Did You Know? - Patrick Seeba, GHPB

The Houston Freight Rail System

Recently at the Port Bureau, we wrapped up a month-long study of freight rail in the Houston area for one of our members. Houston Port Rail Traffic starts with the PTRA, which controls all railroad and switching inside the Houston Ship Channel with 154 miles of track including 46 miles of mainline track. The entire Houston region includes more than 200 miles of mainline track.

With their established infrastructure, the PTRA moves approximately 900 cars a day between their North, Manchester, and Pasadena yards. TXDOT inspectors certified the PTRA tracks as “in excellent physical condition,” even though they are under consistent heavy use.

Each week, approximately 2,200 trains move through Houston on the Union Pacific Railroad (UP), BNSF Railway Company (BNSF), and Port Terminal Railroad Association (PTRA). Additionally, Kansas City Southern Railway Company (KCS) has the right to operate over BNSF and UP tracks. Rail traffic in Houston rarely just passes through, as over 90% of all traffic that touches the Houston area stops in the city.

Freight movement in Houston generally focuses through the Houston, Dayton, Baytown, Bayport, and Beaumont complexes in carload shipments, and is sorted by the customer at local yards. 84% of traffic is considered heavy industrial and composed of chemicals/plastics, as well as bulk commodities such as coal, rock, and petroleum coke. Looking specifically at the ship channel, the PTRA moves mostly petrochemical products, with Plastics, Chemicals, Fuel, and Petroleum Coke making up almost 75% of movements.

Rail demand for container movement has not been unduly stretched by the constraints of either railroad operations or the Houston rail network, however the region as a whole is underprepared for significant increase in throughput or volume.

One of the major issues with rail, as with truck and ocean transportation is the ability of the current infrastructure to stand up to an increase in volume without causing service issues. Currently 42,000 container loads move on the rail system every year with a projected capacity for 180,000, however even as current usage begins to climb back to the 2005 peak around 80,000 units, the Houston rail system must look at bottlenecks created by rail yards: even with double-sided track on both sides, if the trains have to slow through a rail yard, delays can be created.

Still, on the whole, the Houston rail system has come a long way since 1920’s civic promoters called Houston “the place where 17 railroads meet the sea”.

The Houston community is searching for public money to expand their infrastructure both through state and federal capital expansion funding. Though normally railroad maintenance and expansion is the domain of the companies that own the track, given the lack of funding, Houston does not seem to be a priority for national railroads, especially given the problems they face in other cities.

The Houston area and business community must continue to take the initiative to fix problems before they create issues so that we stay ahead of customer demand.