(The Wichita Eagle posted the following article by Phyllis Jacobs Griespoor on its website on July 12.)
WICHITA, Kan. — If you think you’re seeing longer trains and more of them moving across Kansas, you’re right. “We’re setting new volume records for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is rapid growth in the intermodal sector,” said Steve Forsberg, a spokesman for Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway, the world’s largest intermodal carrier.
Intermodal means using more than one mode of transportation on a single trip, such as putting truck trailers on railcars.
The intermodal sector, recognizable to many Wichitans because of the large “China Shipping” containers that regularly move through town on flatbed railcars, is the fastest growing in the transportation industry, Forsberg said, increasing at an annual rate of more than 13 percent.
“You see it in Kansas because of the transcon route that runs from Chicago to Los Angeles,” he said. “We carried 5.3 million truck trailers by train in 2005, and the majority of those moved through Kansas.”
In fact, he said, trucking company J.B. Hunt is BNSF’s largest customer.
The transcon route sees 1,400 trains every 24 hours, he said, with the longest up to 8,000 feet.
Union Pacific also is experiencing increased traffic, spokesman Mark Davis said.
“We’ve been handling record volumes quarter over quarter across all sectors for the last three years,” he said.
Intermodal traffic has accounted for the fastest growth on the UP as well, he said. But agricultural volumes are also up significantly, he said, because of the boom in ethanol production and low-sulfur coal moving out of the Powder River basin.
“Industrial products such as lumber, bricks, steel, automobiles and auto parts sort of ebb and flow with the economy,” Davis said. “But over the last three years, everything has been steadily up.”
The number of UP trains moving through Wichita is up two a day from last year. Trains are also slightly longer, averaging 78 cars compared with 72 a year ago, he said.
The challenge for many rail lines is to grow fast enough to meet the accelerated demand, Forsberg said.
“We have used up the excess capacity that our ancestors built,” he said.
“BNSF has actually added more than 1,000 miles of new track since 1995, including 32 miles in Kansas.”
The increase in traffic has also led to an increase in jobs, Forsberg said. BNSF has hired 14,000 people over the past four years, he said. While some of those hires were replacements for retiring baby boomers, the company still saw a net growth of about 3,500 employees over the past three years.
All that traffic has some cities, including Wichita and Olathe, looking at building overpasses and underpasses to facilitate a smooth flow of train and automobile traffic.
“Kansas has been very proactive in handling the growth,” Forsberg aid. “We have more than a dozen projects under way in Kansas. That’s five times as many as California, which has 10 times the population.”
Forsberg and Davis agreed that the growth in intermodal transportation has been good for railroads and trucking companies.
“Trucking companies are facing huge challenges with the high cost of fuel and with a shortage of drivers,” Forsberg said. “Putting the trailers on the railroad for the long hauls is a big fuel savings. It also enables companies to improve the quality of life for their drivers. They can make the 200- to 250-mile deliveries from terminals and still be home with their families every night.”
Taking those trucks off the interstates also reduces traffic congestion and highway maintenance, he said.
“I got a call from a woman in Olathe upset about waiting for a train,” he said. “I reminded her that if it weren’t for that train, there would be 300 more trucks on the road moving that freight. You add that up across the country and that’s 2.5 to 3 million truck trailers a year going by rail instead of down I-70 and I-35.”