Trains, Planes and Automobiles. . . and the Coronavirus Pandemic
Unless you have a special interest in them, you probably haven't been thinking much about means of transportation lately.
Indeed, you probably haven't been going anywhere much, for that matter.
But because we have a special interest in the topic, and have dedicated blogs on two of the three title items here, we've been thinking about them a little, and we're seeing some interesting things going on.
Let's take the oldest topic first, trains. We have a companion blog that's just dedicated to that topic. Have the railroad been impacted by the COVID 19 Pandemic? We'll, here's a recent industry magazine headline on what's going on.
So indeed, it would appear so.
Regionally, at least one of the railroads has been furloughing employees. Coal is collapsing, there isn't really anywhere near as much oil shipped by rail as there once was and oil is down anyway, and we're entering what appears to be a pretty deep recession.
Not a cheery scenario for the railroads right now at all.
So what about air then?
Indeed, you probably haven't been going anywhere much, for that matter.
But because we have a special interest in the topic, and have dedicated blogs on two of the three title items here, we've been thinking about them a little, and we're seeing some interesting things going on.
US rail traffic falls off a cliff
So indeed, it would appear so.
Regionally, at least one of the railroads has been furloughing employees. Coal is collapsing, there isn't really anywhere near as much oil shipped by rail as there once was and oil is down anyway, and we're entering what appears to be a pretty deep recession.
Not a cheery scenario for the railroads right now at all.
So what about air then?
Not looking super either.
Air travel has decreased 96% due to COVID 19. That's a whopping huge decrease to say the least.
96%.
Flights locally have been reduced 50%. No need for all of the old ones, and it's not like they were flying out of here every few minutes as it was. Cheyenne cancelled a run to Dallas it had (until they cancelled it, I didn't know that they even had one).
As a minor plus, Cody's airport is going to receive $18,000,000 in the form of a grant, which was a surprise to them, but that is fairly minor in comparison to what's otherwise going on.
Well, all this shouldn't impact automobiles, that old standby, right?
Well there'd certainly be good reason to suspect it wouldn't. Oil is below $20bbl and now at an all time historic low. Prices at the pump have been dropping. Should be great for cars, right?
Nope. Sales of automobiles have crashed. People just aren't going out and buying, and in a lot of places, of course, they can't. And they likely don't want to either.
Hired automobile rides, such as Uber, are also down, not surprisingly.
Interesting times.
