AAR weekly rail traffic report shows a drop from last year

Officials from the Association of American Railroads (AAR) weighed in on the most recent report on U.S. rail traffic, which showed that as of the week ending October 24, total traffic at 553,144 intermodal units and carloads had decreased 5.6 percent from the same period in 2014.

AAR’s Senior Vice President of Policy and Economic John Gray, said, “The decline in rail traffic in October is consistent with the view that a divide has opened up between the service sector, which appears to be fairly robust in many respects, and manufacturing, which appears to be facing increasingly strong headwinds, including international turmoil and slowdowns in the energy sector,”

Ed Greenberg, Director of Media Relations with the AAR told TI Daily News, “Freight railroads provide a vital link for our farmers, manufacturers, and resource producers to the domestic and global marketplace, moving U.S. products to market anywhere in the country and, through ports to destinations around the globe. Each railroad works closely with customers to be responsive in moving goods to markets within North America or to ports for world markets. As a transportation provider that moves about 40 percent of all intercity freight in the country, freight railroads continue to redouble efforts to continue to be flexible, efficient and responsive as they respond to their customers. Since 1980, they have spent more than $575 billion on maintaining and further modernizing the 140,000-mile rail system.”

The industry is continuously responding and changing to what shippers need. “The freight rail industry, in its long history in moving America’s economy, continues to be resilient and nimble in adapting to shifting freight traffic trends,” Greenberg said.