Union Pacific Still Seeing Big Delays in Southland Traffic

Despite issuing assurances earlier this year that freight traffic jams in Southern California and elsewhere were easing, Union Pacific Corp. is indicating it’s made little progress in alleviating delays.

In its weekly report to federal regulators, the railroad operator said personnel problems and track construction are still causing major delays in the Southland.

“They are still running behind,” said Jack Kyser, chief economist of the Los Angeles Economic Development Corp. “They’re running about a day late on container traffic in and out of Los Angeles.”

Analysts say container terminals at the ports in Los Angeles and Long Beach are filling up, and some shippers are still diverting vessels to Seattle or Oakland to avoid congestion, Kyser said.

A labor shortage in Southern California is one of the main culprits, according to the report issued by Dallas-based UP to the Surface Transportation Board. Union Pacific began filing weekly reports last fall when traffic jams resulting from its merger with Southern Pacific Rail Corp. severely slowed its operations, affecting industries nationwide.

More than 40% of the scheduled train crews failed to report to work in Southern California on some days, the report says. A Union Pacific spokesman blamed the high absenteeism on ongoing contract negotiations with its two main labor unions.

“They call in to work sick and say they can’t report to work,” said Union Pacific spokesman John Bromley.

But one union member said there have been no conflicts in these early stages of contract negotiations. He blames the delays on heavy rail and track construction designed to increase rail capacity.

“If you slow [a train] down to 10 miles an hour because of work being performed, there [are] going to be delays,” said John J. Fatterly, switchman and member of the local chapter of the United Transportation Union.

Nationwide, UP’s average train speed remained constant last week at 14.6 mph, compared to 19 mph during the same period last year.

Officials at the Port of Long Beach said that while there have been some minor delays in and out of the port recently, there have been no backups as severe as last fall, when some containers were waiting at terminals as long as 10 days.

“There are some delays, but it is better than it has been in the past,” said Don Wylie, director of trade for the port. “March was the busiest month in our history, and we still got containers in and out.”

The traffic problems started a year ago as Union Pacific began merging the operations of Southern Pacific into its system. UP paid $5.4 billion to acquire its main rival in 1996.

Economists say the resulting logjam has cost industries nationwide about $2 billion in extra costs and lost business.

The company issued a statement in January saying that service on its 36,000 miles of track was back to normal, except for a 250-mile stretch from Houston to New Orleans. In its latest report, issued Tuesday, the railroad said it removed about 2,000 excess freight cars from its national rail system during the last week, to reduce its total to more than 325,000. Last May, there were about 310,000 cars in the system.

But the report also said it did not make “further progress” since then in alleviating the freight congestion.

Bromley said the company’s operations should become more efficient this fall after it consolidates both rail companies’ computer operations systems and completes contract negotiations with its unions.