Railroads
I have written letters to my Congressmae and Senator about the railroads. Why can't we re-invigorate our rail beds and expand them where they have to be expanded. Build a corridor that goes from coast to coast, get most of the long haul trucks off the roads by hauling the trailers on fast moving railroads. Then have the truckers deliver the merchandise on a regional or local level. This would save millions of gallons of diesel, but we must reinvent the railroads.
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Permalink Reply by Randy on -
I like this one. Railway is a very cost efficient way to move goods.
We should also look at fast commuter transportation too.
The maglev in China goes 300+ mile per hour.
The speed of these trains make them attractive compared to driving in traffic.
We should be putting people to work building these trains right here in our country.
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Permalink Reply by John Sobolewski on -
Railroads can moved enormous weights and volume of goods. What I have proposed is to have regional rail yards that would cater to truck traffic so that the trailers could be off loaded quickly and be on their way to stores and factories.
This also would reduce highway accidents and deaths by lowering the volume of long haul trucks on our highways, and also would reduce maintenance on our interstate highway system.
Truckers would still have jobs , but we would get the goods moved very efficiently.
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Permalink Reply by Kenny on -
The problem with rail is that even though it is a much more efficient means of shipping, it's not cost effective. This is because each rail line is usually owned by a private company. To ship to anyone along that line, you have to use that carrier, in effect creating localized monopolies. Their only competition is trucking so they generally charge just a little under what it would cost to send it by truck, even though rail is much more efficient in terms of both labor and fuel. If the government bought the rail lines, any carrier could schedule the use of any line, creating a free market. Competition would then quickly drive prices down. This would also help advance passenger rail, since they would be given priority over freight in scheduling. The initial purchase, as well as any government scheduling agency and maintenance, could be paid for by bonds which would be paid off with trackage fees to be charged each carrier based on their use.
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Permalink Reply by John Sobolewski on
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I don't know if we would want the government owning the railroads, but I agree that the railroads are inefficient to some degree and the government regulations are archaic, but if everyone cooperated , then we may be able to modernize and improve the rails so that they would me much more cost effective than long haul trucking.
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Permalink Reply by SJC on -
I see nothing wrong with the U.S. Government owning the railroads. They are there for the public good. The governments own the roads that truckers do not even being to pay the costs for.
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Permalink Reply by DubleDeuce on -
The governments own the roads that truckers do not even being to pay the costs for.>>
Its called a Road Use Tax SJC. And EVERY trucker pays it EVERY TIME he fills up, to the tune of 18.3 cents a gallon or $45.75 every 250 gallon tank full. PLUS, it you will look on the side of every long truck you will see a sticker (Bright pink this year) that has the letters IFTA on them It stands for the International Fuel Tax Administration.
http://www.dot.wisconsin.gov/business/carriers/ifta.htm
Every 3 month every trucker must fill out a form delineating the states he drove in last month, the entering mileage and the exiting millage, the date and the time of the ingress ans egress. THAN each trucker must report EACH and every fuel purchase for the reporting quarter. Where he bought it. When he bought it. How much he bought.
THEN, each trucker MUST compute the actual numbers of miles driven in each state (from his report) and tally up the STATE Road Fuel Tax (each one is different) and take the road fuel tax paid from his purchases (again, each state is different) and through a formula, divine the ACTUAL amount of tax due in each state he ran in, subtract out the various taxes paid in other states (when he purchased fuel) and allocate it all (the term is called Apportioned) to the various states. If you want the TOTAL poop and scoop, go here, http://www.dot.wisconsin.gov/business/carriers/docs/iftamanual.pdf
Don't say that truckers don't pay road taxes. They pay out the wazzoo.
The Deuceman
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Permalink Reply by Matt Bumgarner on -
There are two issues to consider here, and they need to be broken into a) Freight Railroad, and b) Passenger Railroad considerations, as each has a unique set of perspective.
An underlying premise that both considerations must acknowledge is that 95% of the trackage in this country is owned by the railroad company itself. They pay taxes on every square inch, maintain all of their own infrastructure, and have liability for such. The same cannot be said for trucking companies, shipping companies, or air lines, who all have their infrastructure- interstates, ports, air ports- SUBSIDIZED by the federal government. (Yes, truckers do pay some higher taxes, RR's do get some grants, but that is pure semantics. Dollar for dollar, the reality is that railroad companies do not get subsidies as an industry NEARLY as much as any other mode of transportation.)
That being said:
a) Passenger Railroads: First and foremost, Congress must get over its insane idea that "Amtrak is losing money" and they can no longer fund it. NO OTHER MODE OF PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION is held to this requirement- why should Amtrak? Secondly, since it inception, Amtrak has NEVER received the amount of funding that it was alloted in various house and senate bills. NEVER. This blog is not a scholarly report,so I won't get into details over Amtrak's past 4 decades, but the fact it is still functioning is a testament to the leadership over the course of its history. And unfortunately, while I do lean towards John McCain this year-he is Amtrak's largest opponent.
Another major consideration for expanding Amtrak service throughout the country is the problem that outside of the Northeast Corridor (Wash-NYC-BOS), Amtrak trains run at the mercy of someone else's railroad. These freight railroads put their priority on their own revenue freight trains, not some passenger train that they make no money on and had the government ram down their throats.This leads to long trips, oft-delayed schedules, and a general unhappy Amtrak passenger. But who can fault the freight railroads for putting their product first? They pay for their infrastructure, including taxes, make no money on a passenger train that is forced upon them, and then have a huge share of the liability if one jumps the track and god-forbid someone is killed.
b) Freight Railroads. - Advocating government control of freight railroads is not a good idea in my estimation. The big dogs are doing very, very well at the moment. So much so that capacity is an issue in nearly every region of the country. Moving away from coal-fired plants will certainly free up major capacity, but that is years in the making. In my estimation, the way to force more freight from the highways to the railroad is higher diesel tax and careful, careful regulation of freight tariffs, much like was done by the ICC from the 1910's to the early 1980's. This route is fraught with DANGER, however, because once any government entity begins to regulate industry, it can be a political pawn forever (See the relief brought by the Staggers Act of the 80's).
Matt Bumgarner
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Permalink Reply by John Sobolewski on
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Matt, Thanks for your response.
I believe there is a great need for passenger service , but right now, I am concentrating on relieving the pressures of long haul trucking and the diesel they consume. There has to be a way of attracting more truck traler traffic to the railroads, and one sure fire way is to gaurantee deliveries in a set time frame from coast to coast and points in between.
The railroads have to come up with a plan of either adding trackage (which has been decreasing) so that we have two way rail traffic across the entire country, or to find a way to computerize train traffic and avoid any type of traffic jam on the rails.
This first phase would save tens of thousands if not more of diesel fuel and would also relieve our roads of truck traffic....
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Permalink Reply by Matt Bumgarner on
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Thank you for the topic.
Actually, there are basically already several transcontinental routes that cover the continental US, and they are tiered north to south. There is a lot of sanity in what you are saying, and shipping companies over the past ten years have done a lot of combining services of containerized freight (ships/truck containers) to double-stacking containers on railroad flatcars for transcontinental rides. UPS even has special trains on several railroads in order to maintain their strict delivery standards.
A large problem has been finding ample space and communities in which to build these trans-load facilities (rail to truck) and willing communities. The NIMBY (not in my back yard) folks kill quite a few of these initiatives.
Recently, I read a stat in TRAINs magazine that over 80% of transcontinental tonnage on routes greater than 1000 miles did travel by rail, but it was the North-South traffic from NY to FL and Chicago to points south that was eluding the railroads.
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Permalink Reply by Dale Nelson on -
When I look at a railway map, what I notice is that there are more east/west routes than north/south.
One solution I have seen propossed is for the federal government to take title to the tracks and maintain them. Then let the railroad companies pay for usage. This would make the tracks comparable to the highways. The railroads maintain their own stations; the airlines do not.
Here in Los Angeles, there is a steady stream of trains loaded with containers leaving the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles.
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Permalink Reply by John Sobolewski on
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Yea I agree with all of you, but it isn't doing any good just writing blogs and talking amongst ourselves. Now If T Boone Pickens picks up on this and starts promoting these ideas, then there is a chance that his voice will be heard and things may change for the better. Railroads are just one of the puzzle pieces to make this country energy independent..but it is a good puzzle piece.....
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Permalink Reply by Bill Meng on -
Check out http://www.narprail.org/cms/index.php. While it's oriented toward passenger rail travel, I agree the railroads could carry a much larger share of freight.
That being said, the railroads spend a lot of money in DC to increase their bottom line at the expense of the taxpayers.
A few years back an Amtrak train derailed in the South, killing a few passengers. An investigation showed the rail company was at fault in their maintenance of the track. But the railroads had a bill passed that admonished them of their responsibility in any Amtrak incident.
I would love to see a rail service where I could drive my car onto a train in St. louis, sit in a club car for two days then arrive in LA drive my car off the train and tour California. This service exists in some places but is not national, probably due to market distortions caused by the government's interference in the markets.
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