| This is a great point. A lot of ideas pushed by managers (like one person train crews) have been of the "sounds good on paper" variety. Adding and adding to the length of trains. Replacing (human) wheel inspectors with automation. Replacing (human) schedulers with software. Cutting the crew size on trains as you point out. In practice, the increased train length seems to have increased the frequency and magnitude of accidents. And increasing the number of cars in a train is not guaranteed to increase efficiency. About inspection of wheels, automation might sound like a good idea, but it doesn't seem to be working. Stand next to a moving freight train today, and odds are very good that you will hear a BOOM-BOOM-BOOM from a surprising number of cars as they go by. These are flat spots on wheels. I do not think this is good for the freight, the cars, or the rails. My personal observation is that this is new. Even a decade ago, I do not remember routinely noticing this. But today, it seems a significant percentage of cars roll by with big flat spots on their wheels. This is out of my area of expertise, so I may be way off on this "flat spot" story. The software for scheduling seems to be chaotic at best. The railroads have responded by pretty much putting all employees on call all the time. This seems to be one of the workers' biggest complaints: they are pretty much 24x7x365 on call, and it is not surprising that they are angry. When I say they're angry: in July the BLET (Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainment) voted over 99% in favor of a strike. Cutting crew size too is kicking peoples' butts. For example to pick up a car alone would require a massive amount of running back and forth from the front to the back of the train. From a safety standpoint: a single person crew has to remain at the engine in the case of an accident or derailment, and someone has to drive to the scene to assess the scene. If there is a two person crew, the second person can walk down the line and report (for example) that there may be a chlorine car leaking[0]. I know a few people second hand on both sides of the who work in industries that ship freight via rail, and people who work on the railroads. Both sides have been describing chaos and mismanagement for years (predating pandemic). Pay on the railroad is fairly good, but the lifestyle is extremely demanding. Policies over the last decade have made it a worse and worse industry to work in. Strike or not, the railroads are getting deeper and deeper into a worker shortage. I think they need a better (for workers) contract just as much as the workers do. [0] https://inthesetimes.com/episodes/jay - 100% worth a listen |