Railroad News

The Arizona Corporation Commission has approved a $120 million project that includes a major upgrade to a Union Pacific Railroad crossing in Tucson, the commission announced this week.

Designed to improve safety and traffic flow, the project will remove a grade crossing at Interstate 10 and Ina Road in Tucson. I-10 will be lowered to ground level and widened to eight lanes, with Ina Road raised to cross over Camino de Oeste, the tracks, and I-10, commission officials said in a press release.

Pricing gains weren't enough to offset the decline in traffic volume in fourth-quarter 2015 at Union Pacific Railroad. As a result, UP posted net income of $1.1 billion, or $1.31 per diluted share for the period, compared with $1.4 billion, or $1.61 per diluted share, in fourth-quarter 2014, the railroad announced this morning.

Operating revenue for the quarter fell 15 percent to $5.2 billion compared with Q4 2014. Fourth-quarter business volumes — measured by total revenue carloads — declined 9 percent in 2015 compared with a year ago. Volumes fell in each business group except for automotive. Coal led the decline; freight revenue for that category fell 31 percent, according to the company's press release.

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has determined that Union Pacific Railroad's failure to conduct a risk assessment of a new control point (CP) signal installation contributed to a collision of two UP trains in 2014, the agency announced in a report last month.

The incident occurred in September 2014 near Galva, Kan., when an eastbound UP train collided with the side of a westbound UP train, according to the NTSB's executive summary of its investigative report.