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The study demonstrated that short lines could achieve greater cost savings if they were to increase their density (revenue ton miles per mile) and their size (mile of road). Size is an important criterion that a short line must examine when evaluating the purchase of a new section of track. However...
This study provides a snapshot of truck/rail container intermodal shipping into and out of North Dakota. The study revealed the benefits of intermodal transportation including lower overall transportation costs, increased economic productivity and efficiency, reduced congestion and burden on over-stressed...
This study examines the cost implications of mergers and competition over existing rail lines by testing for the condition of cost subadditivity. That is, can industry output be provided at a lower cost by one firm than by more than one firm?
Future customer demands, service availability, and industry investment decisions will shape the modal marketing decisions of the grain marketing sector. The Delphi survey technique is used to engage a cross-section of grain industry experts in sharing opinions regarding future trends for service, investment...
An economic engineering model was developed to estimate start-up and operating costs of an intermodal facility located on a short line railroad. The model developed in this study has many useful features. Costs can be estimated for different equipment configurations and sizes of facilities. Sensitivity...
Six major railroads provided the Transportation Technology Center Inc. (TTCI) with defective rail that had been removed from service. The rail, which contained a variety of defects, was placed into a gauntlet track at the Transportation Technology Center (TTC). This paper is the assessment of those six...
The balance of this report will examine the experiences U.S. production agriculture has had with deregulation of the transportation industry. It will highlight the evolution of the procurement segment of grain marketing, concentrating on the wheat origination region, as it is an important export commodity...
This project is dedicated toward creating an annual information base on short line and regional railroads. Three years of collection and analysis of this data is complete, with another year in process. In this report, techniques for collecting short line information by mail and electronically are discussed....
This study examines the cost conditions present in the Class I railroad industry. Recent mergers and merger proposals have brought forth questions regarding the desirability of maintaining competition in areas impacted by horizontal mergers and, similarly, the desirability of end-to-end mergers.
This study examines the impacts that railroad and trucking deregulation had on rail labor earnings and employment.