ISSN 1052-7524

Proceedings of the Transportation Research Forum

Volume 7 1993

35th TRF Annual Forum New York, New York

October 14-16, 1993 The Great of 1993 71

The Great Flood of 19931

Bob O'Neill, Moderator Vice President American Waterways Operators

I am Bob O'Neill, Vice President of the ty of Transportation and Logistics, as American Waterways Operators and well as an Associate Member of the Director of the American Waterway Transportation Research Board and of Shipyard Conference, the national trade the American Association of Railroad association for small and medium-sized Superintendents. shipyards. Mr. Banks recently participated in a We have the task of describing and number of intermodal and port access estimating the amount ofdamage caused assessments. He is a keen observer of by the flooding in the Midwest. Robert significant trade and transportation Banks will discuss the rail mode of technical trends. transportation. Michael Bronzini will give us a view of the impact on high- Dr. Bronzini has been conducting ways and perhaps some rail coverage as research on transportation systems since well. I'll give an overview of the impact 1970, and his current research interests on waterborne transportation and inland include inland waterways, transportation shipyards. cost and performance models, network analysis, and hazardous material trans- Bob Banks is President of R.L. Banks & portation. Associates, a Washington, D.C. firm of transportation engineers and economists. He is presently Director ofthe Center for Transportation Analysis at the Oakridge Until establishing his own firm about 38 National Laboratory in Oakridge, Ten- years ago, Bob was an economist with nessee. The Center conducts research in the Civil Aeronautics Board and a traffic defense transportation systems,highway manager for the New York Central and intermodal planning policy, and Railroad. transportation energy policy. He is also adjunct professor of civil engineering at Mr. Banks is the author of numerous the University of Tennessee. technical studies on transportation economics and has served as a transpor- From 1986 to 1990, Dr. Bronzini was tation policy advisor to several govern- professor and head of civil engineering ment entities, both in the United States at Penn State University. Dr. Bronzini and Canada. went to Penn State from the University of Tennessee, where he was Director of He is a member of the American Econo- the Transportation Center and Professor mic Association and the American Socie- of Civil Engineering. Dr. Bronzini holds

1 A grant from the UPS Foundation helped make this session possible. 72 Proceedings of TRF, Vol. 7, 1993 a Masters degree and a Ph.D.from Penn portions of all the other territory on this State, and a B.S. from Stanford Univer- map were also affected. sity in Civil Engineering. The flood knocked out 6,000 miles of He is a registered Professional Engineer railroad. That is 5% of the national and is the member of the Transportation network. Every number I give you is Research Board, American Society of very imprecise; it is a first order of Civil Engineers, the Institute of estimation. As far as I can calculate, Transportation Engineers, and several about 6,000 miles of railroad were other societies. In 1982, he was Pres- knocked out. By knocked out, I mean it ident of the Transportation Research did not perform its normal function. It Forum. may be that 750 miles were actuallY under water. But, 6,000 miles were affected. The flood tied up the second Robert L. Banks and third largest U.S. national railroad President gateways — City and St. Louis. R.L. Banks and Associates, Inc. What the flood involved was really a This particular flood is the worst one to kick in the solar plexus to every railroad hit the railroad industry since 1913. that either parallels the Mississippi of River or crosses it. This meant In 1913, all the tributaries of the Ohio, a direct hit at all the western railroads which covered most of that state and — the Burlington Northern, Union northwestern Pennsylvania and Pacific, Santa Fe, and the Soo Line. southeastern Michigan, experienced a period of heavy flooding that cut every Milder impacts were felt on the Norfolk single railroad line. At that time, of Southern, the Southern Pacific, and the course, the northeastern industrial Kansas City Southern. Even the bastian was centered in Ohio and railroads that aren't in this territory — Pennsylvania, and the economic blow to the CSX and Conrail, whose operations the country was probably heavier than are to the east of this territory — were this one. But, it cut all the railroad badly impacted, because an enormous lines north of the and south amount of all railroad freight in the of Lake Erie, with the exception of my United States, approximately 60-70%, is old boss, the New York Central, which interchanged at some point in its always manages somehow to stay alive movement. when everybody else kicks in. What that means in terms of a situation Anyhow,this is a once in 80-year event. like this is that a lot of freight going The first thing you might take a look at from the West Coast to the East Coast or is the extent of it. This Corps of from the West Coast to this territorY Engineers situation map as of a we're looking at and points beyond has particular date shows the territory — to be interchanged between the eastern , , , and western railroads at Kansas City or , , , Kansas, and St. Louis, and both of those places were Missouri, which was the epicenter of the out of business. What that involved flood effects on the railroads and were some extra-ordinary reactions to presumably on everything and everybody crisis that we will see more of in a else too at one stage. The worst hit moment. I also want to spend a little states were Iowa and Missouri, but time on a point of esoteric. Some of yon The Great Flood of 1993 73 have heard of George Kennan, who used railroads, the major trunk-line rail to be Assistant Secretary of State and carriers that were already hit. whose r memoirs were published and eviewed in the papers last year. Only one of the many railroads in this territory — the Chicago & North George Kennan is the son of an Western — stayed in operation, and that econoraics professor who in 1912 wrote a was because it was above water the 131 001t, a copy of which ended up in my whole way, although only an inch or two librarY. The name of the book is The at some places like Des Moines and Iowa Alton Road. The Alton Road is a City. Of the seven parallel lines railroad that runs through this territory, traversing this territory in an east-west except that it is no longer called the direction, only the Chicago & North Alton. Road. From the time that the Western was in service throughout the b°°k was the written until the present time, whole episode — from mid-July to mid- railroad has had six different names September. and owners. the The reason is that it was last one to be built through this There were also some beneficiaries. The territory. It was excess and always runs a tough had Illinois Central is a railroad that financial time. parallel to the Mississippi in a north- south direction between Chicago and Y°11 may recall, those of you who follow New Strangely enough, this these Orleans. 'natters, that it used to be called railroad was a beneficiary. Why? the Chicago & Alton and after that it Because it was unaffected by the flood Was called the Alton Road and then it and it handled about 600 trains that Was called the Baltimore & Ohio, and would normally not go this way to get to tnii,en it was called the Gulf, Mobile & the West. Where were they headed? and then it was called the Chicago, Most of them were headed for Memphis "lissouri & Western. Today, it is called where there are some parallel lines that the Gateway Western. were unaffected by the flood. The reason I mention it is because it So, the Illinois Central got a traffic collies right through this territory and increase that it was able to handle g°es to Kansas City. It is the smallest without any significant increment to its railroad of some significance that was physical facilities. It is estimated that it af fected by the flood. handled traffic about 65% above its normal traffic levels. ,t has drawn a lot of attention because 'Lle wife of at one of its employees was That is all I am going to say about the tracted to the fact that her husband extent of the episode. Turning now to ,N.7,as going to lose his job cost. The he and she got all what this whole business media interested in it. They took impact railroads was costly. It asoMe on the tremendous photographs of how was costly, of course, on everybody in Ellis railroad was knocked out, one or this territory. This is one of the two of which I will show you later on. approaches to Kansas City after the water receded. What you have here is Also, the Iowa Interstate, which There total of is some track that is unusable. is a the remains of ltoad, the former Rock Island washout right underneath it. The track was very badly hit. But, those has been bent. Everything has to be railroads are incremental to the main fixed up. 74 Proceedings of TRF, Vol. 7, 1993

The physical damage is the thing that $230-$275 million. This number was not fascinates the public and gets into the arrived at just off the top of my head. papers. There are some elements of cost that are not obvious and that don't get I had two hours and I pulled together a publicized very much, but that are team of 15 of the nation's leading equally consequential in this kind of railroad experts — all of them work for damage. There is a lot of extra cost me. We put our heads together, and we incurred by the carrier to keep its lines came up with that number. I think it in service under adverse conditions. was reasonably supportable. Then there is the lost business — businesses are disrupted, and even if the About two-and-a-half weeks later, on the railroad doesn't lose customers, it loses fifth day of August, the AAR had pulled the customer's traffic. itself together and came up with an estimate a little lower than ours — $200 So, you have three major elements of million, which represented 100 miles cost. One is the physical damage, which washed away, 500 miles under water, is everything we have looked at so far. four bridges destroyed, many bridges Then there is the excess operating cost, damaged, repair and replacement of and finally the lost revenues or business communications and signal systems, the or traffic. replacement of 500 switches — today, a switch is not just an ordinary thing that The reason I got involved and got chosen one guy can throw by hand. for this panel is because around the end of July when it became clear that this In most cases, it has an electronic was a newsworthy natural disaster, the apparatus, so that what you are talking media contacted their first point-of- about is a $10,000 installation at a contact with the railroad industry, which minimum. is the Association ofAmerican Railroads. The AAR was taken by surprise, and, as Water also damaged the cars. Water it sometimes does, got rid of a difficult came into a lot of territory where there question by sloughing it off on somebody were freight cars standing, some of who is not in a position to defend which had lading in them. In any case, himself, namely me. So, I had a call the AAR's estimate, which encompassed from a guy at the Wall street Journal all the things I just mentioned, came to who said they were going to go to press a total of $200 million. with an article the next day and needed a number as to what the physical Going on now to excess operating damage was. He called me at 1:00 p.m. expenses. By excess operating expenses, on a Thursday. I am talking about two things. First is the repair and replacement of facilities, That puts a consultant in a difficult which is really not an operating expense. dilemma. Either he comes up with a number that he's relatively unsure of It is a capital expenditure, but it is extra because he hasn't tested it for multi- expense. It is represented by this kind linearity, or he, in effect, admits that of a thing. This is a picture of Glasgow, he's not that much of an expert. Missouri, a point on this great little railroad — the Gateway Western. It is a So, as Alexander Pope said in his famous great little railroad to ride over, but quotation, "Fools rush in where angels financially it is a disaster. The repairs fear to tread," I gave him a number — on its main line, which is parallel to the The Great Flood of 1993 75

Missouri River, are estimated to cost service and to keep a track capable of about $12 million, which is a little more carrying heavy traffic while raising it than half the feds had seen fit to five feet is an accomplishment of a ppropriate. substantial merit.

Considering the political realities of our Those examples were one kind of c ountry, imagining that half of it will go expense. Another kind is the on-the- to one property is not realistic. So,these scene activity behind the walls. Again fellows have the problem offinding some using Union Pacific, of which I am also money. not a stockholder but would like to be, they have a war room that they set up in he restoration of bridges is one thing. their usual dispatching center,called the rrhen we have another situation that Harriman Center. It is the prototype of eats up money and that is the building a modern dispatchers' office. alld reinforcement of levees. This is a ternPorary levee that is at right angles They control the whole railroad from a to the railroad tracks. It is probably single place in Omaha, Nebraska. They l ansas City by the looks of it. This all brought in a lot of extra people and got Chews up a little cash. it organized and ran it on a 24-hour-a- day basis, and they kept track of the Here we have another one which is sort locomotives and what crews were °I fascinating. This is an emergency available and what detours had to be Measure that was taken by the Gateway arranged. Western. By the way,I mention it quite Often, but I don't own any stock in the On the detour business, this slide shows, c°17aPany. What they are doing here is for example, that the normal route from ,usp ing a helicopter to fill in some riprap. El Paso to Chicago is a straight shot, but .t his is a piece of rock that a helicopter in order to avoid the Kansas City mess, Is going to dump there. That has got to Southern Pacific in some cases routed Lue the most inefficient form of trains all the way on the Burlington Lranbp—ortation known to man. Northern via Portland.

This is sort of a reverse twist on the There were a lot of circuitous routes. usual efforts of TRF to identify what is One of the big ones was, as I mentioned .e fficient. Here we are identifying what before, down to Memphis, which is a Is inefficient. railroad junction of significance, and going on the southern route. But, they They try to keep ahead of the flood went way out of their way. waters by raising the track. With the Most modern machinery and the most A detour, in any case, is running your °rganized and cooperative of workers, at train on somebody else's railroad. That Xhiost you can raise a track about two means you've got all the expense that 'riches an hour and still keep it in you normally incur, plus the fact that service. They managed to keep ahead of the train is running extra miles, so it the flood waters in many places, but in uses up extra fuel. some places they didn't. When Southern Pacific runs its freight AS for the maximum, the Union Pacific trains on the Burlington Northern, raised some of its track in Missouri as Burlington Northern has to have a pilot. Much as five feet. To keep trains in So, you have crews larger than usual 76 Proceedings of TRF, Vol. 7, 1993 working territory that is strange to Congress,of course, has appropriated,as them. In addition everybody works day usual, a very insufficient amount of and night. It is not a cheap way to run money. a railroad. There were significant variations from Then we get to the lost business. On normal behavior. , like wars, this I am going to give you just a quick sometimes inspire unusual heights of rundown. They lost an estimated cooperation. Most important from the 120,000 car loads. Annualized, this railroad industry standpoint is that would be one-half of one percent of management and the labor unions ail railroad business. worked hand-in-glove to get this extraordinary situation addressed. Revenue losses ran something in the same order of magnitude. As far as we The railroads are accustomed to could tell,the revenue loss approximated competing with one another. If there is $120 million, which is again somewhere anything that a railroad doesn't like, it between four- and five-tenths of one is a motor carrier. But, there is one percent. thing railroads don't like worse than motor carriers and it is other railroads But, the system never broke down. they compete with. In this case, they all Deliveries were slowed. Intermodal in worked together. some cases ran delays of as much as five to seven days. Now I am going to hit The Santa Fe and the Southern Pacific, the most important part of what I have who are competitive, and the BN and the to tell you. One of the big differences UP exchanged trains back and forth. To between this flood and every prior put it another way, it was a bad day for natural disaster is that the shippers FELA. were fully informed. FELA is the Federal Employees Electronic information dissemination is Liability Act, which is a kind of now so well developed that the shippers workmen's compensation that is unique were complimenting the railroads to the railroad industry. There were no because they got the news of where their personal injury claims filed and haven't cars were and what their traffic been to date. Everybody took his sore situation was. Even when the news was back and aching muscles and ate them. bad, it kept coming to them. The flow of Everybody pitched in. current information was superb. I have one more slide to show you. Here As for the financial impact on the is one of the most extraordinary things railroads, railroads are self-insured. that occurred. This was the standard Commercial insurance kicks in, in most way of getting across the Mississippi cases, only at $50 million for each River during the height of the flood at carrier. Keokuk, Iowa.

The big losers here were the The local power company there uses a stockholders. Union Pacific estimates track on a dam across the river to haul that it is going to have a reduction in coal. That raises for Mr. Bronzini the net income that will equal 10-12(P a question of why they have rail-delivered share. Chicago & North Western, 204 a coal on the main trunk route of the share. river. But, they do. The Great Flood of 1993 77

They decided they were going to try to Up until a couple of years ago, we were make some money out of the situation predominantly what we would call the bY having one of those nostalgic trolley brown water inland shipyard industry, Far lines go back and forth. It was all but our association has expanded now to installed, and the first use to which they include rather large builders and Put it was carrying people back and repairers of all types of vessels. forth for nothing. This was the only crossing of the river for 40 miles in Our members can build and repair not either direction. only tugs and barges, but also fishing boats, fish processing vessels, research Putting it into perspective — the overall vessels, small and medium-sized non- flood damage is estimated by various combatant Navy craft, as well as Corps unreliable sources at approximately $10 of Engineers dredgers and Coast Guard billion. The railroads' flood losses from vessels. everything I've told you and everything We can put together are approximately We build and repair most of the Coast 1/20th of that total or a half billion Guard fleet. In addition to that, our dollars. members build and repair vessels up to about 400-450 feet in length, so we get Coming back to New York where we all into some small product carriers along are, an officer of the city testified in the the coasts. The hot market right now for trial of the fellows who tried to blow up our members is gambling boats, as well the World Trade Center that the overall as cruise boats — dinner cruise and day losses attributable to that disaster were cruise boats — that are run not only on a half a billion dollars. So,the railroads' the rivers but also up to Alaska and in total adverse impact was approximately that area. equal to that of the World Trade Center bombing. So, ours is a very vital part of the industry. You may have heard that the shipbuilding industry is sort of gasping Bob O'Neill, Moderator for air in light of the fact that its Vice President umbilical cord to the Navy and its rather American Waterways Operators large shipbuilding budget has gone away. I'm going to describe what happened to waterborne commerce, particularly the The first tier yards such as Newport tug and barge industry and the inland News and Bathe and Ingles, Nasco, and Shipyards. I'm Director of the American General Dynamics, are indeed in big Waterway Shipyard Conference and we trouble. They are looking now for new are the national trade association for markets, mainly commercial markets second tiers — small and medium-sized and international markets. Shipyards. Our members,the second tier guys, have We represent about 55 shipyards been in that commercial and throughout the United States, operating international picture now for several 67 facilities in 17 states, predominantly years and you will find that they are concentrated in the Pacific Northwest, very lean, competitive, very creative, the Gulf Coast, the inland waterways,of and very vital. So, I am proud to say I course,the Mississippi and Ohio systems represent a very vital part of the mainly, and the East Coast. industry, although we are always look- 78 Proceedings of TRF, Vol. 7, 1993

ing for ways to expand and we really river system, for low grade types of could use more opportunities. Having cargo,it cost about $300 a day per barge, said that,I would like to get to the heart and for a more high-grade types, which of my presentation and that is water- is the petro-chemical products in tank borne commerce. barges, it probably cost $700-$800 per day per barge. Our industry estimates Let me first talk from the perspective of there were about 7,000 barges that were a carrier — a tug or barge company that stalled and mired in the flood situation. plies the inland river system. Unlike the railroads, there was no opportunity In terms of product, we estimate that to detour during the flood, so essentially there were about seven million tons of barge traffic was shut down during the product that were frozen on the river flood period. system for that period, mainly grain, petro-chemical products, coal, and iron The losses came in two areas — in cash and steel. flow as well as lost business opportunities. The flood happened at the There is really no insurance in our case. most important time of the year for There is no insurance available for the barge carriers, particularly going south, loss of business. It is available for the carrying grain out of the upper Midwest spoilage of cargo, that is, if coal and down to New Orleans for export. Almost grain get wet, but in this particular case, all of the export grain in this country spoilage was not a major factor in the moves on the barge system. losses.

So, three important months were totally In contracts between carriers and written off, which was a major impact. shippers,there are clauses which have to In terms of cost to the industry, it costs do with delay of delivery of the cargo. about $4.0 million a day for the industry However, there is another clause in to sit still. To look at it in a micro way, those contracts which resulted, in this it cost between $3,000 and $4,000 a day case, in no penalty. However, there was per towboat to keep it tied up with a a rather sizeable cost to the carrier skeleton crew. About 200 tow boats companies with regard to the loss of were disabled or were stopped in the business and lost business opportunities. water. Physically, on the inland river waterway That $3,000 to $4,000 basically covers system, there is an interesting physical the cost of a skeleton crew, insurance, phenomenon that occurred that still has and fuel. The reason I mention fuel is to play itself out in terms of the cost and that some tow boats were in a situation, damage to the industry and its operating physically, where they had to keep their procedures on a day-to-day basis, and engines running. The river level had that is shoaling. gone to such a point that they couldn't tie off on trees or piers or anything like That is, when the river floods and the that. So, they had to keep their engines river surface rises, the floor of the river running to keep in the same position in also rises. the water. As you can imagine,that was a rather substantial cost. Then, if the river recedes slowly, essentially the river floor will go down In terms of the actual hopper barges and as well. In this case, what you had was tank barges that you find on the inland an extremely rapid rise in the surface of The Great Flood of 1993 79

the Water, and at the end of the flood, However, there is a different story for You had a very rapid fall of the water. levees that were built by private entities. There were 1,347 such private That caused shoaling, which is basically levees in the flood area, and 1,043 failed Clu mps of silt that inhabit the middle or or were damaged. almost any part of the waterway Channel. Let me get a little ahead of myself here. I spoke with one of my big shipyard The flooded waterway was altered in members with a major repair yard on terms of its physical makeup. The Coast the inland river system. They have a Guard and the Corps of Engineers are private levee which very valiantly tried c°Mpletely overwhelmed in trying to to stave off the flood but, basically, the keeP track of all the shoals. So,they are flood went 11 feet over the levee top and relying on the industry to report their there was really nothing they could do. location. They asked the Corps of Engineers to ,A8 you can imagine, the Corps of look at the levee to see if they could give 4ngineers is overwhelmed in terms of them any help, and the Corps said, removing and dredging the shoals. So, "Look, this is a private levee; we can't :3°11ive got a situation now where river give you any help; we've got our hands craffic has begun to move again, but at a full with other projects right now." very slow rate, since pilots have to be very careful because of the shoaling. "But, if you were to try and build the levee to such a point that it would fight I sPoke with one of our regional vice off this 300-year flood, you would have to Presidents in the Midwest who told me expand the levee base as well as increase that traffic is moving but in a halting the height of it by about 15-16 feet. The Way, in the sense that traffic will move base of it would have to be expanded to and then hit a shoal. a point where most of your usable property would be used up." So, the They then have to stop and either private levee situation is really very circuranavigate the shoal or work with desperate. the Corps of Engineers to eventually get it out of the way. So, it is running in To a large extent, businesses are telling fits and starts. That is a real hazard for me they are going to do their best to the inland tug and barge industry. repair the levees and that is going to have to be the best they can do right With regard to the reservoirs, the now in terms of both engineering and reservoirs held and did their job. As for cost. the levees, you break that down into two categories: first, the federally built The navigational system held up in the levees built by the Corps of Engineers. sense that out of 34 locks in the flood They worked. plain, and 29 sites, 17 had to be closed at one time or another, but continued to be The structural integrity of those levees operational throughout the flood period. held. Out of 229 levees in the flood When I say 17 were closed, they were area, only 28 were over-topped and only closed for a brief period of time and then two federally built levees failed. were re-opened. 80 Proceedings of TRF, Vol. 7, 1993

Let me move on now to the shipyard flood itself because the traffic was tied point of view, which is the concept that up. is really near and dear to my heart. Now, the double whammy is that the Basically these are repair yards that barge lines are running full team, full service the tugs and barges that ply the out with all their equipment on the inland river system. Mainly what they water, to try to make up for the tiro had to do was to evacuate their that they lost during the flood itself. As equipment and personnel out ofthe area. a result, no one is bringing their equipment in for repairs now. They are Most of the yards were able to get most keeping their fleets afloat and of their equipment out of the flood area operational as best they can because and evacuate it to a higher point. they have to try to make up.

Some yards were even successful in They are behind schedule and have to being able to move whole operations, get that grain down to New Orleans for that is move their entire machine shop export as well as to move chemical to another location, and continue products and coal back upriver. To that operations. The same thing with their extent, the business cycle has been propeller shop and their wheel shop and totally disrupted and. A lot of yards are other things. However, some of the telling me that they will make no money machinery wasjust too big and was fixed this year. Their profit-loss situation is in place. going to be impacted such that they will be able to meet their operating costs and Shipyards are telling me that, in large that will be about it for calendar year measure, they are going to have to run 1993. their equipment for several weeksjust to find out what may have happened in One positive thing is that, in several terms of water damage. So, the picture instances, yards told me that banks were on equipment damage in shipyards is a very tolerant and waived their mortgage little murky, but I think probably in the payments during the flood period and next few weeks, we should have a better during the next couple of months, view. knowing that these yards are good customers and will be around for a A lot of the facilities in shipyards on the while. Their cash flow is being helped inland rivers are floating dry docks,that by the fact that the banks are working is, docks that can sink. If a barge or a with them in terms of meeting their tug pulls into the dock, it is pumped out facility mortgage payments. and raised so that work can commence on the vessel. Those floating dry docks Government assistance has been sustained no damage because they were somewhat minimal — 4% loans are able to stay above flood levels the entire available if you are not qualified with time. Right now, people are telling me the local bank. The catch-22 is that a lot they are probably back to 50% strength, of yards are very qualified with the local and in the next few weeks they will banks and therefore aren't eligible for probably get back to 100%. any type of government assistance.

The loss of business opportunities is a The yards on the Ohio River that were double whammy for the shipyards. They not directly affected by the flood were suffered the loss of business during the still indirectly affected because there The Great Flood of 1993 81

Was a traffic tie-up in the barge industry say, they are back to 50% operations on the Ohio River. As a result, they had generally and should be back to 100% a Complete shutdown of traffic for a within the next few months. While Now,there has been a resurgence and a The ironic part about this is that while reoccurrence of more rains in the the Missouri and the Mississippi Rivers Midwest, and several shipyards are very Were at this Biblical flood stage, the apprehensive about what that is going to °hio River was at a near level, mean. Almost all of the shipyard Slid yet they could not move any traffic facilities are between the river and the because of the tie-ups on the Mississippi. levee, and they really feel they could be sunk again if the rain continues. The One interesting tidbit that I would like final story of this particular episode has to bring up here was brought to me by yet to be told. one of my yards, which is a major repair Yard in Cape Girardo, Missouri. What should the federal policy be now on Dr. Michael S. Bronzini levees on the river system? Should we Director of the Center for repair the levees? What impact do the Transportation Analysis levees have on the river level and the Oakridge National Laboratory flood level down stream from them? We had a drought on the Ohio River One fellow pointed out to me that the system during the flood. Oakridge and IIPper Mississippi had risen above the Knoxville are on the upper reaches of 40-foot level five times between 1844, the Tennessee River system. When the Corps of Engineers began keeping records, and 1973. In the 20- July was the driest month I've seen in Year period between 1973 and now, my total tenure of 11 years and two Where there has been a real proliferation stints in Knoxville. I can only of levee construction in that area, it has remember one other summer that was risen above 40 feet nine times. that dry.

You have a situation now where you So, while St. Louis was under 50 feet of have less rainfall causing a higher water water, we had minus two inches in my level in that area. Should there be grass. another look at federal policy with regard to the construction and One of the questions is, why in the world maintenance of levees? Maybe the does the Oakridge National Laboratory answer to that question is, yes, we care about the flood, especially since we Should continue that. were in a drought ourselves, and what is our interest in this thing? I don't purport to have an answer, but I think it is something that ought to be Well, there is a bit of a story of why we looked at and that is very important. care about this. The principal reason we were worried about it is that this year Essentially, the carriers, the barge and we are helping the Census Bureau and towing companies took a major hit. The the U.S. Department of Transportation shipyards took a major hit as well and it in their conduct, and in our case is going to take months for them to get analysis,of the 1993 national commodity back on their feet financially. But, as I flow survey. That is going on right now, 82 Proceedings of TRF, Vol. 7, 1993 and shippers are reporting quarterly on estimate, in the case of waterway shipments that fall into their sampling shipments, 100% of the actual mileage frame. used, you would find a big variance between the survey results for 1993 and This is the first time the CFS has been the estimates of mileage and ton-miles done in around 20 years or so. What by other sources. shippers are reporting on is the zip code of origin of a shipment which happens to So, our strategy is to try to record the be in the sample, and the zip code of actual ton-miles moved during 1993 and destination, and the mode or combina- hope the users understand this is tion of modes in transportation that was certainly not a typical year. used. We have to know what elements of the At Oakridge National Laboratory, we system were out of service when, so we have an agreement with the Department can provide accurate mileage by mode of Transportation to take that when that might have affected the information on zip code pairs and freight shipments. develop information on the mileage by each mode and each combination of Within the process of tracking these modes between the origin and disruptions, there were things besides destination. the flood, by the way, that affected transportation in 1993, enough to cause The flood caused a big problem for us. some rerouting.

A year ago, we recognized that we were You may remember the late winter going to have to keep track during the blizzard that hit the upper Midwest and calendar year of any significant events which we suspect may have caused some that might have affected the rerouting of truck traffic. Who knows transportation network. what will happen between now and December 31st?. So, we have to keep Our interest is in reporting the actual track of all of it. utilization of the transportation system by those sample shipments, and thereby In the process of doing this, of course, trying to develop estimates of the actual the flood occurred, and we started to see ton-miles oftraffic by mode that occurred reports such as some of the excerpts that during 1993. Bob showed you.

You can approach that task from two It became obvious to our sponsors in the different perspectives. One is to say that Department of Transportation that the we should probably not worry about existing systems of information capture disruptions, but try to take the may not have been good enough, may information on the extent of service by have needed to be improved to provide the modes, along with likely riding better real-time or near real-time patterns,and develop a business-as-usual information on what is happening where, estimate of ton-miles. particularly from an intermodal perspective. Then, whenever you would look at our survey results and try to compare them So, in concert with doing this work to with ton-mile numbers generated by support the commodity flow survey, we other surveys that use samples to are also trying to figure out whether the The Great Flood of 1993 83

existing data capture systems can serve a flood occur, so you can quickly see a Couple of other purposes. what routes are affected and what other kinds of actions might be necessary. Olie is to link them to better geographic ,d1sPlays, better maps of what is So, we have a couple motives for doing QaPpening, and second, to try to capture this. One I want to talk about is a system reliability and system service snapshot of the kinds of things that we statistics that can be reported annually. learned during the flood. One of the sponsors of this effort is the Bureau of Transportation Statistics. First is, where do you get the This year the Bureau will be putting out information? There is already a system the first transportation statistics annual in place that the Department of report, which is one of their chartering Transportation runs, and that is the requirements. Office of Emergency Transportation.

There will be a chapter in this year's They put out for any significant event rePort on the reliability and availability something called a situation report. Of the transportation system, and we are They issued about 40 situation reports helping to collate and provide the during the flood. They update them Information, with the flood as the usually at least daily and sometimes Prinadry- example of the kind of statistics more often. that need to be collected. They have a relatively informal network. The first issue of the annual report will They have people out in all of the /lot have a comprehensive set of data on federal regions whose job it is to be the reliability from all sources throughout pipeline of contact to local agencies who the year, but it will probably focus on have on-the-scene operational the flood as an example and call for the information and who have a need to kind of thing that might be done in the know this for operational purposes. future. Their job is to get that information from °I course, the Bureau was also the field, get it back out to anybody who Concerned because, for the CFS and needs to know it in the federal agencies. Other purposes, we maintain a national So, their situation reports have been the set of network databases. best source of information that we could find for what was happening during the We are in the process of upgrading every flood. °lie of those network databases to the 1:100,000 scale of accuracy. The These situation reports usually rely upon versions that we were using initially all of these other sources, but you can Were based on maps with a 1:1,000,000 also sometimes call the other sources to 1:2,000,000 scale accuracy. directly and get more detail than might be in the situation report. The new network map databases have a rauch higher level of geographic The Coast Guard in St. Louis was the resolution, to the point where you can prime source of information on the actually recognize what is where. It waterway situation._ /nay be useful for displaying in semi real-time the geographic status of the The FAA does a great job of tracking transportation network when things like impacts on airports. Of course, the 84 Proceedings of TRF, Vol. 7, 1993 individual railroads and the state cases to find out precisely when the highway agencies track those two modes. facility opened back up again.

Every state highway agency has a The bridge closures turned out to be — construction hotline. In fact, those again, this is another point-located kind affiliate members are listed in the front of facility — the bridge closures turned of the Rand McNally Highway Atlas. It out to be pretty good. The was fairlY turned out, those same numbers were accurate information about when they often the place to call to find out what closed, and in most cases, when they might be happening to the highways and opened up again. bridges in a particular state. Let me show you a few statistics that we What did we learn about data quality? have been able to compile on some of the As you might expect, the point-located modes. One of the modes that we didn't facilities are the easiest ones to learn hear much about in the flood is the air about. So, it was pretty easy for the mode, but, in fact, there were a number FAA to tell you that a particular airport of airport closures during the flood. was in or out of service, or for the Corps of Engineers to report on the condition of In the middle of July, the number of an individual waterway lock. closed airports peaked at about 24 airports. We relaxed to a steady-state In the case of railroads and highways, number of about 12 which were still out the data are often ambiguous from a of service at the middle of September. database standpoint. The reason is that There are still a few of them that are in most cases, the information is out of service. These are primarily small reported in local language, and airports with landing strips. No sometimes the spacial reference to where significant passenger terminal was out of a facility is located is lacking. There is service during the flood. usually not a diagram or a map in a local report. Often a street name or As an example, some of the facilities highway name is reported that might be that were closed — this is from the a local name as opposed to a route situation report of July 26th, so it is number or Interstate. right about the time there were 24 out of service — the ones out of service in The specific date that a facility is closed Missouri were the Jefferson CitY or open is often not given. In some Memorial, Washington Memorial, cases, a report would be given on Herman Municipal, St. Charles County, Monday that something closed over the St. Charles Municipal, and so on. weekend. Primarily it is municipal and small Well, when was that? Was that 4:00 on strips as opposed to the major Friday? Was it noon on Saturday? Was commercial centers. I believe one or two it Sunday afternoon? When did it of these airports actually did air carrier actually close? The way our news media commuter service, but none of the major and our interest as readers work, the air carrier airports were out of business. closing of something is big news. The bridge is closed. The highway is closed. Another kind of statistic that we've That makes the news. For some reason, compiled is the duration of time the it is not as big news when it opens airports were closed. A few were closed again. So, it was very hard in many for just a few days. The Great Flood of 1993 85

There is a peak at the five- or six-day There is a note on the situation report level. Then there is a tail of those that saying that the opening and closing of were closed for a long time and are still rail line service in the flood areas Closed for periods exceeding a month- reoccurs daily as the water rises and and-a-half. It looks like the median falls and detour routes are negotiated. length of being closed is somewhere around 25 days or so. What does that do to my trying to process the commodity flow survey? I'm This doesn't affect us for the commodity going to have to rely on knowledgeable n°w surveys since these aren't people like Bob or the AAR or FRA or 81gnificant centers of air freight the individual railroads to try to get a shipment, but it does affect us in terms better handle on exactly when specific of trying to record the availability of the facilities were shut down and reopened. air system for general aviation. We have a start on that. We have a small database for each mode which tries We've already heard a lot about the to identify these things by facility name railroads, so I don't want to do anything or location, and then tries to tie down rulore than to put up this one particular the specific closing and opening dates. illustration. Regarding the highway mode, let me Bob already showed the areas that were talk about the bridges. We have a affected. There were delays primarily pretty good sample of data for the because of the rerouting necessary, and bridges. Here is another diagram that there was extensive rerouting. shows how many bridges were out of service, by date, during the flood. The UP Kansas City yard was closed for quite a while and some of the things There was a peak at the beginning of that were done were pretty creative and August when 30 highway bridges were unprecedented. closed down in the Midwest. We have a database that includes each of these by Por example, the UP and the Santa Fe name and location and when it was built a connection between their systems closed and when it was open. As of the in Topeka to allow the UP to run over end of September, there were still seven the Santa Fe tracks to get around the bridges that were closed. Several of Problems in the Kansas City area. those will be closed indefinitely because There was a lot of creative interlining they were so extensively damaged that and switching going on. the repair process will be pretty lengthy.

I mentioned earlier the extent of things Here is the histogram of how long and tot necessarily well documented. Here how, many bridges were closed during 18 an illustration from the situation specific periods of time. It looks like report for July 26th. about two weeks is the median of this distribution. As I've said, as of the end It says the following UP lines are out of of September, there are still a couple of service: Kansas City, Missouri to bridges that have been closed for 30 days Omaha; Salina to Wichita, Kansas; or so and are still closed since the time I Jefferson City to Kansas City, Missouri; made up this histogram. St. Louis to Poplar Bluff, Missouri; and several other lines that were out of I can make one or two comments on the service as of that day. waterway case. I will supplement a 86 Proceedings of TRF, Vol. 7, 1993 little of what Bob O'Neill said. One of presume that the network was intact the things that happened to carriers and throughout the year. That will give us waterways was rerouting ofshipments to an estimate of ton-miles by mode. We different destinations. This is another will then go through our database and thing that is going to affect CFS. make a list of lines and facilities by mode that were affected by the flood. Our data indicates that by July 13th, some West Coast ports were beginning to Census will try to figure out which feel the affects of the flooding in the shipments in their survey would have Midwest, because trucks and trains used those facilities, so they can reroute were delayed in arriving with export those shipments on what was left of the cargoes. Consequently, transportation network. We will see what kinds of ton equipment to haul imports east was in miles come out of those calculations, and short supply. Some cargo was being held that will give us some notion of the in the Ports of Los Angeles and Long impact of the flood on route diversion. Beach, creating a backlog of cargo. So, the Midwest flooding did have an impact Getting a handle on shipment diversion on the West Coast ports because of the is going to be a bit harder because the cross-country and inland hauls that were shippers who tried to switch modes involved. presumably will tell us in the survey what mode they actually used. How to I have a note on grain diversion from go about figuring out what mode they barge to rail. This comes under the lost would have used had the flood not been business category. As of July 22nd, there may be a tough question. At least between 150,000 and 300,000 tons of we know who they are, though, so grain that ordinarily would have moved Census could do a follow-up process and through the Gulf of Mexico had been contact shippers that our runs indicated diverted to the Pacific Northwest. They would have been shipping through the couldn't get it to New Orleans by barge, flood area. so they sent it to the West Coast presumably by rail. Maybe we can find shippers who shipped things differently in the third quarter of Another note is that Archer Daniels the year than they did the first, second, Midland, the nation's large grain and fourth quarters of the year, because processor and third largest barge the sample frame depends on annual operator, indicated that flood delays shipping volumes. So, we ought to be were costing about $1.5 million per day. able to find some shippers that exhibited ADM had to divert shipments to rail at a difference in their shipping patterns twice the cost. In some cases, the during the third quarter of the year. company used trucks, which is, ofcourse, even more costly than rail. About two years from now when we get all this processing done,because the first We have a unique opportunity because goal of Census is to put out the actual the CFS was done this year and, thus, survey results in terms of shipment 0- we will try to get an actual quantitative D's and mileage, we will probably have calculation of the impact of the flood on a chance to do some supplementary work ton-miles and on mileage. and try to obtain some estimates of the flooding impacts and see how that We expect, in processing the commodity correlates with what other people have flow survey data,to do one run where we done who were on the scene. The Great Flood of 1993 87

O'Neill -(in response to a question)I can the Census Bureau,you wonder why the give you my perspective from my end of Census Bureau doesn't do a better job. the transportation spectrum. I think the Impact is probably substantially greater. For 20 years, consumers of numbers have been complaining because the Prom what I can tell, particularly from cutbacks of information gathering funds a shipyard point of view, people are just during the last two administrations liot yet aware of what the entire damage mean that everybody who works with Picture is. As time goes on, people are numbers in this business has been learning more and they are uncovering struggling. more, so there is a certain degree of apprehension and uncertainty among The numbers and statistical series that companies that are trying to grapple were kept for years and publicized all of With this. What is the affect on the a sudden disappeared. levees? What is going to have to be done there? What about the machinery Now, when they finally do decide to and the facilities? spend some money in this direction, they pick one year in 80 when everything is As I mentioned to you in my disrupted. Presentation, a couple of people had mentioned to me that they are just going Why don't you cancel this and start it to have to run their machines for a while next year on the assumption that it is and see what happens. not likely to happen two years in a row. That is a question for you, Mr. Bronzini. In contrast to an earthquake where you can have a pretty clear picture of what Bronzini - The survey manager is here — the impact is, there is a certain degree of John Fowler from the Census Bureau — vagueness here, and businessman hate but I think the short answer is that the that. And, for instance, with the survey was already underway for two shoaling in the inland waterway system, quarters. they are groping in the dark learning about these shoals as they encounter You certainly couldn'tforecast there was them. going to be a flood in the third quarter. So, you either quit with half of your It is going to take months for the shoals sample, or you go on and try to point out to be seen and then be marked and that the third quarter is abnormal. ultimately to be removed. So, it is just going to take months and perhaps years Comment. That is exactly right. The to get a real grip on it from our point of gearing up for this survey took many view. months. To stop things and put it offfor a year would have been nearly Banks - What it demonstrates to some impossible from a fiscal standpoint, even extent is that the statistics on which we if it had happened earlier in the year. all rely need to be taken with a grain of salt. As a participant in a nationally I don't know how many times we will advertised estimate, I can tell you from have to do something like this CFS to firsthand experience,you need to assume get a typical year. Even this year, there that these are the best numbers that can have been other events like blizzards be gotten, and even if they are gotten by and . Other years we have had 88 Proceedings of TRF, Vol. 7, 1993 earthquakes, etc. You begin to wonder Some petrochemical products lose their what a typical year is. chemical properties and had to be shifted right away. But I don't think there was Banks - There will always be something. any massive movement from barge to The solution is to have the survey other modes, at least in the information conducted every year instead of once that I have gleaned thus far. every 20 years. Bronzini - We have heard reports from Question - On Mike's last point about carriers that there was some unloading possible changes in mode of of barges, shifting to other modes. We transportation as a result of diverting are going to have to follow up on that, traffic among modes during the flooding, probably through contacts with have you heard anything from your individual carriers, to try to get a better contacts that people have moved goods handle on how widespread that might by other modes. have been and what commodities might have been involved. O'Neill - I did not hear that much anecdotal information about shifting Comment - Our information is that there from one mode to another. As I were quite sizeable diversions from mentioned, grain and coal can pretty barge to rail and from rail to truck in much maintain their physical properties. individual situations. But, there is no As a result, yes, there were backups, but present indication that any of these I think the shippers were generally changes will be persistent. They will agreeable to sticking with the barge probably all revert to the originally mode for most of the crisis. chosen mode when things settle down.