North American Rail Traffic Fell 3.8% in Week Ended June 1
June 05 2019 - 1:07PM
Dow Jones News
By Colin Kellaher
North American rail traffic fell 3.8% last week, as flooding
continued to wreak havoc on U.S. networks, data from the
Association of American Railroads showed.
Carload volume for the week ended June 1 on 12 reporting U.S.,
Canadian and Mexican railroads fell 3.2%, while intermodal traffic
fell 4.5%, the trade group said Wednesday.
North American rail traffic was 5.1% lower in the week ended May
25. For the first 22 weeks of the year, North American volume is
down 1.6%.
The AAR said U.S. rail traffic fell 6.1% last week, on the heels
of a 6.7% drop a week earlier. U.S. carloads fell 5.8% for the week
amid declines in eight of the 10 commodity groups tracked. The
volume of intermodal containers and trailers fell 6.4%.
In a customer notice posted on its website Monday, Union Pacific
Corp. (UNP) said severe weather, heavy rainfall and flooding have
led to new, prolonged and expanded outages in Kansas, Missouri,
Oklahoma and Arkansas.
The railroad said the outages are causing terminal and main-line
congestion in several key locations, which it said will likely
impact service to customers, including those outside the affected
areas. Union Pacific said it has staged resources at strategic
locations to address outages as quickly as possible.
BNSF, owned by Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (BRKA, BRKB), last week
said major flooding was causing significant disruptions to normal
traffic flows through central areas of its network, and that it was
re-routing trains as much as possible to minimize disruptions.
Norfolk Southern Corp. (NSC) Monday said flooding was affecting
traffic between Decatur, Ill., and Kansas City and was also
preventing traffic from being diverted to operate via St.
Louis.
U.S. rail traffic is now down 2.4% for the year to date,
compared with a cumulative decline of 2.3% at the end of the
previous week, the AAR said.
The AAR said rail traffic rose 2.9% in Canada last week, with a
4% rise in carloads and a 1.5% increase in intermodal units.
Rail traffic edged up 0.5% in Mexico last week, as a 1.4% rise
in intermodal units more than offset a 0.3% drop in carloads.
Write to Colin Kellaher at colin.kellaher@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
June 05, 2019 12:52 ET (16:52 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2019 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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