THE TRUTH
ABOUT TRAINS
Let’s set the record straight about myths, costs,
societal influences, technology, efficiency, and more
o, let’s say you’re at a cocktail party, and you let it slip that you’re
interested in railroads and might know about them. Your friends
want to know more about this industry that disappeared off the
radar screen of American culture decades ago. They’ve seen bits
and pieces of the story. They’ve read the fable on the Internet about the
width of the Roman chariot leaving ruts that led to standard gauge (and
thus ultimately dictating the size of the space shuttle boosters that go by rail
from Utah to Florida). They’ve seen the CSX and Norfolk Southern commercials on television, touting railroading’s fuel efficiency. They know that
Amtrak trains get government money, but they’re not sure how much. They
ask you questions about these reports and others in those gray areas where
fact and fiction blur. Is what you know about railroading accurate? Test
your knowledge as we seek the truth about trains. — J.G.W. and M.V.
24
© 2011 Kalmbach Publishing Co. This material may not be reproduced in any form
Trains JULY 2009
without permission from the publisher. www.TrainsMag.com
FACT OR FICTION?
STANDARD GAUGE ORIGINATED WITH A ROMAN CHARIOT
Photo by Tom Danneman
I t sounds so precise: The world standard
gauge for railroad track is 56½ inches,
and people have long invented fanciful
origins. My favorites combine Roman chariots, grooves in stone pavement, and the conviction that the width of a horse’s rump set
railroading’s benchmark dimension.
Ancient Greeks used carriages running
in a stone guideway to move warships across
the Isthmus of Corinth in much the same
way Pennsylvania’s Allegheny Portage Railroad moved canal boats three millennia later. The Corinthian “gauge” was close to 56½
inches, if they had used flanged wheels. Later, Roman road builders made channels in
pavement to guide wagon wheels.
Unfortunately, we can’t connect our railway age back to bits of surviving stone road.
During the intervening thousand or so years,
most knowledge of the ancient world disappeared. Modern track gauge relates to the
dimensions of a horse’s hind end only to the
extent that draft animals pulling wagons on
the early tramways of Great Britain and Europe needed a path. That meant placing rails
between 4 and 5 feet apart.
In reality, the origins of standard gauge
are more prosaic and derived from one
strong-willed individual and three guiding
principles of human nature: “It seemed like
a good idea at the time,” “Because I said so,”
and “Everyone else does it.”
Why exactly 56½ inches? Answering
that question is impossible, but William
Jessop’s “edge rail” of the 1780s offers one
precedent. His track gauge was a reasonable
5 feet, with guide wheels, acting like flanges,
running on the outside of each rail. The inside gauge was almost exactly 56½ inches.
The Killingworth tramway, where George
Stephenson built his first locomotive in
1814, also used roughly 56-inch track. A decade later, he chose a similar gauge for the
pioneering Stockton & Darlington Railway.
Northumbrian colliery operators converged
on that as a standard and expected to use
their old wagons on the new railroads.
Stephenson was a brilliant, self-taught
engineer who, with his son Robert, built
railways throughout the world. George was
headstrong, opinionated, and arrogant.
When he regarded a design as established,
he tolerated no dissent. Stephenson used a
slightly widened “Northumbrian” gauge for
the 1830 Liverpool & Manchester Railway,
making 56½ inches a formal specification.
Stephenson decided the issue was settled.
A younger, equally brilliant, more flamboyant engineer named Isambard Kingdom
Brunel disagreed and favored a track gauge
of 7 feet. If Stephenson’s genius improved
railroad technology incrementally, Brunel’s
envisioned a new kind of high speed, highintensity railroading. His Great Western
Railway, as a technological marvel, proved
the merits of broad gauge.
George Stephenson, who cordially detested the upstart Brunel, argued that Britain’s railroad boom compelled the embrace
of car interchange and standards. Brunel’s
and other “non-Stephenson” gauges caused
disruption with connections to the growing
national network of 56½-inch lines.
A royal commission convened to determine the standard. Because fewer than 500
of Britain’s 3,000 track miles were broad
gauge, Parliament passed the “Gauge Act”
in 1846, prohibiting any gauge but 56½
inches. It made sense as public policy, and
pleased the Stephensons.
But what about America? In the late
1820s, a Baltimore & Ohio delegation consulted with the Stephensons and visited
British railroads. The B&O ordered an
0-6-0 locomotive from Robert Stephenson
at about the time
the Delaware & Hudson Canal Co. tested
its 51-inch-gauge Stourbridge Lion.
The B&O’s engine, which would have
been America’s first standard gauge locomotive, suffered a mysterious shipboard accident and never left British waters. The
B&O men returned with the conviction
that Stephenson gauge was proper for their
project. In January 1830, the company
made 56½ inches its official standard.
Americans soon understood the benefits of a common gauge. What it should be,
however, remained a vexing question. No
real network existed; no obvious considerations favored one gauge over another. A
North American standard of 58 inches, 60
inches, or even 72 inches was possible.
When Congress decreed in 1863 that
the new railroad from the Missouri River to
the Pacific Ocean “shall be, and hereby is,
established at four feet, eight and one-half
inches,” the U.S. had its standard gauge.
Sooner or later, odd gauge lines found the
will, money, and opportunity to fall in line.
Railroading needed a uniform gauge,
and 56½ inches seemed like a good idea at
the time. The government said to do it.
Romans and horses notwithstanding, that, pretty
much, begins the story of
standard gauge. — John P.
Hankey
© 2009 Kalmbach Publishing Co., TRAINS: Jay Smith
www.TrainsMag.com
25
FACT OR FICTION?
RAILROAD LEXICON HAS BECOME A PART OF EVERYDAY LANGUAGE
A Louisville & Nashville doubleheader arrives at Corbin, Ky., in August 1953.
I
Photos by Jim Forbes
26
Trains JULY 2009
f you’ve ever blown off steam or accused
someone of being asleep at the switch, if
you’ve ever eaten in a roadside diner, or
taken a ride on one of those airborne cattle
cars they call commuter jets, thank railroading for making your language richer.
Our forebears mostly came from elsewhere, the majority of them willingly but
some of them in chains, and all of them had
to reinvent themselves in a new land. So it’s
no surprise that American English borrows
from so many influences. It’s the most vibrant and dynamic language on earth.
Railroads played a part, bringing people
of different backgrounds together, however
fleetingly. Whether they were immigrant
Swedes on their way to Minnesota, East
Coast dandies on hunting trips in the West,
or salesmen making their endless rounds
through rural backwaters, Americans from
most walks of life rode trains. The stage was
set for a uniquely American language: A
Jewish vaudevillian could talk about chutzpah during his act in Altoona, Pa., and an
Italian section hand on the Pennsylvania
Railroad would use the term the next day.
But aside from being a powerful agent
in the evolution of American English, railroads provided the language dozens of
terms. Boxcars aren’t just rolling stock;
they’re also a pair of sixes in a dice game. A
caboose can be at the end of a train, or a
conga line, or a person. Pullmans are railroad cars, but they’re also a type of luggage. Doubleheaders are found in both
railroading and baseball, but the word
originated on the rails. Air lines were
railroads before they were airlines. (Seaboard Air Line was the most famous, but
there were others, too.) Commuters and
Jack A. Krave
grade crossings didn’t exist before railroads,
so the terms had to be invented. If you’ve
ever cut and run, it’s probably because a
steam locomotive before you was low on
water, had to uncouple from its train, and
run light to the nearest trackside tank. That
tank may have been located in a jerkwater
town. And speaking of thirst, highballs and
boilermakers likely owe their names, if not
their recipes, to railroads.
On the subject of adult entertainment,
the term red light district may have railroad
origins, too. One explanation: Train crews
left lanterns or marker lights outside bordellos, thus alerting crew callers.
Americans speak unconsciously about
having the inside track, or being in the clear,
or in the ditch. The terms are so ingrained
in the lexicon that most people never give a
second thought to their origins. The genesis
of the verb railroad (“he was railroaded into
it”) is more obvious, but the derivations of
redcap, flag stop, and whistle stop are probably obscure to most.
Railroading also gave us bill of lading,
deadhead, gravy train, mainline, one-track
mind, trunk line, and right-of-way.
According to H.L. Mencken (his book,
The American Language, is still regarded as
a standard reference nearly a century after
its first publication) and lexicographer Stuart Berg Flexner, most of these terms originated with railroading — only cut and run,
red light district, and boilermaker seem
open to doubt. In a memorable turn of
phrase, Flexner called railroads the “great
stirring spoon for our people and language.”
Without that spoon, the melting pot might
have had a lot more chunks in it.
— Peter A. Hansen
FACT OR FICTION?
YOU CAN TURN A TRAIL BACK INTO AN ACTIVE RAIL LINE
A
railroad abandons one of its routes,
and to save the right-of-way, the line is
railbanked, or kept intact as a trail for
future rail use. The railroad sells or leases
the property to a public or private group
that builds a popular recreational trail, but
circumstances change. The railroad wants to
rebuild. Can it happen?
Congress approved railbanking in 1983
to save abandoned corridors. A Rails-toTrails Conservancy list includes more than
90 railbanked lines totaling 2,200 miles.
According to the law, reactivation takes
place like this: The railroad files with the
Surface Transportation Board; after the plan
is approved, engineering and construction
begin. “The whole purpose of the Rail Trail
Act was to enable us to reverse these rightsof-way,” transportation attorney Dick Wilson says. “It should be easy, but that doesn’t
mean that people can’t oppose it.”
So far, only about a half-mile of trail has
been reactivated nationwide, though more
will come. Near Council Bluffs, Iowa, a
new line to a power plant required about
350 feet to cross an abandoned Wabash
line that had become a trail. In St. Louis,
Union Pacific rebuilt a tail track 1,100 feet
along a trail to serve an industry.
Most other rail reactivations that have occurred since the Rail Trail Act was passed
involved re-opening tracks that were never
torn up, the exception being an Illinois Central branch in southern Illinois and Indiana.
A new shortline operator filed to reactivate
the scrapped and railbanked line to serve a
proposed ethanol plant. The STB ruled in favor of the short line, but to date only a quarter-mile of the proposed 22.5-mile line has
been constructed for lack of money.
Two reactivation projects in Pennsylvania
are in court. In the central part of the state, a
landfill project near the town of Snow Shoe
calls for reactivation of a railbanked portion
of the old New York Central Beech Creek
Branch [see “News,” Trains, September
2008]. The line became a rail-trail, mostly for
ATVs, in 2003. Plans call for rebuilding 9.3
miles, but local opposition is fierce. The project is stalled, pending results of an STB-ordered environmental impact statement.
The Kiski Junction Railroad, a 5.2-mile
tourist- and steel-hauling short line along the
Allegheny and Kiski rivers, has been in litigation almost since a subsidiary of the Rosebud
Mining Co. purchased it in 2005. The mining
company constructed a coal loadout about
five miles from the rail terminal at Schenley,
Pa. The plan is to extend the Kiski Junction
on the former Pennsylvania Railroad Allegheny Valley Branch, which is now an undeveloped section of the Allegheny Valley Trail.
“We have no problem with the railroad
because that’s part of our mission: to preserve
the corridor,” says Ron Steffey, executive director of the Allegheny Valley Land Trust,
owner of the trail. Adjacent landowners have
objected and are fighting both the trail and
the railroad over ownership issues. However,
the railroad recently received a $4 million
Pennsylvania Department of Transportation
Rail Freight construction grant; construction
should begin mid-2009.
The cost to rebuild track is about $1 million per mile. Rebuilding on an existing
grade with structures intact saves a lot of
money since the cost of a new bridge runs
about $4,000 a foot.
Trails can return to railroads after their
recreational uses, such as rollerblading,
become less important than moving freight.
photos.com; below: Ron Bouwhuis
Reactivations have so far involved freight
railroads, but planning for high speed passenger lines involves at least one railbanked
trail. This is the one to watch: The maps for
Ohio Hub, the Ohio Rail Development
Commission’s high speed rail program, projected for completion in 2025, show a line
from Columbus to Pittsburgh. Presumably
the former Conrail Panhandle Line will be
the route of choice. However, from Weirton,
W.Va., to Walkers Mill, Pa., near Pittsburgh
this line is a trail. Problem? Maybe not. Says
Pat Tomes of the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy, “Any time you can move people without
cars is fine with us.” — Bill Metzger
FACT OR FICTION?
PASSENGER TRAINS ‘LOSE’ MONEY AND HIGHWAYS DON’T
The Boston section of Amtrak’s eastbound Lake Shore Limited crosses the Berkshires at Washington, Mass., in June 2003.
F unny, you don’t hear much about
“money-losing Amtrak” anymore. Sure,
“cash-strapped” sneaks into a news
story occasionally, but now that the whole
country is struggling and hundred-billiondollar bailouts are being dispensed to “ailing
insurance giants,” another batch of suspects
has taken Amtrak’s place on the firing line.
Nevertheless, there’s an ideological argument, espoused by “free market” Congressional legislators and economists, that Amtrak should be held to a profitability standard
while that yardstick is missing from discussions about highway and airport funding.
Take the debate leading up to the passage
of this year’s $787 billion economic stimulus
package, in which Sen. David Vitter, R-La.,
offered an amendment that would have
stripped all the money for Amtrak and high
speed rail (a combined total of $2.85 billion
at the time) out of the legislation. Vitter’s
amendment was defeated 65-32 and passenger rail would eventually get more than $9.3
billion, but hey — 32 legislators voted against
this proposed rail funding, presumably be-
28
Trains JULY 2009
cause they believe the government has no
business running passenger trains.
The fact is that expecting profitability
from passenger rail is nothing but a leftover
legacy from government transportation policies that date from the early 1800s, when
canals were built and a comparatively small
number of land grants were offered to railroads. Later, federal, state, and local governments would begin building roads and airports, in part because private railroads had
angered too many politicians and businesses
whose well-being depended on having affordable and reliable transportation. The
“contract” with road and air users was the
same: We’ll help provide the infrastructure if
you will invest in the boats, cars, and airplanes, and then you get the transportation
benefit, or in the case of a public operator,
the profits. The railroads’ monopoly began
to fall apart in the 1920s as government-built
highways filled a void. Then the monopoly
crumbled when military advances led to jet
aircraft (operated by trained Air Force and
Navy pilots) and President Dwight Eisen-
Brian Solomon
Airlines load and go at Boston’s public airport, as the Wright Brothers had envisioned.
hower authorized the construction of a “National System of Interstate and Defense
Highways” in 1956.
Planes and cars became the public’s go-to
modes, thanks to massive government infrastructure investments, driven by cheap gas
and a fuel tax entitlement system for states
(apportioned in accordance with the number of highway miles built and driven), while
state and local taxes paid for police and
maintenance. (States direct highway spend-
A BART subway rolls in the median of 10-lane Route 24 near Oakland, Calif. Both modes were built with public funds.
Source: “Pocket Guide to Transportation 2009,” Bureau of Transportation Statistics
Source: “Pocket Guide to Transportation 2009,” Bureau of Transportation Statistics
ing using federal money from the highway
trust fund, in addition to their own revenues
from gas taxes and general funds. Meanwhile, car rentals and parking fees became a
crucial revenue stream at public airports.)
The railroads, however, didn’t share in this
largesse and saw their traffic drop while expenses soared because they alone were forced
not only to buy cars and locomotives, but
also to bear the full expense of maintaining
their privately owned and heavily taxed
rights-of-way — a double whammy.
Japan, France, and other countries finance
high speed rail investments, but Amtrak’s
1971 startup was not accompanied by anywhere near the level of government funding
that the U.S. has thrown at the highway system. Last year’s federal road spending grew to
$40 billion, $8 billion of which was supplied
by a general revenue booster shot because the
highway trust fund had gone bankrupt with
lower tax receipts. Still, highways received
more last year from the U.S. government
than Amtrak has received over its lifetime.
Amtrak’s federal grant last year was $1.4 bil-
lion, the cost of a few highway interchanges.
(The National Association of Railroad Passengers notes that transit got seven times the
amount of federal funding as Amtrak in
2008, and airports got 10 times as much.)
Was all that money spent wisely? The
next time you might ask that tweedy, pipesmoking policy wonk who gasps, “the government has spent over $30 billion on Amtrak since 1971 and not once has it made a
profit!” how, exactly, that multi-million dollar interchange in the middle of rural Louisiana passes the profitability test. Oh wait a
minute — there is no test for highways.
This much is certain: The phrase “moneylosing passenger trains” rings more hollow
now than ever. With the Obama administration and Republican party advocates like
California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger solidly behind high speed rail, an aging population unable to drive itself everywhere,
younger travelers who want the freedom to
plug in rather than become slaves to steering
wheels and car payments like their parents,
growing environmental concerns, and a sur-
>> See more comparisons between modes on
our Web site. Visit www.TrainsMag.com
Rail transit, 0.25
0.0
Amtrak, 0.45
0.5
Toyota Prius, 0.55
1.0
Aircraft, 0.97
1.5
Average car, 1.10
2.0
Sport utility vehicle, 1.57
Total state and local revenues, 98.2
State and local air, 15.9
State and local water, 3.7
Transit (state and local only), 15.1
Total federal revenues, 52.2
0
State and local highway, 63.5
20
General support (federal), 0.02
40
Federal water receipts, 1.8
0
60
Pipeline (federal only), 0.06
50
80
Federal airport/airway trust fund, 11.1
100
CARBON DIOXIDE EMISSIONS PER
PASSENGER-MILE, 2008 (pounds
per passenger-mile)
100
Railroad (federal only), 0
150
GOVERNMENT TRANSPORTATION
REVENUES (USER CHARGES,
TAXES, TOLLS) BY MODE, 2006
(in billions)
Federal highway trust fund, 39.2
200
Federal highway (excludes state grants), 3.0
Federal transit, 0.08
Federal rail, 1.5
Federal air, 22.8
Federal water, 6.6
Federal pipeline, 0.07
Federal general support, 1.8
Total federal expenditures, 35.8
State/local highway (includes federal grants), 96.8
State/local transit (includes federal grants), 44.0
State and local rail, 0.02
State and local air, 18.4
State and local water, 4.3
State and local pipeline, 0.03
State and local general support, 0.01
Total state and local expenditures, 163.6
GOVERNMENT EXPENDITURES BY
MODE, 2006 (in billions)
Two photos: Bob Johnston
Note: Cars measured with solo drivers. Rail transit measured with 50 riders a car.
SYSTEM MILES IN THE U.S., 2006
Interstate highway
46,893
National Highway System
116,573
Paved roads
2,466,534
Unpaved roads
1,402,000
Class I rail network
94,942
Other freight rail miles
46,000
Amtrak network
21,708
Commuter rail network
6,972
Rail transit
(light and heavy)
2,903
Navigable water channels
Oil pipeline
Gas pipeline
26,000
169,346
1,534,300
Source: Bureau of Transportation Statistics
face transportation reauthorization debate
cranking up this year, maybe mobility will
finally trump profitability where passenger
rail is concerned. — Bob Johnston
www.TrainsMag.com
29
FACT OR FICTION?
TRUCKS CARRY MORE FREIGHT THAN TRAINS
TONS OF U.S. FREIGHT CARRIED BY
MODE, 2006, (15.5 billion tons)
Rail
intermodal, 1%
Rail
13%
Pipeline
10%
Truck
69%
Water, 7%
Air, 0.1%
Source: American Trucking Associations
TON-MILES OF U.S. FREIGHT
CARRIED BY MODE, 2006,
(4,638 billion ton-miles)
Pipeline
20%
Water
12%
Air, 0.3%
Rail
40%
Truck
28%
Note: percentages rounded for simplicity
Source: “Pocket Guide to Transportation 2009,”
Bureau of Transportation Statistics
TONS ORIGINATED
VS. REVENUE TON-MILES
rucks might dominate America’s overall
transportation picture, but if you want
to move enough coal to light up a city,
or enough grain to feed a nation, you need a
train — and America could not survive without its railroads. To understand why, you need
to know the two basic ways tonnage can be
measured: actual tons carried and ton-miles
(one ton carried one mile).
In terms of tons carried, trucks rule. The
Association of American Railroads says the
rail industry carried 2 billion tons of freight in
2006. That’s less than a fifth of the tons hauled
by truck that year, according to the American
Trucking Associations. Look at ton-miles,
however, and a different picture emerges. In
2006, U.S. railroads produced 1.9 trillion tonmiles, while trucks produced 1.3 trillion.
Railroads have the ton-mile advantage because they can carry large quantities long distances. On average, one train can haul the
30
Trains JULY 2009
equivalent of 280 trucks, notes the AAR, and
the railroads’ average length of haul has doubled between 1960 and today. Imagine the
traffic if today’s rail freight went by truck!
In the 1940s and earlier, railroads ran on a
network that resembled today’s road system.
While this enabled railroads to carry more
total freight, the industry could not take advantage of its economies of scale, and maintaining the overbuilt system was costly, particularly once trucks began to siphon off
short-haul traffic. Toward the end of the last
century, railroads aggressively trimmed their
mileage and capacity to match demand, shedding rural branches and duplicate main lines.
“In terms of miles of track, number of locomotives, and number of cars, the physical
plant of today’s railroad infrastructure is
equivalent to what it was in 1880,” notes William D. Middleton in the “Encyclopedia of
North American Railroads.” The improve-
1,875
2.0
1,250
1.5
625
0
Tons originated, rail (in billions)
T
Truck: Howard Ande; UP: Mat t Van Hat tem; Photo illustration by Drew Halverson
2.5
1920
1930
1940
1950
1960
1970
1980
1990
2000
2007
The competition faces off.
Revenue ton-miles, rail (in billions)
2,500
1.0
Year
Source: “Railroad Facts, 2008 Edition,” Association of American Railroads
ment in the industry’s financial condition in
the late 20th century resulted from its concentration on long-haul, high-tonnage movements, carried out with minimal switching
using more efficient cars and locomotives.
With ton-miles now double what they
were in 1980 (see above), thanks primarily to
low-sulfur Western coal, railroads are even
putting track back in. — Michael W. Blaszak
FACT OR FICTION?
RAILROADS ARE THE CHAMPIONS OF FUEL EFFICIENCY
A towboat pushes barges on the Chicago
Sanitary and Ship Canal. TR A I NS : Mat t Van Hat tem
H
ere is one of the great untold railroad
success stories: In 1980, when railroading was still a fragile industry, it began
a desperate effort to become more fuel efficient. As time passed, the efficiency push
grew even more intense for a different reason: escalating fuel prices. The end result? In
2007, railroads hauled almost double the tonmiles of 1980, but used only about 3 percent
more fuel (as detailed in the chart below).
How did they do it? For one thing, today’s locomotives are more powerful and
twice as fuel efficient as ones built in the
1960s and ’70s. Railroads have also increased
the amount of tonnage that can be carried in
each freight car by using newer and better
types of steel to lower the empty weight of
the car, notes John T. Gray, senior vice president-policy and economics for the Association of American Railroads. For instance, a
coal car now might weigh 30 tons empty,
down from 40 tons. That means the car can
haul 110 tons of coal rather than 100 tons,
while producing the same wear on the rail.
“Most of the fuel efficiency improvements took place back when fuel was relatively cheap,” Gray says. “We were doing this
long before it was a national fad, and we also
know that you have to work on it for little
increments over a long period of time to
make a difference.” How do you measure fuel
efficiency? “We compute the number simply
by dividing total revenue ton-miles by total
gallons used,” Gray says.
Now the downside: The price of diesel
fuel rose from 57 cents to $2.18 per gallon in
just the decade ending in 2007, meaning the
fuel bill rose even faster than the impressive
efforts railroads made at fuel conservation.
Yet railroads are not the champions of fuel
efficiency. That title goes to barges. The big
loser is trucks, although truck power plants
have made impressive gains in efficiency.
A barge industry study found that inland
towing carries 1 ton of freight 576 miles on 1
gallon of fuel, while railroads can go 413
Engineer Brad Jolliffe starts Ontario Southland M420 No. 647 at Guelph in 2003. Ron
miles, and trucks 155 miles. This is strictly
the weight of the freight, not the weight of
the vehicle used. However, it includes all fuel
consumed, even if idling or engaged in empty
backhauls. (Backhauls consumed 30 percent
of the fuel used by railroads, the study notes,
while another 10 percent was used in yard
service, and about 4 percent during idling.)
The study was produced in 2007 by the
Texas Transportation Institute using 2005
data, a year when freight railroads consumed
4.1 trillion gallons of fuel (about the same
amount they used in 2007). The report does
not appear to be skewed to make barges look
better, and the rail industry does not take
serious issue with it, although the AAR performed its own calculations with 2007 data,
and came up with a figure of 436 ton-miles
per gallon for freight trains, reflecting the
continuing increase in railroad ton-miles.
“Barges should be much better than they
are,” Gray adds. The reason? Many towboats
have older diesel engines similar to the railroads’ gas-guzzling F units of the 1950s —
and they sound about the same. Cashstrapped barge lines are slowly replacing
these, however. — Don Phillips
600
Bouwhuis
MILES PER GALLON
CARRYING 1 TON OF CARGO
Inland
towing
576
500
400
Freight
railroads
413
300
200
Truck freight
155
100
0
Source: “A Modal Comparison of Domestic Freight Transportation Effects
on the General Public,” Texas Transportation Institute, 2007
200
175
150
125
100
75
50
25
0
DOUBLE THE FREIGHT ON THE
SAME AMOUNT OF FUEL
(as a percent of 1980 figures;
1980 = 100)
Rail volume (ton-miles)
Rail fuel consumption
Average fuel price
1980 1983 1986 1989 1992 1995 1998 2001 2004 2007
Source: AAR
www.TrainsMag.com
31
FACT OR FICTION?
A MILE OF HIGHWAY COSTS MORE THAN A MILE OF RAILROAD
U.S. PASSENGER-MILES
AND VEHICLE-MILES, 2006
Passengermiles
(billions)
Vehiclemiles
(billions)
Riders
per
vehiclemile
Passenger
cars
2,658.6
1,682.7
1.6
Other 2-axle,
4-tire vehicles
1,888.0
1,089.0
1.7
Buses
148.3
7.0
21.2
Motorcycles
15.8
12.4
1.3
Rail transit
16.6
0.7
22.8
Commuter
rail
10.4
0.3
32.9
Amtrak/
intercity rail
5.4
0.3
20.5
Other transit
(ferry, etc.)
2.2
1.1
2.0
590.6
6.6
89.2
Air carriers
Source: “Pocket Guide to Transportation
2009,” Bureau of Transportation Statistics
Michigan, 2.6
CSX, 2.6
Illinois, 3.3
Pennsylvania, 3.3
New York, 3.6
BNSF Railway, 3.9
Union Pacific, 4.2
California, 4.2
Florida, 5.7
Texas, 7.6
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
0
WHO SPENDS MORE ON
INFRASTRUCTURE, RAILROADS OR
STATE HIGHWAY DEPARTMENTS?
TOP 10 SPENDERS, 2006
(in billions)
Note: Railroad spending amount for maintenance-of-way and structures. Highway
agency spending includes capital outlays and maintenance expenses.
A Rail Runner train from Santa Fe races I-25 traffic at La Cienega, N.M.
I f you want to see the bright future of passenger rail, head to Albuquerque, N.M.,
where in late 2008 trains began zipping
along the median of I-25 on their way to the
state capital in Santa Fe. Traffic between the
two cities is projected to double in the next
20 years, and adding an extra interstate lane
each way on the 50-mile corridor would cost
$1 billion. Instead, the state funded a $250
million extension of its Rail Runner Express
commuter service that included four stations,
a layover yard, and 18 miles of new track. For
New Mexico, extending Rail Runner at $12
million a mile was a better investment than a
$20 million-per-mile highway project.
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Trains JULY 2009
Source: Federal Highway Administration and the Association of American
Railroads
John Benner
Financial arguments for highway versus
rail building aren’t always cut and dry. And
construction costs vary greatly depending on
factors such as land acquisition, weather conditions that will affect repairs, speed, and the
rigidity of the underlying earth or rock base.
One state highway flyover south of Gilroy,
Calif., which will eliminate a traffic light, is
pegged at $32 million. On the other hand, for
$20 million, you could upgrade 130 miles of
track between Milwaukee and Green Bay,
Wis., to run passenger trains, notes the United States Conference of Mayors, which put
the route on a wish-list of Amtrak projects.
The utility each mile of railroad track gen-
erates also depends on the amount of investment. On 18 miles of Amtrak’s Northeast
Corridor, Acela Expresses can run at 150 mph.
Yet the incremental maintenance costs to
maintain the tight tolerances required at
those speeds are $10,000-$15,000 per mile
more than track good for half those speeds.
The payoff comes from having a line that
provides more capacity with faster trains.
How efficient are highways? The “riders
per vehicle-mile” column in the table above
provides a clue, reflecting the superior occupancy of passenger trains — something for
legislators to think about when infrastructure
money is being doled out. — Bob Johnston
FACT OR FICTION?
MAGLEV REALLY IS THE TECHNOLOGY OF THE FUTURE
M
agnetic levitation propulsion, or maglev, a rail
system without wheels, has long
been a mysterious white knight for surface transportation if someone would
just write a big check. The first commercial maglev in the world opened in 2004:
a $1.3 billion, 19-mile route that takes
trains 7 minutes and 20 seconds to travel
from a city subway station to the airport
in Shanghai, China.
In the United States, the government’s
Federal Transit Administration provides
$90 million for research. Four routes are
under study: between Anaheim in
Southern California and Las Vegas; Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport and the District
of Columbia; downtown Pittsburgh and
its international airport; and downtown
Atlanta and the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport.
At least two companies researching
maglev have working prototypes: American Maglev Technology operates a 2,000foot-long test track near Marietta, Ga.,
and General Atomics, a 54-year-old hightech company in nuclear power and defense technology, has a 400-foot-long test
track in San Diego, Calif.
“We’ve developed a technology different from anyone else’s in the world,”
says Sam Gurol, General Atomics’ director of maglev systems. Advances in the
past two decades changed the amount of
the magnetic field that permanent magnets produce, the basics that enable levitation and propulsion.
On a conventional railcar, motors and
gears drive the wheels with the power
supply onboard or picked up through a
third rail or pantograph. Maglev technology, Gurol says, eliminates the need for
such
equipment.
“You have the
moving magnetic field produced by the track, and the chassis
just goes along for the ride,” he says. “The
track does all the work.”
This differs from other maglev designs
that had power equipment onboard to
power the levitation magnets.
The maglev version used in Shanghai
uses powered electromagnets onboard
the vehicles for lift. Versions such as
the American Maglev Technologies
concept also require onboard linear
motors for propulsion.
Another potential for U.S. maglev
technology is moving cargo containers
from ocean-going ships to inland rail
yards, ultimately dispensing with the endless parade of trucks ferrying back and
forth on congested roadways.
Under consideration for this application is a route from the Southern California Port of Long Beach to Union Pacific’s
leased Intermodal Container Transfer Facility, about five miles inland. Maglev
would provide faster speeds while decreasing polluting diesel truck emissions.
Whether maglev is employed to carry
passengers or containers, Gurol says he
feels less resistance to the concept from
government and industry quarters.
“It was considered far off into the future before Shanghai.... Shanghai has been
a real success story. This has given confidence that maglev technologies make
sense.” — David Lustig 2
The airport maglev at Shanghai, China,
whisks passengers 19 miles in 7 minutes
and 20 seconds from subway to terminal
and opened in 2004. AP
MAGLEVS IN OPERATION
China: Transrapid: Pudong International
Airport-Shanghai (19 miles, with plans to
reach 124 miles after 2014)
Japan: Linimo: Aichi (Tobu-Kyuryo line,
5.5 miles)
S. Korea: Expo Park and National Science
Museum: Daejeon (two-thirds of a mile)
General Atomics in San Diego, Calif., operates this 400-foot-long maglev test track.
David Lustig
www.TrainsMag.com
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