CURRENT IMPAIRMENTS IN RAIL FREIGHT

 Rail plays a key role in the present and future of intermodal freight transport worldwide. Transporting goods via rail freight is safe, fuel-efficient, and fast. However, recently the rail freight industry has taken a serious knock, with lockdowns in China and the Russia-Ukraine conflict in motion. In this blog, we dive into the state of the market, current challenges in the industry, as well as how to boost resilience during this difficult time. Many best shipping company in India leverage their global network and long-standing carrier relationships, to bring to you flexible and reliable rail freight forwarding solutions built around operational excellence.In this contribution, we examine rail freight as a whole to identify the main problems and challenges in strengthening its competitiveness. The role of rail freight worldwide is described in terms of infrastructure, fleets, mobility, modal share. Targets for the future vehicles, infrastructures and services needed and/or planned to accommodate future trends and developments are described, along with the main barriers of the rail freight market. As rail shipping accounts for a larger percentage of organizations’ total volume, the need for visibility is increasing in importance. By implementing an end-to-end rail visibility solution, shippers can better manage operations and ensure timely delivery, which directly impacts customer satisfaction.

 

 CHALLENGES IN RAIL FREIGHT TRANSPORTATION (AND HOW TO MITIGATE THEM)

Here are the  most common challenges in rail freight transportation and how real-time visibility can alleviate them:

1. Inaccurate ETAs and Manual Updates

Accurate ETAs can be difficult to source. They generally require manual and reactive calls to both carriers and railroads in case of disruption. By implementing a real-time transportation visibility platform, organizations can receive ETAs that update automatically as things change, freeing up bandwidth that was previously used for contacting the railroad for updates.

2. Reactive Disruption Management

Not unlike managing ETAs, managing exceptions can be extremely manual, especially for unexpected disruptions such as weather and railroad strikes. More commonplace exceptions include delays, dwell time at origin rail terminals and interchanges, bad orders or holds. Having visibility into rail freight transportation allows companies to quickly identify affected shipments to proactively communicate delays both internally and externally in real time.

3. Empty Railcar Tracking

Tracking empty rail car movements is essential for planning and efficiently utilizing private fleet capacity. Many leading shipping freight forwarding companies put into services new empty railcar tracking functionality which allows shippers to track empty railcars back to their origin. Since shippers tend to have a limited number of railcars, this feature enables availability projection in advance of the next loaded shipment.

4. Poor Data Quality & Lack of Analytics

Railroads and intermodal carriers tend to provide tracking data in different formats with varying levels of consistency and standardization. Analytics are typically lacking as well, so reporting on things like cycle time, transit time and future planning needs can be manual or nonexistent. A lack of TMS updates can also lead to significant seasonal variations that can negatively affect transit times.

 

 

 

5. Automation and digitization of rail freight

the introduction of ATO has a positive impact on freight operations and that it is a technology that can increase the punctuality, safety, capacity, energy consumption, etc. of freight transport. Moreover,  railways are in the midst of a profound transformation, driven by emerging digital technologies like 5G, big data, the Internet of Things, automation, artificial intelligence, and blockchain.

Although rail freight has a clear competitive advantage in automation and digitisation, the rail sector is not seizing this opportunity to improve its efficiency and competitiveness. This is so because,  railways around the world have been hit by significant government budget cuts, limiting their ability to invest in infrastructure or maintain high service standards, as mentioned above. Stiff competition from roads, which have the door-to-door delivery advantage have offered added pain.

 

6. Internalization of noise externalities in rail freight

There is a problem of conflicting interests and this problem is expected to increase in the future: Demand for transport services is projected to increase but residents in many urban environments would like a reduction in noise pollution. Failure to address this problem entails misallocation of resources, either in the sense of some individuals gaining while others lose in terms of their personal welfare, or in the sense that the aggregate welfare losses due to transport noise outweigh the welfare gains from the provision of transport services. There is no ‘market solution’ to this problem of conflicting interests because there is no ‘market’ for transport sound. The institutional invention of tradeable pollution rights does not solve this problem; a nonmarket agent is required to determine the total amount of pollution, including an accepted methodology for measurement and costing of pollution levels.

Transport noise (and other community noise) has become an important problem for individuals, urban planners, governments, and transport service providers

Top Freight Forwarding Companies In India offers supply chain visibility solution that allows shippers to standardize data and provide guardrail logic to multiple sources, preventing incorrect railroad and carrier data from surfacing. Besides abovementioned main problems and challenges that rail freight worldwide are facing today, some other areas where impairments in rail freight has been diagnosed are as follows:-

●More regional trade routes are needed to increase the flow of cargo between Asia and Europe.

●The lockdowns in China are likely to last until June. This means that factories will remain closed and many important logistics paths blocked until then.

●Alternative routes to the main Silk Road are now being explored.

●Currently, there is a shortage of SOCs (Shipper-owned containers) in many regions. SOCs are your number one solution during uncertain times, as they increase flexibility and reliability.

 

Fix Your Rail Freight Problems

With the increase in rail freight volume, the need for visibility is now more important than ever. Visibility platforms are specifically made to better manage operations and help ensure the timely delivery of shipments. In the search for a real-time transportation visibility solution, organizations must select a platform that will move them away from reactionary operations, and into proactive supply chain management. AFM Logistics is the only visibility platform that provides a single-pane-of-glass view into all transportation operations.  Our platform helps organizations identify risks sooner, investigate the root cause of delays, and find new opportunities to improve inbound and outbound operations across all modes.