US Railraod Traffic Remains At Depressed Levels

One of the more striking, and under reported, trend changes in the US economy since the Great Recession has been the decline in railraod carload trafffic. The chart below shows the four-week moving average and one-year moving average total carload traffic. As you can see there has been remarkable slow down in total traffic since 2007. The exception to this, however, is the dramatic increase in petroleum products carloads.