U.S. intermodal service appears to be improving even as the major railroads handle a surge of volume, largely driven by shippers accelerating imports through U.S. West Coast ports ahead of the expiration of the current longshore labor contract at the end of this month.
Average intermodal train speeds, a barometer of overall service reliability, improved in the week ending May 30 to 29.9 miles per hour from 29.2 mph in the prior week, said Larry Gross, a senior consultant at research firm FTR Associates. But the average train speed of intermodal trains in the last week of May was still 5.4 percent slower than in the same period in 2013.