Common sense on goods transportation

The good news is that America is very large. The bad news is that it eats up thousands of miles trying to move goods from one place to another.

All over the world, goods transportation charges are higher (compared to average wages) than in America. Even in India, the cost of moving commercial goods is a greater ratio to wages than we enjoy in America. Why? Because a great portion of the heavy lifting here is done by rail; good old-fashioned (modernized) rail.

And to make matters even better, America is blessed with a legacy of great railroad pathways. The east coast is crisscrossed with rail right-of-ways, some in disuse (admittedly mistakenly), city-to-city pathways railed, ironed over, ready to be refurbished to take the most up-to-date trains.

Of course, no politician ever got elected making claims to bring better, cheaper freight trains to your neighborhood, so all you hear about is high-speed rail and passenger benefits. But, in the interests of America’s future as a competitive manufacturing and consumer society, it is rail which may save our bacon.

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Let’s get to some facts. At last count, there are seven major rail companies in the United States. In 2008 they reported they had moved almost 2 trillion ton-miles of freight. A ton-mile is a measurement meaning 1 ton of freight moved 1 mile. To move all that freight, they used 4 billion gallons of diesel fuel.

If you do the math, they used only 1 gallon of fuel to move 430 tons one mile. Or, another way of looking at this, the largest freight means, truck semi-tractor trailers, average about 41 ton-miles per gallon, less than a tenth as much. That’s a typical load of 20 tons moving 2+ miles for one gallon.

Empty they only do 7 mpg. And the other fact is that diesel trains need less than 35 cents per mile maintenance costs hauling trains of 20,000 tons (1,000 trucks worth).

Quietly, working in the background, locomotive companies have increased the efficiency of trains 85 percent since the trains of the ‘80s. Can your car or truck say the same?

Trucks have improved about 25 percent over the same time period. The estimate is that if only 10 percent of the truck freight were switched to rail, the nation would save 1 billion gallons of fuel per year — that’s good for national security too. The EPA says that moving freight by rail saves 66 percent in pollution (see aar.org/Environment/EconomicCalculator.aspx).

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But the greatest reason for switching as much heavy freight to rail is because of the cheap pathways and roadbeds already in place, waiting to be used once again.

If we were to try and acquire these rights of way and eminent domain purchases today, the cost would be in the trillions of dollars. They are sitting there, ready to be re-railed, used to everyone’s advantage.

Want to move windmills from Detroit to Phoenix or Buffalo – go by rail – it’s 33 percent of the cost by truck; the windmills do not care if the journey takes a few hours longer. Want to double the freight traffic nationwide? Lay a second rail bed on existing land, already zoned and ready to use.

The cost of one lane of highway? About $2 billion per mile in urban areas. For train traffic? About $1.5 million for new rails and electric points (switches).

It’s a no-brainer, but then common sense approaches to saving the nation’s future are frequently overlooked. In the train drivers’ lexicon:

The Economist sees a history of red ink for passenger travel,

The optimist sees high-speed rail, smiling passengers,

The realist sees the trains chugging along, under-funded,

The train driver sees three idiots on the track, all in the way.

Former Amenia Union resident Peter Riva now observes national issues from his home in New Mexico.