Changing Railroads in the U.S.: Is now the time for a national electrification program?


Garlynn Woodsong is an occasional guest contributor.

According to this Washington Post article, A Switch On the Tracks: Railroads Roar Ahead, the U.S. railroad industry is currently booming. They’re hiring workers and expanding their facilities, as opposed to just six years ago, when they were laying off workers. They expect that high fuel prices will lead to a continued boom for railroads even as the economy continues to soften.

Also, apparently a diesel railroad engine can haul a ton of load four times more efficiently than a diesel truck. This allows the railroads to position them as the green shipping alternative.

This is all fine and good, but what about communities adjacent to the tracks? A couple of tons of diesel exhaust is a couple of tons of diesel exhaust, no matter how efficiently it is being used to haul its load.

Can our nation easily begin to retrofit the national railroad system to become electrified? The railroads are currently coming to Uncle Sam looking for a handout. Maybe the form of this handout should be tax breaks for electrification projects?

A modern diesel railroad engine is, apparently, something like a hybrid: A diesel generator provides electricity to turn the electric motors. Unlike a hybrid, it does not significantly use batteries in its operation, however. I wonder if a program to add pantographs (catenary arms) to diesel engines could work, to allow them to get the electricity for their electric motors from overhead wires, where available (say, in urban areas, to begin with) and to use their diesel engines where no overhead wires had yet been installed?

An issue with electrification, some might say, would be the extra-tall railroad cars now commonly used by freight railroads.

Catenary height in Europe is a standard 20 feet, and can be as high as 23 feet in Amtrak’s NE Corridor. The maximum height of shipping containers is 9 feet; two of these stacked on top of one another, in a well car with 25″ of clearance above the tracks, would be about 20 feet tall, still leaving nearly three feet of clearance between the top of the car and the highest catenary lines. If most of the U.S. is currently non-electrified, then it would be a simple matter of standardizing at the 23-foot catenary height to allow the U.S. to continue using double-stack trains as it began to electrify its national railway system.

What does this mean for Portland? Why not start the electrification program here? We could electrify all of the railroad tracks in the tri-county area (maybe using a mix of clean air funds, surcharges on shipping and maybe even a diesel tax), retrofit the engines that live here, and have electric switchers meet inbound long-haul trains at the borders of the region.

What’s the favorite tenet of planners everywhere? “Make no small plans.” This, IMHO, is no small plan — but why let that stop us?


22 responses to “Changing Railroads in the U.S.: Is now the time for a national electrification program?”

  1. How fast can the USA electrify Freight Railroads?

    One of the best rail consultants (John Schumann of LTK) gave me about $500 of his time (LONG phone call).

    Conclusion, under “maximum commercial urgency” (example Canadian tar sands) we would have the equivalent of five large Class I RRs (UP, BNSF, N-S, CSX & one combo (CN, CP+DME, KCS, FEC).

    Best case:

    Year 1 = 0 miles
    Year 2 – 500 miles x 5
    Year 3 – 1,000 miles x 5
    Year 4 – 1,500 miles x 5
    Year 5 – 2,000 miles x 5
    Year 6 – 2,500 miles x 5
    Year 7 – 2,500 miles x 4.5 (some RRs may begin to run out of good candidates to electrify)

    France made the commitment in 2006 to electrify EVERY branch line and switchyard in twenty years.

    LTK have a branch in Portland where John Schumann works, I believe. The author of the article – actually comments on the Oil Drum blog – Alan Drake, lives in NOLA. Another one of his pieces: Transportation A 10% Reduction in America’s Oil Use in Ten to Twelve Years

    Step One – Electrify US Freight Rail Lines and Shift Freight to Rail

    Electrifying railroads and transferring half of the ton-miles of trucks to rail should save 6.3% of US oil consumption. Japanese and most European railroads are already electrified. The Russians finished electrifying the Trans-Siberian Railroad, from Moscow to the Pacific, in 2002 and electrified to the Arctic Ocean at Murmansk in 2005. So there are no technical limitations. Electric railroads are cheaper to operate and can carry more freight because they accelerate and brake faster (and can generate electricity while braking, saving energy), and have no delays for refueling.

    Railroads are 8 times more energy-efficient than heavy trucks. The US used 19.8 million barrels/day in 2002 with two-thirds for transportation. (Today, roughly 20.7 million barrels/day.) Railroads carried 27.8% of the ton-miles with 220,000 b/day whilst trucks carried 32.1% of the ton-miles with 2,070,000 b/day (2002 data).

  2. I’m all for this with a few caveats:

    Electrifying everything makes tons of sense in WA & OR, where most electricity is already clean and relatively cheap. Out east, it’s really just a pollution shift to go electric. Joint efforts to make coal cleaner, enhance the amount of clean energy that can be harvested, and perhaps some sort of centralized electricity regulation (public or industry-adopted) to ensure that this doesn’t drive private (ie, your electric bill) energy costs to drive through the roof.

    Also, I want this implemented in such a way, it’s not an environmental disaster. I don’t mind a animals getting killed/habitats divided, but I’d like design to be sensitive to those possibilities. Smaller versions of the wildlife overpasses on the trans-canadian highway would be nice.

  3. It’s really perferted that this is suggested as a pseudo “national” plan.

    Milwaukee Road, NYC, Penn Central, and other railroads electrified vast amounts if not ALL of their lines. Not until the Government screwed them out of pricing power (by giving the trucking industry a hand out via the roads) and shifting massive tonnage to trucks did the electrifications stop. The capitol outlay is just too much with the uncertainty of markets caused by excessive Government intrusion into the logistics and transportation markets.

    If the Government makes it a forced national plan they’re going to have to foot the capitol outlay. If they do that AND still continue to pickle around in the industry the offset nature, odd growth patterns of society, and other manipulations will ruin the freight roads into being either A: forced into a nationalized takeover by the Feds/States or B: massive abondonments which we can’t allow at this time.

    Also “forcing” more freight onto the rails doesn’t work. Just make the trucking industry pay its share of the cost/damage/maintenance of the roadways and a natural market shift will occur as the cost of shipping on trucks skyrockets to cover the cost of infrastructure. Since the freigt railroads already cover that cost and are still far cheaper they’ll then once again have the pricing power to confidentally make capitol investments of the magnitude that electrification is.

    The key isn’t regulation, mandates, and other Government manipulations of force, but merely the logical utilization of electrification. As long as Government is so heavily involved in the industry then there will be ZERO motivation to invest that heavily. The fear and shifting problems are just too severe to shift power modes.

    …but I digress, if you disagree, what then do you think should be done?

    (btw – If left to the private industry w/ a new found pricing power, I PROMISE that things would be electrified faster than any electrification completed in history)

  4. Alan’s incetivizing vehicle is a tax break:

    US railroads have pointed to property taxes as the reason that they did not electrify (no taxes on their diesel, property taxes on electrification infrastructure). Simply exempting any rail line that electrifies from property taxes under the interstate Commerce clause would undoubtedly promote the rapid electrification of many rail lines. Expanding capacity (adding tracks, better controls, grade separation, etc.) and adding intermodal transfer points will be more economically attractive without the burden of property taxes.

    He’s not a big government guy by any stretch of the means. This is all laid out in the context of declining oil supply, too. We’ve seen lately how independent truckers are fairing with $4.50/gallon diesel, and there’s likely no returning to cheap fuel prices. Thus, the need to get to work on this post haste.

  5. Milwaukee Road, NYC, Penn Central, and other railroads electrified vast amounts if not ALL of their lines. Not until the Government screwed them out of pricing power (by giving the trucking industry a hand out via the roads) and shifting massive tonnage to trucks did the electrifications stop.

    Sorry, but that’s not right – at least as far as the Milwaukee Road goes.

    The Milwaukee Road didn’t electrify all of their routes, just the “Pacific Coast Extension” from Montana west to Tacoma. However the branchlines in western Washington were unelectrified, as was the Milwaukee Road’s core system in the Mid West.

    Anyone who has read the history of the Milwaukee Road knows that the decline of traffic has nothing to do with government intervention. The Milwaukee Road amassed huge amounts of debt building a FOURTH railroad into the Pacific Northwest (after the Great Northern, Northern Pacific, and Union Pacific roads) – the road was built to generally good specifications, but was so expensive that the Milwaukee went broke building it. While it finally made it to Tacoma, it had no access to Seattle or Portland (of which the three other railroads had access to all three Ports – Seattle, Tacoma AND Portland.) So the Milwaukee was already at a disadvantage.

    Further, the Milwaukee bypassed many major communities along the line, especially in Washington. In Montana the line parallelled the established Northern Pacific – and was about 20 years or so too late. Communities which have already established their industrial areas around the NP found the Milwaukee line far from freight shippers.

    In the 1960s the Milwaukee Road was in terrible shape, but the other three roads were doing quite well. GN and NP eventually merged into Burlington Northern in 1970 and became a super-railroad. Union Pacific had always been a strong performer. Milwaukee, on the other hand, was cash-poor and its lines were in poor condition. Milwaukee gained access to Portland in the BN merger, and BN even gave away haulage traffic to Milwaukee in an effort to keep them alive as a competitor. Milwaukee gained little from gaining access to Portland given that it now couldn’t compete on time with BN and UP.

    In the mid-1970s Milwaukee shut down the expensive to maintain and operate electrification. The locomotives were old and difficult to repair. (In fact the locomotives were ordered by Russia, but due to an economic embargo placed after the locomotives were built, the GE “Little Joes” couldn’t be delivered to Russia and the Milwaukee was the only road that could use them. I believe the government actually helped Milwaukee out there…)

    By 1980, the Milwaukee called it quits and abandoned the Pacific Coast Extension. Five years later, the remaining part of the Milwaukee – the core system in the mid-west, was sold to the Soo Line. Today it’s a component of Canadian Pacific Railway.

    The UP and (now) BNSF Railroads…that cover the same territory as the Milwaukee? They are growing significantly and haul more traffic today than the region shipped even with the Milwaukee’s traffic included. If you were a customer, would you choose a railroad that had five derailments on the mainline a week AND took 30 hours longer than the others?

    The analogy that the Milwaukee Road failed because of the Interstate Highways is like saying that AT&T Wireless failed as a company because government-subsidized DSL service. AT&T Wireless failed because it couldn’t compete (and had internal business problems) against the other carriers, and ultimately was absorbed by Cingular.

  6. Coal plants tend to be cleaner than diesel locomotives per kwh/hp-hr in CO2 emissions and most other standards as well, (the big exception being mercury and radioactive particles.) Not that there isn’t room for improvement on coal plants, but they tend to be run to very high standards, much higher than locomotives or even trucks…

    I live in North Portland, and a lot of the localized pollution is because of the locomotive traffic: For instance, a locomotive is allowed to use diesel fuel that has 100 times more sulfur than the diesel fuel that goes into trucks… The difference in price between those two grades of diesel? BLS says 1.25 cents/gallon. Now, certainly part of the solution it to get locomotives to use higher grades of fuel, but running them off electric power, (even if it is coal,) would be a major improvement…

  7. Coal plants tend to be cleaner than diesel locomotives per kwh/hp-hr in CO2 emissions and most other standards as well, (the big exception being mercury and radioactive particles.) Not that there isn’t room for improvement on coal plants, but they tend to be run to very high standards, much higher than locomotives or even trucks…

    Maybe a massive coal-fired power plant located in Rivergate wouldn’t be such a bad idea…

    Maybe site it at the Portland International Raceway, seeing that much of North Portland hates the racetrack (and the largest race event to occur there has been cancelled.)

    By the way, I find it a little ironic that despite the technological improvements in railroad switch engines over the last five years, that not ONE of them has made it to Portland. BNSF and UP have deployed dozens of low-emission diesel switch engines throughout California and Texas…but not a single one in Oregon.

    Seems like a great industry that could have been developed here in Portland…

    http://www.railpower.com/
    http://www.nationalrailway.com/nviro.asp

  8. “Maybe a massive coal-fired power plant located in Rivergate wouldn’t be such a bad idea… Maybe site it at the Portland International Raceway, seeing that much of North Portland hates the racetrack (and the largest race event to occur there has been cancelled.)”

    You have no idea. That would make most, (but not all,) of my neighbors very very happy.

  9. MRB: Electrifying everything makes tons of sense in WA & OR, where most electricity is already clean and relatively cheap.

    EH: Um, no…

    Sorry… I was referring to my experience with Seattle City Light, which is 90% hydro, and just 2.0% coal and natural gas.

    Or Tacoma power, who’s Hydro percentage is slightly higher at 90.5%, and just 1.16% coal or natural gas.

    Puget Sound Energy isn’t quite as nice, with only 44% hydro as opposed to 51% coal and natural gas.

    It’s safe to say… energy in the Northwest is cleaner than any other part of the country, until Phoenix or Las Vegas start installing these.

  10. Many people advocate massive investment in US railways, but electrification does not top the list of needed upgrades such as grade-separation, double-tracking, side-tracks, welded rail, yard operation, signalization, etc.

    Electrification amounts to about 25% the total cost of light rail projects. Electrification offers valuable efficiencies, but it adds a cost burden that can prohibit investment in more important upgrades. Electrification be added later.

    The proposed California high-speed rail project may die on the vine because its cost is high and its proponents will not consider cost saving measures like reducing the top speed to about 150 mph and eliminating electrification. I will not hesitate to say “I told you so” if the project fails.

    I appreciate Eric relaying the history of the Milwaukee Road, but it seems to me that if its failure is due to competition, this a fundamental flaw in free market ideology that its adherants fail to recognize or admit.

  11. MRB: “Sorry… I was referring to my experience with Seattle City Light, which is 90% hydro, and just 2.0% coal and natural gas.

    Or Tacoma power, who’s Hydro percentage is slightly higher at 90.5%, and just 1.16% coal or natural gas.”

    You’re absolutely right, Seattle City Light and Tacoma Public Utilities use far, far more hydro than Portland does. Seattle has an extensive trolleybus system that makes use of this cheap hydropower as well, something that is lacking in Portland.

    However given the huge increases in electric demand that have occurred in the U.S. (thank you, the Internet and the computing industry), widespread electrification of the nation’s railroads are going to need huge investments in power plants, which will all but certainly need to be nuclear power plants, to meet the demand. Currently the U.S. is very close to capacity – Oregon, which used to have an energy surplus until Trojan was shut down, now has to buy power from outside of Oregon. PGE in particular is very dependent on market based purchases of power from outside sources.

  12. Yeah Eric. The capacity of the surplus shut down outside the widespread cheap use of dependent nuclear purchases that hydropower increases of sources and investment huge railroads! Right on, brother!

  13. Thanks, Dude, for the additional reference information. Very interesting! I believe it, too. 7 years is plenty long to do the job.

    MRB — In this particular post, I’m not advocating for new R-O-W, I’m just advocating for electrification of the existing alignments. However, I agree that more wildlife crossings would be a good thing.

    With regards to sustainability, a related-but-separate proposal would be to electrify using a “shed” — that is, on top of the power lines, but suspended by the same set of poles, would be a “roof” made of solar panels. I’m no electrical engineer, but I imagine that, with an average double-track width between poles of, what, 25 feet minimum, maybe 30 feet, times the length of the R-O-W (couple thousand miles), that’s plenty of room to generate most, if not all of the electricity requires for daytime operations. Additionally, wind-generating towers could also be located within the R-O-W in many locations. One potential would be to contract out the construction and operation of these facilities to private firms, with the understanding that the R.R. would automatically receive 100% of the power needed for operations (at a favorable rate), but that surplus could be sold by the firm on the open market.

    Adron & Dude, I agree that tax breaks are probably one of the best ways to make this happen. A little regulation thrown in for good measure couldn’t hurt, however (i.e., let’s say, a carbon tax on diesel emissions…). But, maybe not required. Maybe tax breaks would do it all by themselves. Or, maybe raising the tax on diesel (& gasoline) fuel would help the situation a bit, too.

    What about retrofitting existing engines — good idea, or not?

  14. To have an effective reform of American railroading, requires the drastic step of severing the rail rights of way from the private common carriers. (Like most of the world already does)
    Make a public corporation / authority in charge of the rail road rights of way, and then electrify them.
    Open the rails to all users, whether common carrier freight, passenger, and or private conveyance.
    Perhaps, then we’d see some common sense from the Federal Railroad Administration.
    (Sigh…)
    Interesting article from a European viewpoint regarding America’s rail roads.
    http://zierke.com/shasta_route/pages/07function.html

  15. Make a public corporation / authority in charge of the rail road rights of way, and then electrify them.

    And where is the money going to come from to buy up the privately owned right-of-ways?

    Remember, there’s this little piece of law called the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution:

    No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

  16. “And where is the money going to come from to buy up the privately owned right-of-ways?”

    You sell bonds, and pay them off by charging the railroads rent to use the rails. The railroads would be in favor of this, if the rent is not more expensive than the cost of maintaining the rails plus the capital costs of owning all that land/track/etc. And given that what they are worth in rent is the way you’d arrive at the value of the track in the first place, then it shouldn’t cost the taxpayers anything, (at least, in theory.) In practice there is a little bit of inefficiency by introducing another layer of operation into anything, and that little bit of money will probably get eaten by the taxpayers, but given how much money electrified tracks could save us in fighting oil wars, we will be better off in the long run anyways…

  17. Matthew-

    Good thinking. Plus, the RR ROWs tend to include, at least in many places, extra land that is not strictly required for operations. In addition to the previously-mentioned idea of building a “shed” above the ROW with solar-voltaic panels on top of it, this extra ROW could be use to site wind-powered electrical generators, where conditions made sense for such a proposal.

    Between the two of these, I would be willing to bet that at least a little bit of excess power could be sold back to the grid, and if this revenue was bonded against, it could pay for the installation costs of said infrastructure, plus help with the costs of buyout of ROW from the existing private owners.

    Would be interesting to see this scenario spec’d out by somebody with some real numbers (or at least ranges)…

  18. You sell bonds, and pay them off by charging the railroads rent to use the rails.

    And what happens if the revenues from the railroads don’t cover the bond costs?

    Since you are creating a free-market element, railroads are now competing on price. Congratulations – you see what’s happening in the aviation industry, right?

    Railroads no longer have a strong revenue stream, so their values go down. They no longer have real estate to prop up the asset balance. Since you’ve also eliminate “common carrier” responsibility (you can’t dictate a railroad to serve someone if they don’t own the track) you have to also deal with shippers who can’t attract a railroad to serve them because they aren’t “profitable enough”. Do you create a “carrier of last resort” that has to be subsidized by the State? If so, how is that funded?

    Right now at least there is some sense of regulation – railroads generally cannot unilaterally stop service to a customer without Surface Transportation Board authority. It takes two years of “no traffic” before a line can be abandoned and removed – and even then the railroad must seek a buyer for the line or apply for an “Offer of Financial Assistance”.

    On top of that you must now hire thousands of employees to maintain the track and dispatch the railroad; maintain and operate the vast communications systems required, yards (which due to their nature largely cannot be given to the individual railroads). These employees will have to be assimilated into the civil service job system – and you’ll have to pay for their benefits.

    And then you’ve completely ignored the fact that all of this privately owned property currently pays property taxes. In Oregon, you’re taking $506 million dollars in property values out of taxation – how are you going to cover the losses incurred by cities, counties, school districts and other local governments that rely on that money (especially certain Eastern Oregon counties)?

  19. “I’m no electrical engineer, but I imagine that, with an average double-track width between poles of, what, 25 feet minimum, maybe 30 feet, times the length of the R-O-W (couple thousand miles), that’s plenty of room to generate most, if not all of the electricity requires for daytime operations.”

    If you installed PV panels 25′ wide x 120 miles long, from Portland to Eugene, it would generate around half a gigawatt of power during the summer months, assuming a 7%, low efficiency PV panel.

  20. Zilfondel-

    Thanks for the back-of-the-envelope calculations. I’ll buy those numbers. Also, even during cloudy winter months, solar panels usually will generate 15-20% of their sunny-day output. That’s still 75mwh-100mwh, correct?

    In terms of demand, it’s hard to imagine that such an electric train system, at least intially, would run more trains (and thus use more power) than BART. According to this presentation:

    http://www.arb.ca.gov/msprog/zevprog/symposium/presentations/nishinaga.pdf

    …it looks like the BART system’s peak load is around 75mwh.

    So, even on a cloudy winter day, such a solar system alone could probably power the trains, and on a sunny summer day, could be generating a hefty amount of surplus to sell back to the grid (exactly when demand would be greatest, with A/C running in office buildings, etc.).

    If it were standard practice to install the solar shed at the time of track electrification, there would surely be more than enough power during daylight hours to run the trains. That’s a huge step in the right direction. Power could then be either stored for the non-daylight hours, or purchsed back from the grid (demand is usually lesser at night than during the day).

    Power sales during the summer could then provide revenue to pay for other needs… i.e. ROW purchase, property tax reimbursement, bond service, etc.

  21. I thought it would be an ideal time to mention the ongoing electrification of lines in India spec’d to accommodate double-stack container carriers. The solution was quite simple and elegant, merely requiring modified pantographs that could be switched in to replace the shorter ones on existing rolling stock, meaning that the Indian railways had no need to order new electric rolling stock. This solution could absolutely be put to use here in the United States.
    I am pursuing a degree in Urban Planning and Development (well, planning to) in addition to my Accounting BA and I’m convinced that a cohesive effort by the Federal Government to mainline a Master-Planned overhaul and redesign of the nation’s transportation infrastructure could be achieved in a time span measured in decades, not centuries. It’s a broken record rationale, I know, but even less than a fifth of the Dept of Defense’s operating budget diverted each year to national infrastructure would not only make this possible, it would create tens if not hundreds of thousands of jobs from construction alone and then, by virtue of more rapid and efficient interurban/intercity transit, create permanent jobs just as the CHSR project is forecasting by allowing more people to commute into large cities from the affordable surrounding areas.
    It is all too easy to look at the estimated $3T+ of infrastructure repairs needed and wonder how we’ll ever manage to do it all…but the DoD blew a third of that on the F35 project, which may or may not even prove useable in the long run! Given the choice between a fighter jet that over-promised but under-delivered and a national transit network…well you can probably guess which I would choose.

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