Excellent news! Just about anything that translates into more rails, more trains, and more train service is a plus in my book.
One thing to consider- Even if people stop driving, all other costs are going up, quickly. As yet, there is no clamor for alternative transportation. And I am not hearing enough at street level, about willingness to increase taxation for such projects. If household budgets continue to tighten, it may not happen. Food, and a roof overhead are going to come first. If this economy continues to slow, the population simply won't have funds to give for such projects. Boxcab E50
Well Boxcab... I think you're aiming right down the pike with that one. The population horse has been ridden just so far and so hard... And as you said, there might not be enough money in the til. Sometimes I look over my shoulder and remember things like being 13 hours late on the Sunset LTD from LA to NO and ten going the other way and the insistance on powering our trains on diesel oil in those territories where there is abundant hydroelectric power and good traffic density when the cost of that imported oil has gone through the roof. What I really dislike about Washington is: They don't even talk about electrification!! Furthermore, the country has become so divided in its thinking about rail passenger service that high speed trains are now considered to be state issues in most places with nothing unified. If ever this was a "divide and conquer" exercise, we have certainly witnessed a grand example of it.
Transportation costs money, however you slice it. There are lots of choices. We can all chip in a fraction of what we're spending on gas, insurance, car payments, etc., and get some rail improvements that will only serve to make that a more viable alternative, or we can continue down the current road, and possibly look at $5/gallon gas. I was trying to stay out of that and just cheerlead the investment in rail... :tb-biggrin:
Electrification is never going to happen country wide. You'd need to at least have it through an entire corridor. Like the entire ATSF Transcon. THEN in makes sense. But it will never happen. Aside from the basic infrastructure costs, the additional costs of building the additional power generation to support it will kill it. What current fuel costs may do is resurrect the Steam locomotive. There's a pretty long running thread over on the Trains.com boards about the economic and environemental feasibility of a modern reciprocating steam locomotive. It's an intriguing proposition. I don't personally think it will happen, but the cost of oil may drive us there.
It won't happen. Not for a long time to come. It's not just costs. It's the struggle to get the resource created. Many of those who advocate for electrification, are amongst those who would rally against nuclear, new dams, coal plants, etc. Conservation does not create more power. It only redistributes what exists. That is a finite venue. So, whether they like it or not, we will need to generate new electricity, build power distribution networks, etc. But only after decades of being tied up in destructive, expensive litigations. Boxcab E50
Yes it does. No argument there. However, my point is- Will the taxpayers have anything left to give? What might have been going for transportation costs, is now often being diverted to basic survival. With the costs of food, clothing, shelter, other taxes, et al, jumping skyward beyond real wage growth. People are going to be more than reluctant to increase their burden. This is a nasty side effect that most "experts" couldn't see coming. Boxcab E50
We had a (rather impolite) debate about this stuff over on the Atlas forum a few weeks ago. My argument is that in the long run (over the next three-five decades) the railroads will electrify because the cost of diesel fuel will just keep going up, to the point where the costs of electrification are well worth it. Moreover, because the electricity could come from any of a variety of sources, electrification will be a hedge against any particular supply shortage. Obviously the most used and easiest-to-electrify corridors will be done first. Boxcab, the alternative to building more power plants is for other uses to be put aside, to free up power. (Do we really need to have major league sports events at night? Or light up bridges to make them pretty? or have so many streetlights in the cities?) While big change certainly won't happen overnight, I think for the long run you're exaggerating the political obstacles to both conservation and building new power plants (to replace the energy we won't be using from oil). The importance of delivering food via rail to a city will vastly outweigh the difficulty of powering the train to deliver it. If it comes to it (let's hope it doesn't) I'm sure any government would ration power if it meant the difference between the goods train getting there or not. But there's no practical reason why we all couldn't take pro-active conservation measures to forestall that kind of a crisis...
Jageed Ben, you are calling for a paradigm shift in our social way of thinking - that is next to impossible to make happen - SO long as everybody is Happy. Now once there is no more happiness, it will be easy to do as you suggest - the ball parks will be silent because nobody can afford to go to the games, and nobody can afford to even turn on the lights for the game. Gas will haveto go towards food distribution first, and supply distribution second. Wait for the eceonomy crash When thse credit cards go like the sub prime market went, then you will know. Oh yeah, don't worry about the environmental panties in a wad group. Once the economy crashes, they won't be able to afford litigation much less their motorhomes to travel around to the various things they wish to protest. Big industry knows most of these people by name too, so none of them will be working any time soon in the corporate sector!
Maybe the government should make a shift in their financial priorities? Try to avoid more burden for the average guy, and shift the available tax money more to the items that can improve society?
Speaking of rails. The Good: How soon shippers forgot they thumb their noses at railroads as they left the rails in favor of trucks.Now as trucks clog the Interstates and State highways along with lack of drivers,slower transit times and higher fuel costs the rails don't look so bad after all. As any one eyed railfan can see there is a increase in rail traffic to include loose freight boxcar shipments. The bad: Railroads has removed thousands of miles of secondary main lines that seen little use as well as thousands of miles of double track as freight traffic dwindled over the years.Some thought railroads was a outdated mode of transportation better suited to the transportation of bulk material. Now with increased rail traffic we are beginning to see Congestion on the main lines due to several things that will include excessive terminal dwell time,lack of rested crews and lack of double track main lines. The question remains can railroads handle the increase traffic in a timely manner? A study of this table RPM shows the track speed isn't as stellar performance as the by gone eras of 75mph passenger and express trains. The terminal dwell time needs to be improved to ensure timely movements of the shipper's freight... Can railroads handle this a increase freight? I fully believe so with contemporary transportation thinking and not doing things the old ways.. Then there is the need for Infrastructure Improvement.. And at whose costs?
Which is what I'd pointed out in my post earlier today- That's time. Which is a negative in this instance. Waiting another 30-50 years just won't help. We still need to be building new sources. Now. As I noted earlier, this only redistributes existing supply. It creates nothing new. The idea is a short lived stop-gap measure. So brief as to be almost not noticeable. Yes. Being private businesses, they must cater to when the greatest number of potential attendees (customers) are available. As the majority of populations work day hours, their free time is in the evening. Take away these diversions from the reality of life, and you'll have an extremely unhappy public to control. While I'd agree these may be unnecessary, I doubt there are enough bridges so lighted, to make any significant impact on the overall picture. Probably. It's a safety and crime issue. Cut back on lighting, and I'd bet crime will slowly start escalating. Or there'll be an ugly accident, followed by very costly litigations. Remember how many utilities are privately owned. Any such government strict oversight, or outright seizure could have a dramatic negative impact on the citizens. Remembering that government is generally less efficient, (often bloated at very least), than the private sector. And also how many people have utility investments in their portfolio for retirement, which I'd wager are likely heavily damaged, or gone. If well thought out, and proven actually practical. Too many suggestions are "feel good" steps, or lacking real impact. Boxcab E50
Sometimes it is not so important how fast the goods travel, but whether they arrive on the agreed time. German steel mills have their coal being transported by rail from the Dutch harbors, because they need a steady and reliable flood of coal to keep the furnaces burning, and the cheaper river boats can't offer that reliability: they deliver a huge amount of coal and the mill doesn't want those huge piles on their property.
Thieu- This suggestion seems somewhat vague. Could you please be more specific? Shift the burden from average guy, to? What items to improve society, based on what model of our society? Boxcab E50
OK, just some dumb questions from an European point of view: - Why give state support to money loosing airlines but make a problem as it comes to Amtrak? A train is very reliable, safe, energy efficient, and environmentally friendly. - Why are Americans the largest consumers of energy in the world? Do you really need a garden with green grass in the middle of the desert? Do you really need those big, gas absorbing cars? Wouldn't it be more logic to save some of that energy waste and use it for better purposes? - Why give a tax relieve to the people that are already very rich? - Why has the richest and most advanced country in the world a crumbling infrastructure? - Why seems it easier to buy some new missiles than investing in infrastructure? I know, I come from a different kind of society with a different way of life. And it is easy to point at other countries and forgetting the mistakes you make by yourself. And maybe we see here only the sharp edges of American policy and society, but how can one complain about the gas prices and still be the largest consumer of energy and not doing anything about it?
Please keep in mind the size difference between the Netherlands and the United States- to compare the two countries is like comparing apples and oranges. Size-wise and geography-wise, the two are entirely different. Having said that, it is by sheer size alone that electrification, while desirable by some, is almost (notice I said almost) out of the question. The cost of building separate infrastructure, power plants, etc. would be more than, say, BNSF could afford- with its size, it's easier to have its trains powered by diesel-electrics, fuel cell-electrics, or whatever. And comparing the return to the rails with asking why we have night games and lit bridges makes little sense, unless you're wanting to go toward energy waste. Which, IMO, is not confined to the US. However, I'm not going to play the finger-pointing game, since it solves nothing. I would rather the emphasis on mass transit not focus solely on air travel, and a little bit more on passenger rail, or even another technology entirely (maglev comes to mind). The problems we face as a civilization on this planet will not be solved overnight, but will take time, a different way of thinking, and the most important power source we have- brainpower. (That, and a bit of common sense)
Of course I didn't want to make any comparison between our tiny country and the USA, but more a comparison between Europe and the USA. Well, I even didn't want to make a comparison, but just point some things (and maybe prejudices?) that many Europeans consider as strange and contradictory. But: we also complain about pollution but people don't want to make less use of their cars.... We complain about declining public transport but don't take the bus or train... We don't want polluting trucks but do everything to prevent the building of a new freight line......
That's a mystery our politicians refuse to answer. We pump money into roadways, waterways, and the airways. None overtly pay their way. But the puny funding for railroads is always argued for not paying it's way. It goes partly to some crooked dealings when NRPC was established. Couple that to a lousy educational system. Which too often teaches about railroading in the past historical tense. Why do so many nations and societies try to emulate us? Or emigrate here? We must be doing something right! Take a close look at China. They'll soon catch and surpass us. Then people can have fun beating up on them. That's an exception. Not the rule. Also beware that many localities have ordnances that actually force us to maintain our properties in a certain fashion! Bureaucracy out of control... Please prove the waste. What better purposes? We are a free society. We can own any car we wish, by earning the funds to buy them. If we buy a gallon of gas, it's ours to use. That's a myth propagated by people who have no business acumen. It's not crumbling. There is always need for maintenance, just as anywhere on earth. Our media loves to blow everything out of proportion. Sensationalism is how they keep their jobs. Fact is optional. The military is a tiny portion of our national budget. From our military, have come many fantastic consumer goods. Including the Internet. There's your answer. Ignore media, and delve deeper than their political motivations. See what you find then. You'll be surprised. Our consumption is somehow evil? Hmmm. Fascinating. The present very, very sudden price spike is highly suspicious at best. That's why we're grumping. We'd love to see a graph of world consumption, side by side with these recent price raises. And see how closely they follow each other. Much of this has been caused by social activism. Pretending to do good, the constant litigations have through our legal systems tangled our business world into a huge mess. If our innovators didn't have their hands tied by so many regulations, they might be more free to create what we need. When they must fight for years, spending enormous sums of money, in order to simply build a new facility for production of that new energy saving gadget, many just back away. If Henry Ford were alive today, he might find it almost impossible to build the Model T. With it's revolutionary, beneficial world wide, production line ideas. Boxcab E50
I think this is in part some of why we're stumbling. We've been consuming heavily and not conserving and it has caught up to us. I think this has gone from railroads to what often gets called "politics" on this board. I would be interested in sharing some of my own thoughts about some of these things with you, Thieu, but perhaps we should move it to PM's and emails. Adam
