(The Fort Worth Star Telegram posted the following article by Dan Piller on its website on April 1.)
FORT WORTH, Texas — Union Pacific Railroad acknowledged Wednesday that a shortage of train crews has caused congestion in its yards and lines in Houston and Los Angeles.
“Business expanded faster than we anticipated, and we’ve had a gap in train crews,” UP spokesman Robert Turner said from headquarters in Omaha, Neb.
The situation isn’t nearly as dire as in 1997-98, when the results of clogged yards in Houston spread throughout Union Pacific’s system and the railroad almost ground to a halt.
Turner said Union Pacific plans to hire about 4,000 train-crew members rather than 3,000, as projected in November. But training the new hires will take time, company officials said.
“We have about 1,000 new crew members who began training last September, and we have more already in training or just hired,” Turner said. “They are the solution to the problem.”
Weekly operating statistics on the Web site of the Association of American Railroads show a slight slowdown in the UP system and delays in Houston and Los Angeles but normal functioning for the rest of the system.
Union Pacific all but shut down for several months beginning in fall 1997, shortly after a $5.4 billion merger with Southern Pacific Railroad. The center of that congestion was Houston, beset with antiquated rail yards and an unwieldy intracity track-switching and connection system.
The congestion spread back through Union Pacific’s system, which covers the western half of the United States from Chicago to the Pacific coast and the Gulf of Mexico. UP’s losses from late shipping charges, for example, were estimated at more than $300 million. Gulf coast petrochemical shippers, heavily dependent on rail, said their losses exceeded $100 million.
This month’s slowdown, amplified by the peak season for Asian imports to the West Coast, doesn’t approach the tie-ups of 1997 and early 1998.
In early 1998, the average train speed on the entire UP system slowed to less than 13 mph. Last week, it was 21 mph, down from 24 mph a year earlier.
As of last week, the average time spent by a UP rail car in Houston awaiting departure was 49 hours, up from 30 hours a year earlier. In Los Angeles, it was 52 hours last month and 31 hours a year ago.
Operations at UP’s Centennial Yard, west of downtown Fort Worth, are normal. The waiting time declined from 34 hours last year to 33 hours last week. The Fort Worth yard handles north-south and east-west traffic.
Turner said UP hasn’t turned down business because of delays. In 1998, the railroad voluntarily gave up shipments into and out of the General Motors plant at Arlington for several months because it couldn’t handle the traffic.
Rival Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway, based in Fort Worth, said its system is still “fluid.”
“Aside from a few glitches here and there, we are functioning normally,” spokesman Pat Hiatte said. BNSF’s weekly statistics indicated normal train speeds and car-waiting times through March.
Railroad traffic is up about 5 percent this year, not only from the expanding U.S. economy but because of heavy export and import shipments through ports such as Houston and Los Angeles.
“There’s no way to avoid the fact that we underestimated the volumes of business we would move,” UP’s Turner said. In addition to the new employees, UP plans to buy up to 500 new locomotives this year.
Union Pacific has about 47,000 employees, some 20,000 of them on train crews. Turner said the railroad had serious attrition last year when many workers took advantage of a new rule allowing early retirement.