Over at Washington Monthly, Phillip Longman has a fascinating piece on the state of America's Freight Railroads and the enormous potential they offer for rebuilding America along more sustainable lines. We hear about roads and bridges as part of the stimulus package, but darned little about rail. Vice President Joe Biden is supposed to be a big supporter of Amtrak, and everyone knows we could use a real passenger rail system in this country.
Freight rail is kind of the orphan stepchild in this debate. If so few people travel by train in this country, how much harder is it for people to appreciate what freight railroads do every day, and how much more they could with some targeted government funding? It's smart development, the kind the financial markets abandoned long ago in pursuit of Ponzi schemes.
Jump below the fold, and I'll toss you a few teasers to whet your interest.
Here's some choice selections from the article Back On Tracks:
Semis account for roughly one out of every four vehicles that travel through Virginia on I-81’s four lanes, the highest percentage of any interstate in the country.
.... As it happens, running parallel to I-81 through the Shenandoah Valley and across the Piedmont are two mostly single-track rail lines belonging to the Norfolk Southern Railroad. Known as the Crescent Corridor, these lines have seen a resurgence of trains carrying containers, just like most of the trucks on I-81 do.
.... The railroad estimates that with an additional $2 billion in infrastructure investment, it could divert a million trucks off the road, which is currently carrying just under five million. State officials are thinking even bigger: a study sponsored by the Virginia DOT finds that a cumulative investment over ten to twelve years of less than $8 billion would divert 30 percent of the growing truck traffic on I-81 to rail. That would be far more bang for the state’s buck than the $11 billion it would take to add more lanes to the highway, especially since it would bring many other public benefits, from reduced highway accidents and lower repair costs to enormous improvements in fuel efficiency and pollution reduction. Today, a single train can move as many containers as 280 trucks while using one-third as much energy—and that’s before any improvements to rail infrastructure.
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If this is the kind of bang for the buck freight rail can produce (and the above is just one of many examples cited by Longman) where is the investment money railroads need?
Why don’t the railroads just build the new tracks, tunnels, switchyards, and other infrastructure they need? America’s major railroad companies are publicly traded companies answerable to often mindless, or predatory, financial Goliaths. While Wall Street was pouring the world’s savings into underwriting credit cards and sub-prime mortgages on overvalued tract houses, America’s railroads were pleading for the financing they needed to increase their capacity. And for the most part, the answer that came back from Wall Street was no, or worse. CSX, one of the nation’s largest railroads, spent much of last year trying to fight off two hedge funds intent on gaining enough control of the company to cut its spending on new track and equipment in order to maximize short-term profits.
Investing in freight rail would be sound energy policy, good for the environment, more than self-supporting in terms of economic payback, good for employment (can't off-shore rail lines!) - just plain smart public policy. As the article makes clear, there are a number of obvious places to target right away for investment; it won't require lengthy studies to decide where to start.
Is all this politically feasible? Certainly more so than a year ago, before the consensus formed that we must invest massively in infrastructure of some kind. Importantly, too, we’re not talking about bailing out a failing industry, but about helping an expanding, more energy-efficient one to grow fast enough to meet pressing public needs. Nor would we be making big bets on unproven technology. Also, it’s important to remember that big trucking companies, facing acute driver shortages and mounting highway congestion, are increasingly shifting their containers to rail and so have an interest in improved rail infrastructure. With trucking companies morphing into logistics companies, it’s a new day in the special interest politics of freight.
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So far, Obama's people have been talking about a roughly two year horizon for their economic recovery programs, although many economists are saying we need to look at a longer time frame and a more sustained effort. This is certainly one area that qualifies. Most people today have little understanding or appreciation of how much more railroads used to accomplish in this country a hundred years ago, back in the days of steam. What could be done today with the proven technology we already have is mind boggling - and largely overlooked. As Longman notes, investing in America's freight railroads will also make it a lot easier to upgrade passenger rail too.
Go read the whole article, and start thinking about getting America back on track!