Line-haul speed is a shipper-related indicator of the performance of the railroad industry. The average speed is the over-the-road train speed and does not include terminal dwell time, time for local pickup and delivery, and the time shipments spend in storage yards.
|Quarter||Average line-haul speed (mph)||Revenue ton-miles
|Average terminal dwell time (hours)|
KEY: U = data are unavailable.
NOTES: The Bureau of Transportation Statistics calculated the average overall line-haul speed by taking a weighted average (using freight car-miles) of the individual railroad average speeds. Data cover Class I railroads only (see Glossary for definition). Average line-haul speed and terminal dwell time exclude the Canadian National Railway because they have stopped releasing those data. Average line-haul speed data for 2005 are preliminary.
SOURCES: Average line-haul speed and terminal dwell time-U.S. Department of Transportation, Research and Innovative Technology Administration, Bureau of Transportation Statistics, calculations using data reported by Class I railroads to the Association of American Railroads for posting at http://www.railroadpm.org/, and Surface Transportation Board (STB), Statistics of Class I Railroads in the United States, table 8, available at http://www.stb.dot.gov/, as of August 2006. Revenue ton-miles-STB, Quarterly Selected Earnings Report, available at http://www.stb.dot.gov/, as of August 2006