1. Serving Area Table

2. What’s a Serving Area Table?

6. First, a few acronyms…

7. Acronyms AAR: Association of American Railroads
CSD: Car Service Directives, which govern the return of empty cars for railroad marked or railroad controlled private cars
CSM: Centralized Station Master
CSR: Car Service Rules, which define, among other things, rules for things like loading foreign cars, interchanges to another railroad, advertising on a car
IRF: Industry Reference File
OT-10: The AAR Circular defining the Code of Car Service Rules and Code of Car Hire Rules
SPLC: Standard Point Location Code
UI: User Interface

8. Reclaim for Loading Delay - Owner Responsibility
Now a quick review of
Car Hire Rule 22
Reclaim for Loading Delay - Owner Responsibility

9. Rule 22 Reclaims Common to all reclaims under Rule 22:
Reclaim can be for empty time only
Rule 22 references CSR 16, which in turn references CSD 145 and 435
CSDs govern the return of empty cars
CSD 435 applies to covered hoppers, and CSD 145 covers everything else

10. Rule 22 Reclaims Common to all reclaims under Rule 22:
Cars must be assigned to a National or Shipper Controlled Pool defined as having an Umler Pool Type Code of:
“C” – Specific shipper at a specific location
“N” – National pool, not assigned to a specific shipper
- OR -
Cars must be specific mechanical designations
Per CSD 145: “FA, FB, FBC, FBS, FC, FCA, FD, FDC, FL, FM, FMS, FW, GB, GBR, GBS, GBSR, GS, GSS, GT, GTR, GTS, GWS, GWSR, HK, HKR, HKS, HM, HMA, HMS, HMSR, HT, HTA, HTR, HTS, HTSR, LC, LF, LG, LM, LP, LS, LU, RB, RBL, RC, RP, RPL, XL, XLI, XM, XP, XPI, and T”
Per CSD 435: “LO”

11. Rule 22 Reclaims Common to all reclaims under Rule 22: For TTX cars:
Reclaims are taken against the rack owner, as defined in the Umler Lessee field
Must have an AAR Car Type starting with “V”; and
Must be assigned to a national pool (“998” or “999”)
Additional cars, pool codes, etc. can be allowed, or excluded, per bilateral agreements

12. Rule 22 Reclaims
By far the most common reclaims taken under Rule 22 are:
Account Type 224, “Held Short”:
From time of arrival at a holding point until car leaves that holding point
Only if the car is at the holding point greater than 24 hours
Supposed to be “…when assignee cannot immediately accept on arrival at loading point and cars cannot reasonably be held on other tracks at loading point…”, but that is mostly ignored
Account Type 222, “At Loading Point”:
From time of arrival at loading point until demurrage free time starts or the car is release loaded, whichever occurs first
Per OT-10 Rule 22, A. 2., “Loading point, referred to in this rule, means any point within the limits of the switching district in which the industry being serviced is located”

13. So what’s the problem?

14. Interpretation of “Switching District” for 222
Again, per OT-10 Rule 22, A. 2., “Loading point…means any point within the limits of the switching district in which the industry being serviced is located.”
But, there is no standard definition for a “Switching District”
What interpretations are you aware of, either through your own outbound processing, or inbound reclaim validation?
Use of the Revenue Switch SPLC in Railinc’s CSM IRF?
Within a specific radius of a specific loading point?
Within the confines of a city? And it’s suburbs? And across the river?
Into the next State? Into the next country?
Internal mapping table?

15. Interpretation of “Switching District” for 222
As a recipient of a Rule 22 reclaim, how can you know what was used to create the reclaim?
How much manual work is created throughout the industry in the reclaim, counter-reclaim, counter-counter-reclaim process when the issuing railroad and reclaim recipient disagree on what a “switching district” should be?

16. Why not standardize on the existing Revenue Switch SPLC in Railinc’s Centralized Station Master (CSM)?

17. Revenue Switch SPLC in the CSM
Seems like a good idea
It already maps a single SPLC to multiple SPLCs
Perhaps that could be overridden with exceptions as needed, but at least it’s a base, right?

18. Revenue Switch SPLC in the CSM
The problem is that the Revenue Switch SPLC is included in the CSM for a different reason
Basically the name of the field – “Revenue Switch” – provides the clue that these values have to do with tracking revenue and rates
Using this for the purposes of operations and car hire calculations “hijacks” its main purpose
The mapping of multiple SPLCs to a single one for the purposes of revenue may, in some cases, conflict with a similar but distinct mapping for operations and car hire

19. So what’s an industry to do?

20. Introducing a “Serving Area” to replace the “Switching District”
Changing the verbiage to “Serving Area” helps differentiate it going forward and reduce confusion with a “Revenue Switch SPLC”
OT-10 Rule 22, A. 2. can be re-written to better define what this should look like
NOTE: This proposed change only affects Account Type 222, “At Loading Point” reclaims, and not the Account Type 224, “Held Short” reclaims

21. Proposed OT-10 Verbiage for a “Serving Area”
The latest proposed verbiage for OT-10 Rule 22, A. 2. and 3 is:
Serving area, as referred to in this rule, means Standard Point Location Codes (SPLC) within a reasonable geographic distance of the industry being serviced used to stage, prepare or store cars for use by the shipper. Each loading carrier must use the Serving Area Repository maintained at Railinc to create and maintain a list of the serving area(s) associated with each loading point. Arbitration may be requested under Car Hire Rule 17 if the SPLC’s in a serving area are not within the same two-digit SPLC or if the SPLC’s in a serving area are not required to accommodate reasonable rail operations.
Loading point, as referred to in this rule, means any point within the limits of the serving area in which the industry being serviced is located

22. Breakdown of the Proposed Verbiage
“Serving area, as referred to in this rule, means Standard Point Location Codes (SPLC)…”
Since Car Hire reporting is based on SPLC, it seems pretty obvious to stay with that standard in the proposal
“…reasonable geographic distance of the industry being serviced used to stage, prepare or store cars for use by the shipper.”
That seems like pretty good verbiage; however,
What is “reasonable”, and can that de defined better?
More on this later…

23. Breakdown of the Proposed Verbiage
“Each loading carrier must use the Serving Area Repository maintained at Railinc to create and maintain a list of the serving area(s) associated with each loading point.”
So finally a central, unambiguous place where the SPLCs in a Serving Area will be kept and maintained
The proposed business rules state, “Each loading carrier that plans to use serving areas in reclaim calculation must create and maintain current and accurate serving areas based on the operating conditions that impact each loading location. The system will provide user interfaces to facilitate the definition of the serving areas. Carriers will have the ability to request notification when changes are made to serving areas”

24. Breakdown of the Proposed Verbiage
“Each loading carrier must use the Serving Area Repository maintained at Railinc to create and maintain a list of the serving area(s) associated with each loading point.” (continued)
Furthermore, if a carrier decides to not use the new serving area repository, then “…the absence of a serving area will limit Rule 22 reclaim to the SPLC of the loading point.”
Open questions include:
How often is this distributed? Once a month, like CHARM and other IRF? More often, like Umler?
What format will this be available in?
What will a UI look like (depends on the format of the data)?

25. Breakdown of the Proposed Verbiage
“Arbitration may be requested under Car Hire Rule 17 if the SPLC’s in a serving area are not within the same two-digit SPLC or if the SPLC’s in a serving area are not required to accommodate reasonable rail operations.”
A well defined way to solve disputes between a railroad defining a serving area and the reclaimed party who thinks it’s too big
“Loading point, as referred to in this rule, means any point within the limits of the serving area in which the industry being serviced is located”
Some bridging verbiage between the “loading point” verbiage later in the Rule and the new “serving area” to describe how 222 reclaims should work

26. So What is a “…reasonable geographic distance of the industry being serviced…?
The proposed business rules state, “As a general rule, stations in a serving area should be within the same two-digit Standard Point Location Code (SPLC).”
Per the National Motor Freight Traffic Association:
For the US and Canada:
The first two digits refer to a state, province or territory
The second two digits refer to a county or its equivalent
The third two digits refer to a city or municipal region
The remaining three digits refer to a specific location within a city
For Mexico:
The first three digits refer to the state
The second three digits refer to a municipal region within the state
Note: The rail industry does not use the last 3 digits, so it’s always populated as 000

27. So What is a “…reasonable geographic distance of the industry being serviced…?
If “…stations in a serving area should be within the same two-digit SPLC…”, and, for a U.S./Canada SPLC “…the first two digits refer to a state, province or territory…”, is that too broad a definition?
For example, all of Arizona starts with “79”
California starts with either “87” or “88”
7 Provinces start with their own distinct two digits
Since Mexico uses the “…first three digits refer to the state…”, will that inconsistency cause a problem?
How about the business rules be modified to be “…within the same three-digit SPLC”?
An initial review seems like that’d be too narrow a scope

28. Next Meeting
The next meeting to discuss the proposal is Scheduled for May 17, 2016, so let me know if you have any thoughts or input

29. Conclusions

30. Conclusions
Adopting a Serving Area Repository specific to Car Hire Rule 22 (222) reclaims would appear to:
Reduce ambiguity, allowing for more automation of auditing reclaims, thereby reducing manual interaction in the reclaim, counter-reclaim, counter-counter-reclaim cycle
Provide a defined way to arbitrate disputes on what constitutes the parameters for a 222 reclaim
There is still some work to be done to best define what “reasonable” means when including a SPLC (or not) in a serving area
There are still some details to be worked out as far as the data in the repository, a UI to maintain the data, and how to get the data to car hire processors (both outbound and inbound)

31. Questions?