(The following story by Bob Roberts appeared on the WBBM Newsradio 780 website on March 18, 2009.)
CHICAGO — The CEO of one of the nation’s largest railroads sees evidence that the economy is beginning to recover.
Freight traffic on eastern rail giant CSX was down 20 percent year-to-year from Thanksgiving until late last month. It’s still down, but CSX President, Chairman and CEO Michael Ward said not as much.
“It’s been more like 16 (percent) so we think it’s gradually recovering here,” he said. “We think we’re a good answer for the long-term and we’re still investing for the future. We know this recession is going to end. We just don’t know when.”
Ward sees the economic downturn as a “breather” that allows CSX to build the capacity to carry more freight, more expeditiously. And he said that when Americans talk about stimulus, they have to consider what CSX is investing in its own physical plant.
“We’re going to spend $1.6 billion this year improving our tracks, our locomotives, building new facilities and intermodal (truck-rail-plane) facilities,” he said. “That’s quite a bit of money, $1.6 billion, for a private company.”
CSX does stand to benefit from federal stimulus money on at least two projects, including stepped-up work on the CREATE project, a program designed to minimize freight and commuter rail congestion in the Chicago area by adding tracks and bridging over some key rail junctions to eliminate the crossings.
Ward also backs increased federal funding for Amtrak, saying any effort to build higher-speed corridors for passenger trains will benefit the freight railroads that own most of the trackage, speeding goods big and small to consumers.
The relentlessly optimistic Ward said he foresees a 90 percent growth in freight traffic in the next 15 years and that even five years from now, he sees CSX and the nation’s rail network “as a growing part of relieving highway congestion and pollution in this country.”
Because of the lengths to which freight trains can grow, Ward said railroads use far less fuel and remain many times better environmentally than over-the-road trucking lines, and said CSX continues to work closely with two major trucking firms — J.B. Hunt and Schneider National — to expedite trucks and containers in trains between terminal cities.