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Massive spring and summer floods along the Missouri and Souris rivers hit BNSF Railway Co. hard in the pocketbook. The Class I expects flood-related activities and weather-related impacts to cost about $375 million, BNSF Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Matt Rose wrote in a Sept. 27 letter to Surface Transportation Board Chairman (STB) Dan Elliott III. Each year, the STB chairman asks the Class I CEOs to submit a letter to the board explaining how their respective railroad plans to manage service demands through the peak season and end of year.
 
BNSF’s two busiest corridors were taken out of service because of floodwaters, Rose wrote. Both main tracks in Minot, N.D., on a mainline between the Twin Cities and Seattle, were flooded out from late June to early July, and service on a key St. Joseph Subdivision line between Lincoln, Neb., and Kansas City, Mo., was completely severed for several weeks, he said.
 
“At the peak of our flooding, we rerouted as many as 40 percent of our trains, or about 460 train starts per day, and temporarily relocated up to nearly 500 train crew employees to handle rerouted traffic,” Rose wrote. “We undertook extensive rebuilding and hardening efforts, including raising miles of track by up to eight feet, building levees and berms to protect the rail, and repairing and replacing many miles of damaged track, bridges and structures.”
 
Since the floods, BNSF has made steady improvements with train speeds, terminal dwell times and on-time performance, he said.
 
“Clearly, we have not fully regained our steady state of velocity, but we are well on the way to achieving that objective,” Rose wrote.
 
Also in the letter, Rose reviews BNSF’s recent decision to increase 2011 capital spending to $3.8 billion, including $2.3 billion on the core network and related assets. For example, the Class I will install 3.3 million ties, representing an all-time-high for the number of ties installed in a single year, he said. BNSF also plans to spend $450 million on locomotive acquisitions, $400 million on freight cars and equipment, $300 million on positive train control, and $300 million on line, terminal and intermodal expansion and efficiency projects.
 
“We [have] continued to make investments in our railroad despite decreased volumes over the past four years,” Rose wrote.