33:00.602]There's another one over here at Knob Noster.
[00:33:03.043]We'll look at to try to address that area.
[00:33:06.273]The bridge yet,
[00:33:08.282]this bridge had not been implemented yet,
[00:33:09.817]so we still kept that on the table.
[00:33:12.932]We had another crossover for Herman, you know,
[00:33:14.716]a Kirkwood crossover,
[00:33:16.720]and so, we had some different areas to look at.
[00:33:20.441]So we ran the same simulation model again,
[00:33:22.147]based upon these scenarios,
[00:33:23.965]and we start looking at what happened here.
[00:33:27.150]Once again, we saw some very similar kinds of results.
[00:33:30.674]You know, we have the Knob Noster siding once again.
[00:33:33.820]You know, which is on the Sedalia side,
[00:33:35.983]giving a greater percentage to Amtrak.
[00:33:39.737]When we look at,
[00:33:42.531]you know, the bridges are getting more overall benefit,
[00:33:46.649]and the things on the Jefferson City subdivision,
[00:33:50.260]more to the freight.
[00:33:53.492]And so, you know, we have those overall numbers.
[00:33:58.708]We're doing it, we get the same thing
[00:34:00.360]based upon the percent delay reductions.
[00:34:03.791]The dominance graphs, so once again, you can see here,
[00:34:07.853]we have the crossover that's dominant,
[00:34:09.533]followed by basically the bridges.
[00:34:11.432]The bridge, three, and then the combination
[00:34:13.646]of the crossover and the bridge.
[00:34:15.001]So those obviously are pretty high on the freight side.
[00:34:19.875]On the passenger side, we have,
[00:34:22.798]we have the Kirkwood crossover actually is
[00:34:25.233]a low-cost one down here.
[00:34:27.218]And then we have this Knob Noster siding,
[00:34:28.854]which is one kind of back over on the Sedalia side.
[00:34:33.800]And then we've got some combinations.
[00:34:35.924]And then, this final, high-cost but high return
[00:34:39.783]possible scenario is this TrackControl increasing,
[00:34:45.377]trying to improve the speed.
[00:34:48.349]And so, you know, when we look at that,
[00:34:50.238]do the same thing to the different costs
[00:34:52.817]of the amount of savings per million dollars spent.
[00:34:57.819]So, let's see, the siding and the crossover.
[00:35:02.358]The bridge here is going to be relatively low,
[00:35:04.174]because it's a high cost.
[00:35:07.449]And again, we still put that one
[00:35:09.180]kind of on our recommendations,
[00:35:11.857]because it kind of completes things to finish that all up,
[00:35:16.717]on the Jefferson City subdivision.
[00:35:22.000]So, you know, recommend the Knob Noster siding,
[00:35:25.114]the Kingsville siding, and then getting that bridge done,
[00:35:28.615]over there, and then getting that crossover.
[00:35:32.415]So those are the ones that came down as recommendations
[00:35:34.664]for the revised study.
[00:35:37.801]And the Herman, so all, both of those.
[00:35:43.115]Then, these came forward, and so what's happened
[00:35:46.413]since there, implementation wise,
[00:35:48.984]the Osage River bridge began construction this spring.
[00:35:53.348]And so, it'll be done relatively soon.
[00:35:55.586]This press release acknowledges the fact
[00:35:58.384]that we did some study on this to help
[00:36:00.818]determine where to put
[00:36:05.628]capacity improvements.
[00:36:09.483]We, you look at the federal awards.
[00:36:12.683]Their high-speed rail program for Missouri,
[00:36:16.761]and so these are a list of things that are currently on,
[00:36:19.374]that were funded out of predominantly
[00:36:23.298]out of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
[00:36:26.715]All of them were, in this case, listed.
[00:36:29.750]And of those, you know, those six of the nine or 10,
[00:36:34.947]nine different projects there,
[00:36:37.057]are all ones that we had studied and recommended.
[00:36:39.972]So like the, here's the bridge over the Osage River,
[00:36:42.168]so it had basically full funding to get that implemented.
[00:36:45.194]A lot of these other ones are feasibility,
[00:36:48.352]engineering studies, to get that engineering
[00:36:50.577]part of the work done.
[00:36:52.239]Then the implementation would be obviously pending,
[00:36:56.928]and that will probably be the next issue.
[00:37:00.834]So, in conclusion, and this is a little fuzzy
[00:37:03.250]but I'll zoom in a little bit,
[00:37:04.973]MRDOT put together a kind of an overall state
[00:37:07.482]of what happened to the system.
[00:37:10.604]And so, things are being done to try to improve things,
[00:37:14.314]you know, a fair amount of investment.
[00:37:16.795]You know, over $3 million, $300 million dollars
[00:37:19.436]that has been invested in looking at this.
[00:37:22.493]And we looked at the results.
[00:37:26.070]And it was basically, we've got, you know,
[00:37:29.340]ridership that has been increasing.
[00:37:32.383]And I looked at 2012, just kind of its current.
[00:37:34.894]And it's slightly ahead of this, as well.
[00:37:38.913]On-time performance went from '08 of 63% up to 89%.
[00:37:44.713]That includes, you know, some of the recommendations
[00:37:46.639]that have been implemented.
[00:37:48.561]Customer satisfaction had gone up significantly,
[00:37:51.636]that it was not good before, and so that
[00:37:55.917]was a significant improvement.
[00:37:58.794]So you know, from the overall,
[00:38:04.020]the passenger side, we're seeing some significant
[00:38:06.465]improvements that have occurred
[00:38:08.477]over the course of the last couple years.
[00:38:10.932]And the challenge will be, as, you know,
[00:38:13.700]this occurred during a time period when freight was low.
[00:38:17.086]And so obviously, that makes the passenger easier to do.
[00:38:21.152]So that,
[00:38:23.463]the challenge will be as we are increasing,
[00:38:26.094]and get our freight levels back to where they were,
[00:38:28.582]is to maintain that,
[00:38:30.134]and I think we've got the infrastructure
[00:38:31.626]that's starting to be implemented that will enable that.
[00:38:35.295]So, that concludes, and I'll now take questions.
[00:38:49.799]Jim, can you share with us the volume
[00:38:51.556]of the two-way freight rail on that line?
[00:38:54.290]You talked about two Amtrak trains today.
[00:38:56.911]Yeah.
[00:38:57.914]And how many freight trains are there?
[00:38:59.012]In the 50 range, yeah.
[00:39:00.502]50, kind of the 45 to 60 trains per day.
[00:39:05.116]So once we improve the capacity,
[00:39:07.014]then we'll see more freight trains can take advantage
[00:39:09.615]of that, and we'll come up to the stall position.
[00:39:11.878]Well, a new spot that will have congestion. (laughs)
[00:39:13.985]At some point, you'll have to have an extra line.
[00:39:16.518]You can only squeeze so much out of a rock, but yeah.
[00:39:25.830]Okay, Dr. Roulette asks, how do you model
[00:39:27.894]the priority between Amtrak and freight trains
[00:39:30.303]in this simulation?
[00:39:32.564]We,
[00:39:34.835]I mean, following kind of the national rule,
[00:39:38.880]the passenger rail was given top priority, on that.
[00:39:43.303]And then we went through and used UP's rules
[00:39:46.788]for their various freight,
[00:39:48.743]because they had some expedites
[00:39:50.418]versus other kinds of trains.
[00:39:53.328]And so, we're following their rules.
[00:39:56.779]So, and we were looking, in this case,
[00:40:01.966]check my memory here.
[00:40:04.606]Two or three kind of decision nodes down to determine
[00:40:08.904]who would have priority and who would end up going
[00:40:11.372]into the sidings.
[00:40:12.790]Now, the case where we were going particularly
[00:40:15.141]on the Jefferson City to Kansas City level,
[00:40:20.452]before we had the sidings big enough
[00:40:23.622]for the freight to be able to use them,
[00:40:28.011]then the passenger trains, even though
[00:40:29.788]they officially had priority, they had no space.
[00:40:32.080]So they had to go into the siding,
[00:40:33.562]and wait for the larger freight train to go by.
[00:40:40.744]We have a question from the University of Iowa.
[00:40:44.678]Does passenger service have priority over freight train,
[00:40:51.375]have priority over freight in track usage?
[00:40:54.321]And the answer is, yes,
[00:40:55.811]kind of along the lines of that last question.
[00:40:57.822]So yes, the passenger does have the priority,
[00:41:02.518]by the federal mandate, and so,
[00:41:05.954]UP dispatchers work real hard to maintain that.
[00:41:18.614]You don't, when the infrastructure's not there
[00:41:20.768]to support it, then there's only so much you can do.
[00:41:22.969]You know, you can't, for example, if you had a train
[00:41:25.989]that was coming, you know, once it leaves Kansas City,
[00:41:29.968]and it's
[00:41:32.196]going along, and you have trains that have left
[00:41:34.754]Jefferson City going westbound that are freight,
[00:41:38.755]you know, the freight, the passenger is going to have
[00:41:40.846]to go into the siding, until the sidings are big enough
[00:41:43.271]to handle the freight, which is what the California one
[00:41:46.437]allowed, and the ones that we have proposed
[00:41:48.541]will allow that as well, we'll have multiple points
[00:41:51.891]for passing.
[00:41:55.360]Okay, we also have another one.
[00:41:57.954]You mentioned the near capacity or above capacity.
[00:42:01.127]How do you get the capacity?
[00:42:05.656]Maybe I should go back to that.
[00:42:09.963]Let me do that real quick.
[00:42:14.026]It'll be somewhere in there.
[00:42:20.654]These capacities, the Cambridge Systematics generated those.
[00:42:25.767]And so, I will defer, I don't 100% know,
[00:42:29.506]in terms of, when you look at what's going on.
[00:42:32.453]But you look at the capacity, once you get to the point
[00:42:34.870]where you start having, you know, too much congestion.
[00:42:41.067]You know, in general, these speeds, the average speeds
[00:42:44.061]being in the 20, 22, 23 miles per hour in the line speeds.
[00:42:49.978]And when you start seeing that degrade too much,
[00:42:52.766]then obviously, you're getting to the point
[00:42:54.775]that you're at capacity there.
[00:42:58.378]It's, there's just, the freight, the train interactions,
[00:43:03.678]when you start looking at them,
[00:43:07.252]you'd think, you know, almost if you have a freight train
[00:43:12.450]every half hour, that's getting,
[00:43:15.023]that's a lot of train, freight on a single line.
[00:43:18.292]Because, you have mandated separation between trains
[00:43:22.685]that you have to have because of the speed,
[00:43:25.900]the time it takes them to slow down.
[00:43:28.094]And so, you know, it's basically, you can look
[00:43:30.499]at the line fill on that, and once it gets beyond that,
[00:43:33.436]then you're gonna start having those congestion points.
[00:43:41.336]Do you have any plans to expand
[00:43:42.843]your simulation model to do crew scheduling, etc.?
[00:43:46.819]We have not been asked to do that.
[00:43:50.198]But, I mean, that would be definitely something
[00:43:52.666]that we could, would be an easy factor to being into it.
[00:43:55.373]To add basically additional resources
[00:43:57.015]that keep the trains live.
[00:43:59.053]So it would be,
[00:44:01.364]actually, it would be a very simple addition.
[00:44:06.264]Not all additions are simple, but that one,
[00:44:07.971]that one can be done fairly easy to do that.
[00:44:09.972]So, kind of, that would be a good one to do,
[00:44:13.175]particularly as we look at having more freight
[00:44:15.697]on the line there.
[00:44:17.230]The crew scheduling problem becomes much more significant.
[00:44:22.141]Trying to remember the percentage of crew,
[00:44:28.686]looking to pull it here, almost there.
[00:44:35.533]Have to look at my cheat sheet, you know,
[00:44:36.890]which of those codes stands for crew delays.
[00:44:48.558]Um, I'm not finding it off the top.
[00:44:54.647]So that could actually be, the freight train interference
[00:44:56.985]could include that, as well.
[00:45:01.386]But that's a good, that's a good thing to add, yeah, sorry.
[00:45:10.021]Is there a disincentive for UP in this case
[00:45:13.113]to increase sidings that would benefit passenger service
[00:45:15.611]over freight?
[00:45:17.774]Really good point.
[00:45:18.870]I mean, particularly, if you look back historically,
[00:45:23.163]you know, as long as that.
[00:45:25.699]The, I mean, our objective was to say,
[00:45:30.880]how can we improve both.
[00:45:33.446]Because when we look at the results,
[00:45:35.363]there are benefits to both.
[00:45:37.737]And I think, you know, if we look at,
[00:45:40.222]actually if I go down,
[00:45:43.286]yeah, further down, somewhere in this range.
[00:45:52.195]So here we have, you know, if we extend
[00:45:54.603]this California siding and the Strasburg siding,
[00:45:57.638]we're getting about the same improvement for both.
[00:46:00.353]Now that's not true on all of them.
[00:46:02.384]But the, you know, the reality is, I think,
[00:46:07.094]my feeling is that their,
[00:46:09.729]they have to both be on the line.
[00:46:12.570]That's just kind of the,
[00:46:14.258]the passenger is there, you know.
[00:46:17.206]If we go in Europe and things, you know,
[00:46:19.121]they have dedicated lines to passenger.
[00:46:20.670]But we don't find that in the U.S. very much.
[00:46:23.086]So they need to be on the same line.
[00:46:24.752]So putting the infrastructure in to support both
[00:46:28.685]is fundamentally, you know, gonna end up moving both faster.
[00:46:34.408]Because the passengers, passenger trains can slow down
[00:46:37.853]the freight, as well, as well as the freight
[00:46:39.891]slows down the passenger.
[00:46:41.134]So is it a disincentive?
[00:46:43.332]You know, I guess I would say that there's,
[00:46:46.376]the key in this case was trying to find
[00:46:47.841]where it was a win-win for both,
[00:46:50.848]and I think we did that.
[00:46:56.184]In Missouri, some of them carry passengers,
[00:46:58.116]but most freight lines, Springfield to St. Louis,
[00:47:00.469]Kansas City to Omaha, a couple of them that come to mind.
[00:47:05.391]What is MODOT or the railroads looking to do
[00:47:09.185]to improve some of these other systems,
[00:47:12.087]and what role can we play that can support that?
[00:47:15.951]I know, you know they're exploring
[00:47:17.877]particularly Kansas City, or the St. Louis to Springfield.
[00:47:22.524]And Amtrak did a preliminary study on that,
[00:47:24.752]to show the potentials.
[00:47:26.447]And that's a place where, I think, in terms of looking,
[00:47:28.704]as that potential goes forward.
[00:47:30.610]I mean, that line has, it's a single-track line,
[00:47:32.640]so it has definitely a lot more need probably
[00:47:35.940]for some infrastructure improvements,
[00:47:37.474]to bring that up to ability to provide Amtrak service
[00:47:40.324]that would be acceptable.
[00:47:41.762]But there's definitely, you know, on all of those lines,
[00:47:44.123]these, you know, the models that we have developed
[00:47:46.117]give you the ability to fairly quickly analyze,
[00:47:51.206]quickly and robustly analyze
[00:47:53.984]where the congestion points are,
[00:47:55.425]and where is the best place to put, you know,
[00:47:58.253]infrastructure improvements.
[00:48:00.610](man mumbling off mic)
[00:48:02.164]You can move it anywhere, yeah, yeah.
[00:48:03.825]Once we have the data, yeah, that's right.
[00:48:13.121]Yeah, sure, Kansas City and Omaha, any of those
[00:48:15.559]could definitely be modeled, as well.
[00:48:19.037]Because that's a heavy freight line,
[00:48:21.324]Kansas City, yeah.

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2012 MATC Fall Lecture Series: Jim Noble

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