Tag Archives: freight rail

Rail transport links – carry that weight

CC image from Rob Swatski

Some illustrative links from the world of rail transportation:

From Reason and Rail: Why the freight railroads will never electrify.

This is the problem which freight electrification faces. While electrification would represent a lessening in fuel expenses, especially as the price of oil is expected to rise another 20-30% over the long-term, this is a fairly minor savings for the railroads.

Some discussion in the comments asking if government subsidies would change the calculus.  It might, but perhaps the better question is about ensuring common usage of key track segments between commuter and freight traffic, between double-stacked containers and electric multiple unit passenger trains.

Why commuter railroads will electrify:

Firstly, operational costs have a far greater prominence than do capital costs owing to the nature of government agencies as opposed to private agencies. An investment that is hard to justify for a freight operator becomes much easier for a public agency that is receiving “free” funding from another agency and in the process is able to reduce its operational costs to those to whom it is immediately responsible. In such a way does spending hundreds of millions of dollars to save a few million per year become an attractive financial option.

More importantly, however, is the fact that electric trains accelerate much faster, and electric multiple units, compared to a diesel locomotive hauling several rail cars, accelerate like a bat out of hell.

The upshot of this is that more time is spent at higher speeds, reducing the time penalty for any individual train stop and greatly increasing the average speed, making it more attractive to travelers and increasing its patronage, and political support, as a result.

Alon Levy notes in the comments that commuter lines are talking about electrifying only a fraction of the track that would be required for a transcontinental freight route.  Greater payoff and a smaller up-front investment makes sense.

Some confounding factors: speed and weight.  Alon Levy takes note of three challenges in meshing fast passenger trains with heavy but slow freight – a conflict inherent in mixing passenger and freight traffic.  They are 1) schedule conflicts, including the challenges of meshing disparate speeds together; 2) different track geometries required, particularly superelevation (e.g banking) of the tracks; 3) damage to tracks inflicted by heavy trains.

Another confounding factor: US regulations.  Systemic Failure takes note of a recent US railcar procurement.

The FRA is soliciting bids for a $551 million contract for 130 bi-level railcars. As a condition for the contract, the railcars must be manufactured entirely with American steel and components. If you do the math, that comes to 4.2 million dollars each – double the global market price for a bi-level car.

In other words, the FRA is pissing away a quarter billion dollars. Imagine all the projects that might have been done with $250 million. Imagine all the jobs that might have been created with that money. I’m talking real jobs — not bureaucrats enforcing Made-in-America rules. Jobs like installing new PTC signaling, repairing bridges, or expanding the transit network. You know, things that have tangible benefit to riders.

The really crazy thing is that there is a glut in the passenger railcar market. The last thing needed is yet another product (a hopelessly primitive one at that). And since few operators besides Amtrak will be interested in this railcar, a lot of design and development will just go to waste.

Our regulations prohibit purchasing rolling stock off the shelf from other nations, while our history of divestment in passenger rail has largely dried up rail car manufacturing in this country.  These regulations also make the adoption of the faster electric traction commuter trains mentioned above more expensive and more difficult.   They also mandate inferior performance:

Now compare that to the example of the FRA compliant Colorado Railcar as given in theFairmount DMU study. With two single level multiple units and two trailers, Colorado takes 123 seconds to accelerate to a speed of 60 miles per hour. The Talent, however, has blazed past Colorado, reaching 95 km/h (~60mph) in 40 seconds. Indeed, by the time that Colorado has reached 60 miles per hour, the Bombardier Talent has reached the FRA’s normal speed limit of 130 km/h and been cruising at top speed for 50 seconds.

The implication here isn’t just about speed for speed’s sake – the better acceleration makes it easier for the trains to keep on schedule, improving reliability and cutting travel time.

Weekend Reading – Hauling Freight

Amtrak-UP

Amtrak and Union Pacific trains pass each other. Photo by SP8254.

While American passenger rail often leaves much to be desired, our freight rail network is second to none.  This privately owned and operated network often finds itself at odds with desires for increased passenger service and high speed operations.

Hauling the Freight: Freight rail companies have been reluctant to embrace the recent enthusiasm for high speed rail.  In a recent article from the Economist, railroads expressed all sorts of concerns, from technical considerations for offering mixed-speed service along shared passenger and freight lines to a complete re-regulation of the industry, which was de-regulated in 1980.  One such pending requirement will be use of Positive Train Control (PTC) on all routes where freight and passenger trains share the same tracks.

Freight railroads fear a return to the bad old days.  From the Economist article:

Federal and state grants will flow to the freight railroads to help them upgrade their lines for more and faster passenger trains. But already rows are breaking out over the strict guidelines the [Federal Railroad Administration] will lay down about operations on the upgraded lines, such as guarantees of on-time performance with draconian penalties if they are breached and the payment of indemnities for accidents involving passenger trains. The railroads are also concerned that the federal government will be the final arbiter of how new capacity created with the federal funds will be allocated between passenger and freight traffic. And they are annoyed that there was little consultation before these rules were published.

There have been some heated meetings between freight-railroad managers and FRA officials. Henry Posner III, chairman of Iowa Interstate Railroad, ruefully notes that freight railroads, in the form of passengers and regulation, “are getting back things that caused trouble”.

Prior to de-regulation, American railroads had obligations to offer money-losing passenger services, dealt with heavy taxation, and paid for their own infrastructure in the face of heavy subsidized interstate highways undercutting their core markets.   Mark Reutter documented these challenges back in an excellent 1994 Wilson Quarterly article entitled “The Lost Promise of the American Railroad.”  One core issue is defining the best balance between public and private interests.  America’s railroads are private enterprises, and back in the day where they dominated all travel and enjoyed de facto monopolies on various markets, they were regulated accordingly.  As transportation infrastructure financing shifted towards public funding (such as the interstate highway system), the regulatory structure did not evolve to meet the new realities.

The current debate is essentially one of re-defining the proper roles for each of the partners in this mother of all public-private partnerships.  Yonah Freemark at the Transport Politic suggests that the Economist’s take isn’t as dire as the railroads might make it seem:

If the public is committed to the funding of improved tracks along privately owned freight corridors, it has the right to demand that those companies allow passenger trains to run along them. From that perspective, the freight companies have little room to complain.

But the federal government does have a long-term interest in promoting investments that offer improvements in both freight and passenger offerings. Freight lines that run through the center of cities should be moved to new routes that detour, allowing passenger services to take over these access corridors much more essential for people than for cargo. Lines running both passenger and freight trains should be expanded to three or more tracks to allow multiple running speeds in both directions. Projects could theoretically be sponsored by public-private partnership, using both government and freight company funds directed to investments that benefit both.

These changing roles are not without tension.  The California High Speed Rail project has run into problems in their negotiations with the Union Pacific Railroad.  Likewise, DC has been involved – CSX’s rebuilding of the Virginia Avenue Tunnel to a double track, double stack standard is a direct example, and the impacts on passenger rail in the region are unclear.  CSX is poised to see a huge jump in traffic with the opening of new, larger locks at the Panama Canal.  MARC has big plans for future expansion and Amtrak has an eye on electrification to Richmond – how these projects will all fit together is unclear, indicative of the larger dialogue and coordination that needs to happen regarding freight and passenger rail.

Coordination needs to encompass technical questions (standards for train control? shared track? dedicated track? electrification?) as well as financial ones (who will pay for these infrastructure upgrades? what kind of control will come with public dollars?).

Get on the Bus: Aaron Renn writes about bus service improvements over at The Urbanophile, building off of this New York Magazine piece on New York’s new select bus service.  The article outlines many relatively cheap and easy to implement programs that can vastly improve the bus experience – fare pre-payment, limited stops, exclusive lanes, multi-door boarding, etc.  Renn writes:

[C]learly there is enormous opportunity in the US to start transforming the transportation infrastructure of our cities with high quality bus service in a way that is faster, cheaper, and much more pervasive than we’d ever be able to achieve with rail.

In the piece, Jarrett Walker highlights Jay Walder’s quote on taking bus lanes seriously.  He also notes, however, that such seriousness is not without compromises.  Others, such as Cap’n Transit have noted that while these bus improvements are tremendous, we should be careful to not oversell them, as many often do with terms such as a ‘surface subway.’

Cross-posted at Greater Greater Washington