Research Reports
Filter by Keyword
This paper estimates railroad and truck shipment costs for several major commodities and illustrates how public data and analytic tools can be used to analyze multimodal trade-offs and efficiencies.
This report describes the different programming functions used now and discusses future programming issues.
The objective of this project was to create a central database containing information representing the American short line railroad industry. The project continues and expands the initial effort to establish the database. In this report, processes involved with obtaining, developing, and maintaining...
The purpose of this study is to encourage competition among rail carriers by facilitating communications between North Dakota elevators and their rail carriers regarding customer service issues. By conveying marketing and customer service information for the four railroads, the competition for business...
Since 1980, over 200 new local or regional railroads have been established in the United States, mostly through the sale of light-density lines by Class I carriers. With these new additions, this sector of the railroad industry now numbers over 400 strong. Collectively, these firms operate over 40,000...
The objective of the Short Line Railroad Database (SLRD) system is to provide a partial, if not a complete solution. It attempts to set up a framework for establishing and maintaining a standard database for Class II and Class III railroads that would serve as a Personal Computer (PC) data system with...
The overall purpose of this report is to evaluate the perspectives and practice of economic and safety regulation of local and regional short line railroads. Specific objectives are to: (1) review the dynamics of the short line railroad spin-off movement in the United States and the Mountain-Plains Consortium...
This paper reviews an in-depth study of eastern Washington railroad needs, examines the characteristics of regional railroads from Washington to North Dakota and, finally, develops some benefits associated with use of regional railroads.
The railroad industry uses a variety of information and data sources to present planners and decision makers with the best environment facilitating the decision process. The management of this information and its environment is vital to ensure that decision makers have an operational framework allowing...
The goal of this research is to estimate productivity gains and cost savings in the railroad industry since 1978. Further, prior work was extended by separating output and size variables into measures of high and low density output and miles of track. For purposes of comparison, a translog cost function...