OMAHA, Neb. — Union Pacific Railroad and Norfolk Southern Railway will significantly improve eastbound domestic transcontinental service from Los Angeles to the Southeast on May 21.
The service improvement in this important high-volume lane will result from shifting traffic from the Memphis gateway to the new Shreveport, La., gateway.
This new route, combining Union Pacific’s Sunset Route between Los Angeles and Texas with Norfolk Southern’s and Kansas City Southern’s joint venture line between Shreveport and Meridian, Miss., is nearly 150 miles shorter than the current route, making it the shortest, fastest and most reliable intermodal route between Los Angeles and the Southeast.
This change will result:
- Sandard service to Atlanta will improve by one day to fifth-morning availability.
- BlueStreak premium service to Atlanta now will be available on the fourth afternoon, providing truck-competitive transit speeds of 600 miles per day.
- Cut-off times in Los Angeles have been moved to later in the day to allow more shipments to depart on that evening’s train. All eastbound domestic shipments will originate at Union Pacific’s LATC Intermodal erminal in Los Angeles.
- There also will be improvements to other Southeast destinations.
Since expanding service and capacity in this lane in February, Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern BlueStreak has been running 100 percent on time. Both railroads continue to make major investments to expand capacity and enhance service performance on this route.
Westbound domestic service is expected to be shifted to the faster Shreveport gateway during the third quarter of 2007.
International shipments will remain routed via the Memphis gateway, and customers can expect improvements to this service in the months ahead.
— PRNewswire-FirstCall
