Thank you for this. I was looking for something that explained what the benefits of rail would be and this hit the mark.

Rail has gotten a bad rap since Firestone, GM and Standard knocked rails out of the interstate highway program. Now, when you start talking train travel and freight trains to corporatists they holler about gov subsidies of private corporations. Never mind that our taxes pay for the roads have been a subsidy of the Big Three for half a century. Now that gas prices are unpredictable it's the perfect time to start correcting this wrong. That we are the only industrialized nation without high-speed trains is absurd.

Is anyone putting together a list of all these progressive proposals?

I don't think it's a given that reducing freight traffic on the highways means less congestion. When they built more and more bridges in New York City to reduce congestion (and didn't allow trains, but that's another bad story), congestion went down for a year or two, but then came back worse than ever.

Maybe less trucks will mean more cars, and cars are driven by less experienced operators, perhaps leading to worse fatalities.

From an efficiency and enviro perspective, I think rail is better, but I don't think from a congestion or fatalities side it necessarily follows.

Uhh, a lot of cargo already IS delivered a fair amount of its destination (after it hits a US port from China) by freight rail.

That's why a major California developer has pushed for south Dallas/Dallas County (where I live) to be designated an official inland port, with his plans for a massive transportation hub development, and why similar pushes are on in places like Kansas City.

Has Longman never seen a 500-car UPac train rolling across the desert from Long Beach to Dallas or wherever?

This sounds like the most uninformed Washington Monthly article since the idiotic auto bailout article you ran a month ago.

The vast majority of our commerce starts in the ports, then this freight is put on trains, barges or trucks. The frehgt then is distribted throughout the country. Trains and barges are the most fuel and cost efficient. Any infrastucture plan needs to include improving our ports and waterways as they are a part of an integral system of goods movement.

The premise is that Keynes was right and that we need the government to supply the demand that has fallen off a cliff if we are to avoid the second Great Depression. The big problem with that is that after 8 years of GOP misrule, the U.S. is teetering on insolvency. The solution is to invest the stimulus in projects that will improve our nation's productivity in the future thereby increasing the chances of remaining solvent and reducing the burden on our children and grandchildren of doing so. Infastructure is an investment in the future, but only if it leads to productivity increases. Replacing/repairing highways and bridges may support future consumption--cars, subdivisions, gasoline/electricity- but does little to enhance productivity. Investments in railroads would, at least theoretically, better serve this purpose. Education/training would likely be the wisest investment, but it is hard to add much to employment that way. Similarly, alternative energy development might be sound from an investment standpoint, but will not create as many lower skill jobs as repairing highways. I think that is the reason for adding tax cuts to the mix although I think they are likely to be ineffective--they simply can not think of ways to spend money on useful projects that will both enhance productivity in the long run, and put people to work in the short run.

The counterargument - and I'm not saying it's a torpedo - is that rail freight doesn't sustain as many jobs as trucking. I could see an outcry from truckers angry at Obama for taking jobs out of their field casting a pall on such a proposal.

Other points contra Longman.

IMO, the only way to acheive what he proposes is to do what he opposes — nationalize the railroads. If you know how little money UPac in particular, or BNSF, actually spend right now, ain't gonna change while they're in private hands.

Berit's right about ports.

And, Longman doesn't even discuss the "what if" of oil quickly getting back to $150/bbl or more... and that what if being that we could be getting a lot less stuff from China.

Improving rail infrastructure is a great idea, minus the electrification aspect. Freight rail currently uses about 2% of the total energy used by the transportation sector, compared to 15% for trucks and 50%+ for personal transportation.

a 500-car UPac train

More like 120, maybe as high as 150 with some empty well cars tacked on the end. 500 cars at 80ft per car adds up to a 7+ mile long train. As for the east, I've counted 120 coal empties on NS's Christiansburg District.

The kind of investments you're likely to see are some grade separation projects and or bridge rebuilds/upgrades that are "shovel-ready", already designed, blue-printed and awaiting funding.

CA did just approve their super-train, which would be just a garden-variety intercity express in Europe. $25b, nowhere close to "shovel-ready" and due to be completed when?

The four major U.S. freight railroads, at this point, really aren't "underfinanced and overburdened" (although that is a nice turn of phrase). OTOH, as private enterprises, you don't want to get capital investment too far out in front of demand.

In July, the Oil Drum ran an article titled Multiple Birds – One Silver BB by Alan Drake advocating electrification of the major freight lines, rebuilding the electrical grid, and installation of wind turbines along the rights of way. I'm glad to see Mr. Longman spreading the same message to a wider audience. I hope all the readers of the Monthly will bug their representatives with the potential of a rebuild rail system.

Did Socratic Gadfly happen to read the article before denouncing it?

I wonder if Socratic Gadfly read the article before hurling insults. And yes I've seen a Union Pacific hauling connex boxes through the New Mexico desert.

allowing trains to carry most of the cargo now being shipped by the long haul trucks that clog and tear up our interstates -- leading to less road congestion, fewer traffic fatalities, reduced road repair bills and significantly less emissions and energy use.

As someone who has frequently travelled the interstate by car, and seeing the high number of freight trucks on those roads, the significant hazards that they create, and the number of accidents that involve those trucks--I've been waiting for someone to propose this kind of reform for years.

Maybe less trucks will mean more cars, and cars are driven by less experienced operators, perhaps leading to worse fatalities.

That doesn't make any sense--why would a decrease in freight trucks mean more cars? They're not going to start delivering freight in fleets of cars. I also don't buy your "experienced operators" argument. Most car drivers have several years of experience, if not decades. What's your data on experience of truck drivers vs. car drivers? Is the percentage of truck drivers who recently completed training really much lower than the percentage of newly licensed car drivers?
On top of that, big trucks are inherently more hazardous than cars, regardless of who's driving them.

For a view of how the road building special interests interact with corrupt Chicago and state public officials in Illinois, read about the "Asphalt Kingpin" in yesterday's Chicago Suntimes:

http://www.suntimes.com/news/watchdogs/1372683,CST-NWS-watchdog12.article

Just how much of our public stimulus money will be going to companies like those run by Vondra?

Uhh, a lot of cargo already IS delivered a fair amount of its destination (after it hits a US port from China) by freight rail.

Uhh, how much is "a lot"? Have you ever driven on Interstate 80? Because all I ever see is one giant hazardous truck after another--poor visibility, seriously restricting others' visibility, much more dangerous in bad weather, poor braking ability, etc. The list goes on.
I'm not gonna claim to have the numbers, but I'd bet that they're involved in a much higher percentage of accidents than other cars.

We need to invest much more in both commuter and freight rail.

One comment made the point that fewer trucks on the highways would not necessarily mean less congestion--but there are other factors that may help in this line, like a persistent uptrend in oil prices, salary stagnation (meaning less money to spend on autos and their fuel) and, attractively, the development of alternatives to not just long-haul trucking, but also auto traffic. Yup, commuter and interurban rail, augmented by efficient auto-trains running not just on the east coast route.

We're at an historic moment in terms of possibilities for change in the ways we move people and stuff--let's hope that inertia doesn't win out.

I love the autotrain idea. People really discount the cost of wear and tear on their cars and being able to take your car off the road for the majority of a long trip is a great idea. There's places I'd like to take my camper van to, but don't like the idea of putting 3000 miles on it in 2 weeks time.

In order to improve our nation's rail network, we will inevitably need to either spend assloads of money on very expensive real-estate - or the Govt.'s got to do that "eminent domain" thing to appropriate the land.

NO politician in his or her right mind would attempt this. Political suicide. Worse than having sex with underage senate pages, in the eyes of the US voting public.

Sad - because we desperately need to improve our nation's rail network. But I believe it is politically impossible.

This is a little wonky, but a critical piece of new freight rail system would be universal adoption of integral trains.

19th century railroading centered on the boxcar as the universal vehicle for transporting merchandise freight. This entailed a very expensive and time-consuming system for assembling and disassembling trains made up of boxcars -- huge freightyards where this task was accomplished and an elaborate system of little-used spur lines to make final delivery of boxcars to their final destinations at plants and warehouses, among other resources.

Integral trains carrying standardized shipping containers -- the same containers adopted by international maritime shippers -- has been gradually changing the organization of freight rail, eliminating the need for spurs and huge switching yards.

Integral trains -- in which the train is rarely disassembled, if ever, as it moves across the country -- have not yet become the standard practice, though they could be adopted universally now. Integral trains offer substantial energy-saving potential, as well as the economies that follow from containerization. Even on non-electrified rail, diesel electric is the standard of motive power -- on an integral train, actual mechanical transmission can be distributed to each individual wheel as energy is transmitted via electrical lines along the length of the train. Braking, again at each wheel, of course, re-generates energy. More important from a safety standpoint -- integral trains can stop in much shorter distances.

Anyway, a freight rail system based on integral trains would represent a leap forward in safety and energy efficiency. Integral trains should be a threshold committment, for transformative investment.

CA did just approve their super-train, which would be just a garden-variety intercity express in Europe. $25b, nowhere close to "shovel-ready" and due to be completed when?

Actually, California just approved a bond for initial study and planning for a high-speed rail line linking LA to SF, its not described, even in CA, as a "super-train", and it doesn't have a timetable.

But what kind of investments are we likely to see? The incoming president has talked about "the single largest new investment in our national infrastructure since the creation of the federal highway system in the 1950s." But that doesn't necessarily mean that it's wise to invest in more and bigger highways, when the nation's underfinanced and overburdened freight rail system is in need of expansion and electrification.

Are their rail plans that are "shovel-ready", or even far enough along in the planning process that building could begin in three-four months? If not, they are completely irrelevant in terms of the immediate stimulus plan; they might be relevant as part of a longer term infrastructure plan, which should be a priority though not as high as immediate stimulus, but the palette of options for immediate stimulus is pretty much things where the preliminary planning work is done and all that is needed is money to get the building going, and, secondarily, things that are close to that point either because much of the preliminary work is done or there isn't a lot of preliminary work to do.

Good ideas that take longer have a place, but its not in the stimulus plan.

The report address below is a bit dated but non the less is helpful in a better understanding of the issue. My interest is mainly with ports and waterways but it is all connected. How do you think things get to you from the ship to your point of purchase? Trains are not, in my opinion, unsightly but a wonderful and efficient mode of goods movement. http://freight.transportation.org/doc/FreightRailReport.pdf

Beyond freight capacity, we ought to be looking at rebuilding the kind of nationwide double-track system that we had before the advent of interstate highways.

The way it is now with our single-track system, passenger trains have to pull over to let freight trains going in the opposite direction pass first. This occurs so often that passenger trains can arrive hours late, sometimes many hours late.

With a double-track system, these delays would almost certainly vanish. Travel by rail would skyrocket, reducing our need for oil, improve our air quality, reduce highway congestion and generally make life immeasurably better for all.

It would take time and money to make this happen, but it would have amazingly good results for the entire country.

Peak, my "500" may have been a bit hyperbolic, but, the trains UPac runs out of LB and LA are longer than any coal trains I've seen. (And, I've been to the Powder River country, too.)

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Allan, WHERE on I-80? As I noted, Longman focused on the East Coast. I don't think the largest container ships go through the Panama Canal.

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Grinning Cat, yes I did read. In my second post, I note that Longman talks a bit about intermodal, but he mentions not a word about the push for inland ports.

For those of you not familiar with the concept, an "inland port" functions like a watered port; w/containerized shipping, rather than Customs, etc., being involved at the coast, they are at the inland port.

And, as I indicated, I'm familiar w/this, and as a newspaper editor, have reported on this here in Dallas.

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Curmudgeon, very good point.

I've been thinking rail, too.

I think one of the priorities needs to be second tracks in metropolitan areas so commute trains won't need to pull over for freight trains and so collisions between freight and passenger trains will be a thing of the past.

It sounds like our current objectives to electrify and green our energy system would fit well with various parts of the rail system. The time it would take to do those rail projects is not years, but decades. So, I'd suggest combining them into the plan, but focusing on the infrastructure first, including two-way rail lines and wind turbines near rail ways. I'd want our short-term benefits to be obvious, but with a tight linkage to the longer-term developments (better cars and greener houses and rail).

Green rail sounds like a good thing, but it's definitely a long term project.

At least one short-term part of that could be work on the bottlenecks and two-way traffic to make passenger trains safer and more appealing to the public.

I'd also like to see more city-wide transportation using green fuels. It should be a quicker way to begin using natural gas or other fuels than to depend upon individuals buying green cars. The shorter-distance driving would also make it easier for refueling.

BTW, when I say 'green fuels' I'm referring to LNG, biodiesel, electric, hybrids and others akin to those.

I might also note that in the transportation picture there should be some reviewing of our river systems and the use of barges. Are we effectively using the rivers? Are there sufficient ports? Are there good connect-ups to inland highways and storage areas?

The big picture for transportation is a complicated one.

MarkH,
See my post above. If you are really interested read the report I have posted the URL address to. Trains, barges, ports, locks, distribution centers...all integral...it's called intermodal goods movement. There is a whole sector of public and private entities that are working on the policies and research to improve on this. Funding has been spotty at best...lots of deffered maintenance....hence falling bridges, silted up harbors, crumbling roads, iffy locks on the Mississippi etc., etc.

Uhh, a lot of cargo already IS delivered a fair amount of its destination (after it hits a US port from China) by freight rail.

Diesel powered trains, yes. In the Netherlands (pdf rail map, its like a big US metro system) France (rail map) and Germany (rail map) I don`t think I ever saw a railroad track without electrical wires above it. The only electrified track I saw in the US was between Baltimore and DC, where the marc train didn`t ride because it was the day after Christmas... Seriously holidays means less trains instead of more! ;-)

I traveled trough the US recently and became intimately acquainted with greyhound, megabus and even orbitz.com because Amtrak just offers so few possibilities. Oh and then it doesn`t even mention it suspended its service between new Orleans and Florida. Thats only mentioned in this tiny corner of a tiny updated leaflet. They could have mentioned that ... say on the map on their site and in their yearly book of schedules!

In the Netherlands for the last decade my student public transport ID would take me anywhere in the country for free and all I had to do was get to the nearest train station and wait maybe 15 minutes. (and I hated it when it was 20 minutes!) Train travels to France and Germany leaves you with enough time in the day for fun. I never tried the channel tunnel because I liked hovercraft to much ;-)

But as much as I like the train, TGV style projects are to expensive an take to long. Cargo is where I would start upgrading, adding capacity and electrifying US tracks if it were up to me.

The New America Foundation's Phillip Longman has a must-read piece in the upcoming issue of the Washington Monthly, highlighting the kind of benefits that would come with a focus on freight rail -- allowing trains to carry most of the cargo now being shipped by the long haul trucks that clog and tear up our interstates -- leading to less road congestion, fewer traffic fatalities, reduced road repair bills and significantly less emissions and energy use.

Oh and since the energy that is used is electricity, you can move to a different powersource simply by building a a couple of different powerplants, rather then by replacing gazillions of different cars or insulating a gazillion different homes all owned by a gazillion different people each with their own budgets... or, more accurately, no budgets.

Oil companies bumming you out? Build coal. Liquefied coal worked for the transport needs of the nazis and the south African apartheid regime. And coal is doing wonders for the Chinese economy...

CO2 bumming you out? build solar/wind/nuclear using hydroelectric storage and backup.

Nuclear waste and danger bumming you out? Build more solar/wind and transport the electricity across the continent... Need building permission on some long tracks of land quickly to build those power lines? Well why not use... the rail roads! They are gonna need some major electrical infrastructure to power them anyway! Didn`t I hear someone say something about building a national high voltage power grid the other day?

All that time needed for building all that stuff bumming you out... well its still many many times faster than replacing even a fraction of the cars on the road or insulating even a fraction of the homes.

So.... its a no-brainer.

And there is no question US tracks can use it. (Okay, rand is inconclusive, they need data, pdf) But
when I came across train tracks in the US I often wondered if they were abandoned. To a European American railroad tracks, especially those without the overhead electric lines, simply look abandoned. I was often surprised to see cargo trains riding on tracks that when I say them earlier I figured were rarely used if at all. I can remember being surprised by this at least three times in two months of traveling.

Austin TX has an Amtrak station that could use at least some fences and a slightly more safe pedestrian crossing. (although pedestrians are kinda f#$ed in the US anyway, though Austin is of course an obnoxiously proud bike city) Other than that the minimal bus stop style station nicely compensates for the humongous stations from Chicago to Baltimore to Washington DC (So thats were the railway money went!) The railroad bridge is a scary piece of rust. Apparently its mostly one track as well.

In New Orleans the 9th ward could use a decent crossing as well, epsecially if the train has to cross the road, very very slowly, then notices there is something on the tracks, stop, then wait for a while on the crossing and and then reverse back to allow cars the speed over at the first hint of room again. How about signals, fences and people keeping an eye on things to keep a lid on locomotives and things on the tracks?

The harbor of Baltimore looks like a dump all around. I could not tell abandoned tracks from those in use... and come to think of it didn`t see even bells and lights at a crossing either.

Nowhere did I see neat tracks with fresh clean rocks and the top of the rail shining brightly. I saw mostly bits of rusty metal sticking out of the dirt.

I love the new America foundation. Always those innovative new ideas you rarely hear inside the beltway. Things like "lets try and do something about the middle east conflict", "why no try and spend a bit of money on railroads that have seen zero money while Europe, Japan, Russia and China were building many thousands of miles of cost effective modern tracks" or "Lets try and find some radio spectrum for todays wireless innovators, especially if biggest wasters of bandwith, the 24 hour head on ad pumping tv industry, aren't using it" you know... breaktrough thinking like that ;-)

Yeah things like this would cost money.

Oh, on an unrelated note: Wanna know how much the US spends on nuclear weapons each year? Well I don`t know either, no one really does, but it was at least $52 Billion last year. At the least. There may be plenty of cost the Carnegie endowment missed. Anyone wanna guess for how much China can manufacture a nuke?

We all came together for the building of "super highways" (to accommodate war supplies should that ever occur) so why can't we come together to build "super railways". We 'could' make it nearly as fast as domestic flying...perhaps some of the airlines would like to switch over to rail lines if they were just as fast. Face it...the 'happy motoring' era is ending...one way or another and acceptance is an active process. I can even envision individual rail cars (like autos) piloted right down the freeways.