Our industry has been full of talk about capacity constraints that prevent the system from accommodating projected traffic growth and threaten a further reduction in the 14% of domestic freight tonnage that moves by rail. That figure falls to less than 8% by eliminating coal and even lower if grain and intermodal traffic are excluded to expose the modal market share of carload general merchandise.
There's plenty of underutilized capacity in the domestic rail network. Some of it just isn't in the "right places." Years of downsizing--abandonment of branch and secondary lines, removal of multiple-track mains, downgrading of intermediate yards, and closing of gateways--has ...