Types of Coordination

Coordination is carried out between different companies of the same mode(intracarrier) and also between carriers of different modes (intercarrier). It usually takes one or more of the following forms.

Joint Use of Terminals The union depot for rail, bus, or airline, the union freight station for rail or motor freight, and the transit shed servingboth river and lake traffic are examples of joint terminal use. Advantages include convenience of transfer, provision of better facilities than an individual carrier might be able to afford, avoidance of cross hauls and duplication of facilities, and land use economy.

The economies of a union passenger station arise from the tax, interest, maintenance, and operating expenses avoided at individual stations. Not all of this can be counted as net saving, however, as each tenant must contribute to the costs of the joint facility, but not in the same proportion.

A union freight station saves mileage and the number of vehicles required. It reduces the number of calls made at the door of an individual shipper.

A single freight house might not have enough capacity to justify mechanization, whereas the combined traffic of several carriers could serve as an adequate warrant.

Disadvantages include the scarcity of large land areas often required in central locations for the enlarged capacity of a joint facility. The coach yards of rail terminals, for example, may therefore have to be located some distance from the station with expensive deadhead running to and from the yards. The attempt to handle commuting and line-haul traffic in the same station may cause excessive congestion at the platforms during commuting rush hours, when line-haul operations will also be in progress. Additional platforms may have to be built to stand idle and unproductive most of the day.

Other disadvantages are some loss of individual carrier identity, loss of economic advantage from an individual location, difficulties in apportioning user costs and charges, and excessive charges required for small operators who may not require the elaborate facilities provided.

Coordination of Schedules Passenger and freight schedules of one carrier may be arranged to connect with those of other carriers. This more often occurs where the carriers share a union terminal or where one carrier acts as a feeder or bridge line for another. Railroads coordinate their schedules as a routine practice where they interchange large volumes of freight traffic. Entire trains may be moved from one railroad to another on predetermined schedules.

Interchange of Equipment Truck and barge lines interchange trailers and barges to a limited degree. This practice and its advantages are most fully realized in railroad operation, where cars and contents move freely from one carrier to another. Such interchange saves rehandling costs and loss of time in transferring freight. The necessity of standardized features to permit interchange is again noted. Disadvantages include the difficulties of getting equipment returned, unfavorable equipment account balances with carriers having a deficiency in ownership of cars, trailers, or barges, maintenance of foreign or off-line equipment, determining and collecting user costs for using and maintaining foreign equipment, and empty return moves.

Trackage Rights Railroads offer additional opportunities for intracarrier coordination. When two rail lines are approximately parallel, trackage rights granted by one carrier permit the other to use its tracks. The excess capacity usually available in most track layouts permits additional trains to be added with little or no extra capital outlay. If capacity is a problem, two parallel single tracks may be paired to give the advantages of double-track operation, or the institution of Centralized Traffic Control may permit one track to carry the added load and the other to be abandoned. There may also be a saving on operation if more favorable grades are encountered on the host's tracks and if train order and block stations can be closed. Payment may be on a per-train, a gross-ton-mile, a per-car, or a straight-percentage-of-operating-cost basis.

Joint Use of Right of Way The possibilities in the joint use of rights of way are should also be considered at the planning stage. A highway can be built over the tracks of a railroad right of way on an upper deck or vise versa. The loads for the railroad are heavier to support, up to 36320-kg axle loadings for railroads as contrasted with 8172- to 9080-kg) axle loadings for trucks. As an offsetting factor, a railroad structure need only provide 4.3 to 4.9 m of clearance over the highway whereas a highway structure would have to allow 6.7 to 7.3 m of clearance for the railroad. The railroad grades are usually more suitable than highway grades. In fact a railroad couldn't operate over some of the grades that would thus be established even by high-class highways. Either arrangement poses problems of access.

Can Coordination Work? Although generally desirable, many apparently sound schemes for coordination have never been put in effect, for the following reasons.

1. The carriers feel they would be losing competitive advantages and their
   identity by giving up established routes, locations, and services when
   entering into combinations with other carriers.
2. In the US, Laws prohibiting the immediate reduction in personnel as a result of
   consolidations make estimated savings unattractive.