Steel Wheel Interstates

[idlisambar]

For all the talk of hi-speed passenger rail, improving the condition of our freight rail system is also has a big payoff....

This proposal offers dramatic improvements in highway safety and public health, as well as much reduced highway maintenance and construction costs. It will also significantly reduce energy use, greenhouse gas emissions, traffic jams, and shipping costs while providing significant short- and long-term economic stimulus. If fully implemented, it could get as many as 83 percent of all long-haul trucks off our nation's highways by 2030, reduce carbon emissions by 39 percent and oil consumption by 15 percent. Call it the "Back on Tracks" project.
...
...
Looking to future, the potential of a 21st-century rail system to improve national life is truly astonishing -- including a near zero-emission, zero-oil freight transportation system. In a peer-reviewed study recently presented to the Transportation Research Board, the Millennium Institute, a nonprofit known for its expertise in energy and environmental modeling, calculated the likely benefits of a $250 billion to $500 billion expenditure on improved rail infrastructure. It found that such an investment would get 83 percent of all long-haul trucks off the nation's highways by 2030, while also delivering ample capacity for high-speed passenger rail. If high-traffic rail lines were also electrified and powered in part by renewable energy sources, that investment would reduce nationwide carbon emissions by 38 percent and oil consumption by 17 percent. By moderating the growing cost of logistics, it would also leave the nation's economy 10 percent larger by 2030 than it would otherwise be.


http://www.newamerica.net/publications/special/steel_wheel_interstates_10454


Drawing on electricity generated by hydropower, electric locomotives
like this one once hauled 100 car trains over the Rockies and Cascade
mountains, consuming no oil and producing no emissions. Electrifying
America's mainline railroads using hydropower, solar, wind, and other
renewable energy sources will provide "green jobs" and pay economic
and environmental dividends far into the future.

[elleng]

1. Whose idea is 'this proposal?'

.

[idlisambar]

2. The author of the article

Phillip Longman. He's far from alone in recognizing the benefits of upgrading our freight rail system, but the case he lays out here is his.

[elleng]

3. I've been a 'student' of our freight rail system

(more correctly, a regulator of and then and advocate for it) and I'm curious.

Our freight rail system is continually up graded by its owners, shareholders of the various systems, and its been doing pretty well recently.

[idlisambar]

4. that's cool

love to hear your thoughts on the subject. The author makes a good case for a more aggressive program of public investment.