U.S. rail traffic trend held true in year's 16th week

For the week ending April 20, U.S. carloads totaled 276,662, down 2 percent, and intermodal volume totaled 240,698 units, up 0.6 percent compared with volumes from the same week last year, according to Association of American Railroads data.

Total U.S. traffic for the week dipped 0.8 percent to 517,360 units. Four of 10 carload commodity groups posted increases, led by petroleum and petroleum products at 40.1 percent, while grain volume declined 21.8 percent.

Canadian railroads reported weekly carloads totaling 83,540, up 1.2 percent, and intermodal volume totaling 55,564 units, up 2 percent year over year. Mexican railroads' carloads rose 2.5 percent to 15,107, but their intermodal volume fell 5.2 percent to 9,018 units.

Through 2013's first 16 weeks, 13 reporting U.S., Canadian and Mexican railroads handled 5,896,891 carloads, down 0.9 percent, and 4,767,446 containers and trailers, up 4.4 percent compared with the same 2012 period.