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STC: Rail service for ag better, but can still use improvement
 
STC: Rail service for ag better, but can still use improvement

By TIM ALEXANDER
Illinois Correspondent

ANKENY, Iowa — Freight rail service during the 2014 harvest has improved slightly from the performance of many Class I railroads last year, at least in Great Plains states.
That is the conclusion of a research project sponsored by the Soy Transportation Coalition (STC) and the University of Minnesota, whose 2014 Harvest: Attaching a Garden Hose to a Fire Hydrant survey was conducted during the period of Nov. 21-Dec. 5. The results represented one of several issues key to agricultural transportation that were discussed during the STC’s annual winter meeting Dec. 10 in St. Louis.
“Our survey work shows that railroads have improved in handling the 2014 harvest, but overall there is considerable concern with rail service over the past year” in the surveyed states of North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota and Nebraska, Mike Steenhoek, executive director of the STC, said after the conference.
“We have been overall pleased with the service up to this point in this area of the country. We are hopeful this will continue. Farmer profitability depends on it.”
The survey results show 70 percent of participating grain handling facilities report cycle times for railroads are faster than a year ago, 48 percent reported no rail orders were overdue and no respondents observed “much more” storage pressure at their facilities. Only 11 percent reported “more” pressure on storage, while 88 percent responded their storage pressure was “the same,” “less” or “much less.”
The overall favorable rating for the railroads can be attributed to an elongated harvest season, an aggressive response to demand by the railroads, farmers electing to store more grain, favorable weather and more modest harvest volumes than originally anticipated, according to the research project’s conclusions.
However, 60 percent of grain receiving facilities in the Great Plains reported rail service delays and diminished storage capacity in response to the 2014 harvest. This sounds more like the rail transportation and storage issues just to the east of the surveyed states, said Scott Sigman, transportation and infrastructure lead for the Illinois Soybean Assoc. (ISA).
“The railroads further east here have not been as responsive to car placement, and there have been snafus that have had a domino effect in terms of getting grain out and delivering cars to market as they need to be,” said Sigman, who attended the STC’s winter meeting for the ISA.
“We are seeing more grain pilings and more farmers storing grain due to the issues, and the problems presented by transportation bottlenecks affect prices.”
Farmers’ and shippers’ problems with freight rail movements of grain the past couple of years has opened the door to a refreshed debate on the merits of increasing semi truck weight limits on roads, one of three major topics discussed by member organizations attending the STC conference.
“The problems with freight rail have increased the need for trucking and shifted more freight onto our roads,” said Steenhoek. “That’s created a real opportunity to talk about the need to expand weight capacity for trucking.”
Checkoff-funded and independent studies have concluded increasing truck freight weight limits from 80,000 to 100,000 pounds would likely not result in any extra denigration of roads and bridges, provided the load is supported by an additional axle. An increase could also result in a cost savings across the supply chain – and potentially to end users – due to the extra capacity per load.
“Expanded semi weights would be beneficial not only to a lot of ag products, but to other industries as well,” Sigman said.
The expected Congressional reauthorization of a federal Highway Bill, which must occur by May 2015 to avoid insolvency, should provide additional traction for proponents of raising semi weight limits. One of the bill’s components will address semi weight limits, according to Steenhoek.
Another issue of interest is funding for the nation’s surface transportation system. “On a federal level there really is very little energy from our decision-makers on trying to develop a realistic approach to financing our nation’s roads and bridges,” he said, adding the STC supports an alternative funding plan developed in conjunction with Indiana University that would fund the system by indexing yearly the federal fuel tax paid by motorists to cost of living.
Ag transportation experts attending the STC meeting broke from the conference vowing to focus their energies in the coming year on a variety of issues important to the industry, including over-aggressive condemnations of small, rural bridges often used by farmers transporting harvest products or farm supplies.
“We’re going to continue to work with state departments of transportation to promote an approach to better evaluate rural bridges. Not all are structurally deficient. We often take these ratings as gospel, but one of the things we’ve learned is that there is room to challenge those conclusions. There are a number of bridges that are being inaccurately rated as deficient,” Steenhoek said.
The STC promotes the use of technology for structural health monitoring of bridges, using sensors and real data to more accurately identify problem structures, he added.
12/17/2014