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10.09
Railroad Resurrection
By George McClure
The interstate highway system
and cheap diesel fuel helped promote the growth
of truck freight in the United States. Gas taxes
paid for building and maintaining the roadway,
in contrast to investor-owned railroads, which
must maintain their own infrastructure. Former
rail beds have been converted to hiking trails
under the “Rails to Trails” program, as
railroads abandoned uneconomic routes. The U.S.
rail network today, at 94,942 miles, is less
than half of the mileage in 1970. [Ref. 1]
The Staggers Rail Act of 1980
eased regulation
that included not only rates but routes and
services making rail more affordable, safer, and
more productive. Over 40 percent of the nation’s
freight moves by rail. The Act also encouraged
more investment by railroads — over $440 billion
in their own systems’ rolling stock and
infrastructure (a record $10 billion for capital
projects in 2008 alone). At the same time,
average inflation-adjusted rail rates have
dropped by nearly half since 1981 and
productivity has tripled.
Mergers and consolidations have
reduced the number of Class I railroads (with
operating revenue of $250 million or more), from
fourteen in 1990 to seven in 2005. Deregulation
of freight rates aided trucking firms more than
railroads. The Interstate Commerce Commission,
formerly responsible for setting freight rates,
was replaced in 1996 with the Surface
Transportation Board.
Freight rail renaissance
With sharply higher fuel prices,
railroads have shown their economic value. About
half the electricity generated in the United
States is produced from coal. Forty-five percent
of the tonnage carried by railroads consists of
coal trains. Over 43 percent of all intercity
long-haul freight moves by rail, as does 71
percent of the nation’s coal, 35 percent of its
grain, and 70 percent of all automobiles
produced in the United States. Truck trailers
are hauled for long distances on trailer-train
flatbed cars. Containers of imported goods are
routinely shipped from seaports by trains.
Before the current recession, transcontinental
rail routes were filled to capacity with
trainloads of containers.
Freight rail traffic
was down 17.5 percent for carloads in July 2009
compared to July 2008. For intermodal rail
traffic, the decline was 18.0 percent over the
same period. The all-time peak traffic was in
June 2006.
Optimizing freight movement
Rail routes are often not the
most direct path for shippers, and railroad
freight has difficulty competing with highway
trucks in terms of delivery speed. Intermodal
operation, where highway trucking can cover the
first and last few miles between shipper and
recipient, with the cargo on specially
configured freight trains for the other hundred
or thousand miles, saves energy and labor.
Freight rail moves 436 tons of freight one mile
using a gallon of diesel fuel, according to the
Association of American Railroads. Fuel
efficiency is important, considering that on 11
July 2008, West Texas Intermediate crude oil hit
$147.27 per barrel, about twice the present
price, and likely will rise further. [Ref. 2]
Freight rail corridors can speed
up traffic and, permitting double-decked
containers, increase labor productivity. Two
such corridors involving the Norfolk Southern,
the nation’s fourth largest railroad, are the
$253 million Heartland Corridor, now underway,
connecting Norfolk to Chicago, and the $2
billion I-81 Crescent Corridor, now being
studied, crossing 14 states and eventually
connecting Texas and New Jersey, with what has
been called a steel interstate.
Rail corridor efficiency
The 1031 mile route for the
Heartland Corridor will save 200 miles from the
existing route, and require a day less shipping
time. It will permit double-stacked containers
to move from the port of Norfolk to Chicago,
after height modifications are made to 11 of 29
tunnels and other obstructions removed. Along
with a new intermodal shipping transfer center
in Prichard, West Virginia (on the border with
Kentucky), the project should be operational
next year. The Prichard terminal would have
access to rail, highway and river transportation
and be operated by the West Virginia Public Port
Authority. [Ref. 3]
According to the Port Authority
director, Patrick Donovan, such a facility would
employ 750 to 1,000
people. An intermodal terminal
also would lead to $12 million to $17 million in
fuel savings annually for West Virginia
shippers.
"We've completed the feasibility
study," he said. "A $30 million investment would
have a 1.6 to 2.4 cost benefit analysis. That's
a 160 to 200 percent return on investment."
The study, however, was
conducted when diesel prices were around $2.50
per gallon.
"The savings to shippers have
gone up significantly since then," Donovan said.
Public-Private Partnership
advantages
States have a stake in funding
these corridors, since they aid business
development and remove freight traffic
congestion from interstate highways. Norfolk
Southern has cultivated public-private
partnerships to cover the costs. The federal
government and states cover $163 million of the
Heartland Corridor’s $253 million cost, with the
railroad covering the balance. Virginia
contributed $22 million to Heartland and has
agreed to pay $40 million
toward the Crescent
Corridor.
I-81 through Virginia roughly
parallels the Norfolk Southern mainline, built
over a century ago. This interstate was designed
to carry 15 percent trucks, but heavy trucks now
account for 26 percent of all traffic, based on
average daily traffic counts, and often exceed
40 percent. The $12 billion cost to rebuild and
widen I-81 through Virginia is more than the $9
billion cost to upgrade the entire Norfolk
Southern Railway line from Knoxville, TN, to
Harrisburg, PA, to handle intermodal freight,
permitting 60 percent of through truck traffic
to travel by rail. Grade crossings would be
eliminated, with rails in a trench or auto
roadways on track flyovers. The interstate
expansion would require at least 12 years.
Another benefit is the reduction in carbon
emissions and particulates from the trucks
removed to the trains.
www.railsolution.org/projects/steel-interstate.html
When fully implemented, the
Crescent Corridor initiative will be capable of
saving the United
States more than 170 million gallons of fuel per
year, from more than one million
truckloads of freight that will be absorbed from
the highways to the rails annually.
While the United States has
focused mostly on cargo containers for
intermodal transfer, it should consider other
modes as well. In Europe, complete semi trucks
(with driver) are carried across country at
night in truck-ferries while the driver rests
for the next day. This is similar to Amtrak’s
Auto Train, where passengers are moved overnight
along with their automobiles and personal
belongings, between northern Virginia and
central Florida. An
“open” intermodal
approach would carry all kinds of
trucks and trailers as well as shipping
containers. This is being done with the
Trailer-Train concept.
As rail lines are electrified
and diesel locomotives are replaced with
electric-powered ones, our use of oil for
freight transportation can be drastically
reduced — something that over-the-road trucks
can’t accomplish.
Higher energy efficiency
Almost all of our freight trains
now depend on oil as the energy source, but
conversion to electric power is simple and
economical, costing about $2 million per mile
for infrastructure, in addition to the cost of
electric locomotives. Other advantages for
electric propulsion are the lower carbon
emissions and lower maintenance costs compared
to diesel-electric locomotives, and higher
efficiency, as dynamic braking returns power to
the supply lines rather than dissipating it as
heat. A single freight train can take the load
of 280 trucks off the road — equivalent to 1,100
cars.
Particulate matter from diesel
exhaust is cited by environmentalists as a
deterrent for another freight center, proposed
by BNSF at Johnson County, Kansas (near Kansas
City). The railroad points to studies that
dispute this position, but electric propulsion
would eliminate the concern.
The case for passenger rail
Passenger airlines took away
most of the patronage for passenger trains,
promising much faster travel. But adding in the
time to clear security at airports, and to
travel from outlying airports to city center,
makes passenger trains competitive with air
travel for distances up to 400 miles. Since
1970, the National Railroad Passenger
Corporation, known as Amtrak, has been
the sole provider of long distance passenger
rail travel. It also operates some commuter rail
lines. Historically, Amtrak has been underfunded,
compared to larger subsidies given for highway,
waterway, and air travel. But recent surface
transportation bills have begun to change than,
giving Amtrak funds for service improvement as
well as some rolling stock repair. Its gem is
the Northeast Corridor, all-electric service
from Boston to New York and Washington, DC. The
Acela Express, serving that route for ten years,
is capable of higher speeds than it can achieve
most of the time because of inadequate roadbed
and track.
The American Recovery and
Reinvestment Act of 2009, enacted 17
February 2009, provided $787 billion for
economic stimulus
including $8 billion in
initiatives for high-speed rail (HSR).
Additionally, President Obama said he would seek
to budget
$5 billion more over
the next five years. Plans are
being made based on the full $13 billion.
Proposed
HSR routes include:
-
California Corridor — to
link the Bay Area with Los Angeles and San
Diego. $9.9 billion in state bonds already
committed. Total estimated cost: $44 billion
for 800 miles.
-
Chicago Hub Network — to
ease congestion that limits some routes to
as little as 5 mph. Linked to Midwest High
Speed Rail initiative.
-
Empire Corridor — Albany to
New York.
-
Florida Corridor — to link
Miami, Orlando and Tampa.
-
Gulf Coast Corridor — to
link Houston, New Orleans, and Atlanta
(considered unlikely).
-
Keystone Corridor —
Upgrading Amtrak service between Harrisburg
and Philadelphia, but the route is
mountainous.
-
Northern New England
Corridor — Albany to Boston and Montreal.
-
Pacific Northwest Corridor —
linking Oregon, Washington and Vancouver,
British Columbia.
-
South Central Corridor —
linking Texas, Arkansas, and Oklahoma, but
seen as unlikely.
-
Southeast Corridor — to link
Jacksonville, Florida and Atlanta to
Washington, D.C.
-
Northeast Corridor (NEC) —
technically, already HSR, but in need of $3
billion in infrastructure improvements.
In Europe and Asia, trains
run at top speeds of 186 mph to 214 mph,
competing successfully with air carriers for
passengers. In the United States, the top speed
is usually 79 mph, except for the Northeast
Corridor. The U.S. goal here is “incremental
high speed” — 100- to 110- mph trains. The
French manufacturer Alstom is
testing a 225 mph train
that could be in service in Italy in 2011.
For now, what $13 billion will
buy is re-signaled and upgraded track in a
limited number of existing corridors for
incrementally faster service, plus planning on
the more
visionary projects such
as the California HSR.
Amtrak outlook brighter
With $13 billion authorized over
five years for operations and a new $1.3 billion
capital budget (to be spent by February 2011),
as well as access to some of the stimulus funds
through states, Amtrak is in a position to make
progress. It is extending the NEC track
electrification south from Washington, D.C., to
Richmond. Long term, according to CEO Joe
Boardman, plans call for electrification of all
Amtrak routes, starting with Maine to Miami,
then extending westward, accommodating HSR.
As short haul commuter flights
prove uneconomic and are discontinued, the
market for passenger rail improves. Boardman
cites the 245-mile Atlanta-Charlotte corridor
(part of the bigger planned Crescent Corridor)
as a
prospect for increased
service and ridership.
Amtrak carried nearly 29 million
passengers in 2008, the highest number ever. A
20 percent increase to 35 million is projected.
Northeast Corridor riders like the fact that
they can arrive at the station just 30 minutes
before departure, often have electric outlets at
their seats for laptops, and the legroom is
twice that of the air shuttles. Wi-fi access,
however, is spotty.
Resources
“Back on Tracks,”
www.newamerica.net/publications/articles/2009/back_tracks_9914
“Oil: the Long Goodbye,” special
issue, Foreign Policy, Sep.-Oct. 2009
www.foreignpolicy.com/node/47222
NS and Public Private
Partnerships: The Heartland Corridor & The
Crescent Corridor, October 2007
http://transportation.northwestern.edu/docs/0000/
Martinez_presentation.pdf
George McClure is Technology
Policy editor for IEEE-USA Today’s
Engineer and the IEEE Vehicular Technology
Society's representative to IEEE-USA's Committee
on Transportation and Aerospace policy.
Comments on this article may be submitted to
todaysengineer@ieee.org.
Comments may be submitted to
todaysengineer@ieee.org.
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