(The Montreal Gazette posted the following story on its website on September 23.)
MONTREAL — Canadian Pacific Railway Co. is calling for what it calls a uniform international system to plan and carry out railway services.
Neal Foot, senior vice-president of operations at CP, said yesterday that all railways need to shift to a scheduled rail system and abandon the outdated method of tonnage-based operations.
Scheduled railroading, which many analysts say was pioneered by Montreal-based Canadian National Railway Co., means trains leave at a specific time with a specific cargo. Tonnage-based service, which was standard practice for years, meant railways would line up cars one after the other but only leave when there was sufficient cargo to make the trip economical.
“We need to present ourselves to our customers as one integrated system,” Foot told railway planners at a conference in Calgary.
“By building a co-ordinated, integrated and scheduled freight railway system, we as an industry will enhance rail’s already inherent qualities of speed, safety, and energy and labour efficiency.”
Canadian National spokesperson Mark Hallman said CN has been talking with other railways like CSX about scheduled railways and its benefits as other companies seek to emulate CN.
He said CN is also in “a very significant dialogue” with major railroads about so-called gateway optimization, which means finding the most efficient ways for the shipment to travel by linking tracks.
“Seems like CP’s coming to the party many years after we’ve been working on this,” Hallman said.
CN has been able to generate significant market share gains in its cargoload freight business through the scheduled rail system, Hallman said.