If you are watching the #Southwest meltdown and thinking about the calamity that is caused by needing several days to reposition the system, just remember that the US freight railroad system is *far* more brittle. A rail strike that congress forestalled would have created a similar but much more extensive backlog that would have taken months to unravel. And in case you are thinking "well I don't travel by rail" just remember that something like three quarters of all retail goods do.
@antares companies need to hire more workers, no?
@jblxdesign It's complicated in these industries. When my arcade is short staffed we put up a job posting and can usually hire a gullible teenager in a few weeks. It takes 1 shift to deal with HR and then 3 more to train them.
Airline pilots need 1000 hours *in the air* before they can even be hired by an air carrier then 9 months of training before their first revenue flight and they are limited to a single type of plane (the reason Southwest only flies 737s)
Railroads have similarly long training for new engineers. The tricky bit with engineers is that they have to qualify on each section of track, and there are currency requirements. Hire too many engineers and it becomes impossible to keep them current on enough track. You end up with situations where a train from A to B is blocking the way from B to A but the only qualified engineer available to move the train out of the way is stuck on another train waiting for the first to get out of the way.
Just like Southwest is seeing people are holding up equipment and equipment is holding up people.
Yes, more people is the long term solution, but it is not like retail where we put up a sign saying "Starting at $18/hr" and have a bunch of new people in a few weeks.
@antares it’s a long term solution, you’re right. That requires *regulation*
@jblxdesign Will those regulations come with financial backing for economic downturns or will significant additional costs need to be added to the price of transportation?
In the case of airlines will they be able to raise the price enough to continue to offer service at low volume class C and D airports? If not then that line about if you can't run the business profitably and treat your employees right you should just shut down will come true in quite a dramatic way when airports in all those states over-represented in the Senate no longer have any flights. Heck the only thing you would need to kill that bill in the Senate would be to explain that if it passes there will no longer be commercial service to Charleston WV.
@antares let’s give passenger rail 10% of the subsidies we give to the automotive industry and see what happens!
@jblxdesign Passenger rail is fine vis-a-vie staffing levels. Amtrak run very predictable trains over a very limited amount of rail on a daily bases. Its problem is that is doesn't own any significant rail lines and so is at the mercy of the freight traffic. It is the freight railroads that are understaffed. They have to run trains based on ever changing cargo demands over the huge networks.
@antares so you’re saying, nationalization of private rail has led to increased dependability and sustainability? Now, imagine if the federal government owned a network of rail lines. Almost like (stay with me here) an inter-state system of federally subsidized routes.
@jblxdesign O Lord no! Amtrak is often hours or days late. There rolling stock is catastrophically bad and their viability as a form of public transport on anything but the NE corridor is non-existant. The Government has run them in to the ground far worse then even the USPS. But the Engineer that goes from Sacramento to Reno knows that there will be a train scheduled for that route every day and there will be one going back eventually.
The freight guy out of Roseville might go haul a slow freight to Winnamucca one week and cotton up the central valley the next. Someone has to keep them current on all that rail, know where they are and god-forbid they get sick, scramble to make the entire schedule over again because no two engineers are current and qualified on the same lines any more.
@jblxdesign Please support California's High Speed Rail. That is where the future of rail is. Dedicated grade separated high speed lines. That and intercity urban rail.
@antares amen. One day Florida’s bright line will FINALLY connect Orlando and Tampa. I can’t wait.
@antares give me an Amtrak over a hertz rental or a delta flight any day. And if we have them, again, an appreciable percent of the funding that we dump into highways and subsidized airports, our passenger rail COULD be amazing.