Re: Winterail.....? Least of our worries this morning...? And, yeah, TEU's are reportedly down even more, but they already were down on RR's....
Author: BOB2
Date: 03-12-2020 - 10:07
It already has started to affect RR traffic. The port container traffic, dray, and ports loadings of RR container traffic are all reported to be down in about a dozen articles I've seen in the last week.
But remember, the west coast ports TEU volumes were already down nearly 20% in 2019, because of the trade war. And, RR TEU's have been down continuously month over month for nearly two years now. TEU's on RR's were down between 7% and 8% in the quarter leading up to Christmas, and leading up to when this blew up about 3 weeks ago.
New AAR weekly number ought to be out, it'll be in tomorrow's rail news posting, and it is likely, based on these other reports, that we'll begin to see further short term dips in TEU's.
Ridership on public transit systems, like BART and NYC are down, and there are anectdotal reports that freeway traffic is down, although I haven't seen any PeMS data reported on that. This is partly because folks are just staying in, and partly because they are cancelling so many trips (airports generate a lot of trips), various events, closing so many schools, and so many folks have been told to telecommute. Remember that "home to work" trips are only about 20% of total trips, and many of those are actually "off peak"... But, of course, with things like tourist attractions, sporting events, and other recreational/social/cultural events cancelled, lots of work trips, that support all of that are "cancelled", as a result.
As I said, I'm interested in hearing what folks are seeing around the state, the country, and the world, from our friends in Germany, Switzerland, and New Zealand in the way of passenger volumes, and measures to mitigate the impacts.