Rail
The title of this post is a quote credited to Winston Churchill, although the attribution is questionable. It conveys the notion that dramatic events generate new insights and create opportunities for growth. Put another way, "look for the silver lining."…
A friend of First Analytics, aware of our safety work in the railroad industry, asked, "so what do you think of all the train derailments?" He had seen reports of three derailments just within the last few days. With the…
As of Monday, November 21st, 2022, the prospects of averting a nationwide rail strike appear to be grim. The Federal government intervened in September, avoiding a strike at that time. But there was a sense that this was just "kicking…
Tension between railroad management and workers is high. Attendance policies associated with grueling work schedules and safety concerns related to Precision Scheduled Railroading (PSR) are at the top of the list of complaints voiced by labor unions. Government regulators have…
After three decades of steady decreases, the rate of highway/rail accidents bottomed out in 2012. But it has been trending upward ever since. The graph shows that in 2012 the incident rate reached its all-time low of 2.72 incidents per…
With supply chain issues topping recent news, the railroad industry is under scrutiny for how well they operate their networks. As a follow-up to our previous post about railroad industry operating ratio, we here consider how analytics and machine learning…
As a heavy industry, railroads seek to appeal to the finance community by focusing on metrics that speak to the company’s efficient utilization of its assets. A key metric is Operating Ratio, which is defined as operating expenses as a…
Year-over-year comparisons can attribute too much of a volume decline to COVID-19. That is what we showed at the beginning of the pandemic, with predictive analytics applied to railroad car loadings data from the American Association of Railroads (AAR). The…
Union Pacific recently announced that, for the second year in a row, it has been the top-performing railroad in employee safety. Furthermore, 2016 was the safest year in their 154 year history. While the railroad has undertaken a decade-long pursuit…
Union Pacific’s announcement this week of an all-time record low reportable injury rate, making it the safest Class 1 railroad in the United States, is a validation of a data-analytic approach to safety. First Analytics has worked with Union Pacific since 2011…