RCE wrote:
"Harry Krause" wrote in message
...
HoustonChronicle.com

April 19, 2006, 10:21PM

ENERGY
Rising crude oil prices splash over $72 a barrel
Fuel inventories fall, but consumer demand may slip
By BRAD FOSS
Associated Press



During my recent trip out to Denver and back, I started taking note of the
number of tractor trailers hauling stuff all over the country. In the early
mornings, every rest area, highway off and on ramp where full of trucks.
Several thousand of them all told, I would guess just on the route I took.
I can't imagine how many are running everyday, nationwide.

I started thinking about this, given that they average about 6 or 7 mpg. I
don't know, but I suspect the amount of fuel used per day in one of these
rigs would probably fuel a family car for a month or more.

We need a more efficient system for transporting goods, like railroads, but
to make a drastic change to the trucking industry would result in massive
unemployment and screaming in Washington by the trucking industry lobbiests.
So, again, you're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't.

RCE

Railroads currently haul over 40% of all intercity freight.
There is, of course, existing capacity for more.
The problem with rail isn't capacity, it's flexibility. This country
was allowed to grow for
the last 80-90 years based on the theory that a town needed to be near
a highway, but not necessarily a railroad. This theory really pickup up
steam in the 1950's, when air travel became more popular and railroads
were no longer the primary mover of passengers between large cities. I
once wrote an article about Tacoma, and in my research on the remodeled
Union Station I learned that in the late 1940's there were more than 40
passenger trains per day originating, terminating, or continuing
through Tacoma. Today there are 2.

Here in the Pacific NW, we get thousands upon thousands of containers
offloaded at our ports each year, (mostly from Asia). In Seattle, these
containers are put on a truck immediately and then hauled to a rail
yard for long distance transport or hauled to their destination if
efficiency or lack or rail service to the destination makes that the
more prudent choice. Tacoma has an "intermodal" yard, where some
containers are unloaded onto trucks for direct local or regional
transport but most are unloaded directly onto railcars without the
intermediate use of a tractor.

If we had the infrastructure to support it, and we don't, high speed
passenger rail service would easily replace many short-distance airline
flights. Take Seattle to Spokane, as an example. It's 230 miles from
Seattle to Spokane, and a high speed passenger train from
Seattle could make that run in two hours if it were able to average 120
mph. A flight in a little
prop jet takes maybe 45 minutes to an hour; but it takes half an hour
to an hour (depending on traffic) to get from downtown Seattle to Sea
Tac airport, you are supposed to be there an hour before your flight
takes off so they can X-Ray your shoes and be sure you're not a
terrorist, and when you arrive in Spokane you aren't exactly in the
business district, either. Total travel and waiting time is actually
longer by commuter air than it would be on a 120-mph train. A train
goes from downtown to downtown, saving the time and expense of two cab
rides.

Specific comparisons of fuel efficiency, rail vs truck: (from CSX
website)


Railroads now move a ton of freight nearly 410 miles for each gallon of
diesel fuel used, up from 235 miles in 1980 and 332 miles in 1990. A
truck, on average, moves a ton of freight about 100 miles for each
gallon of diesel fuel.

In 2004, railroads consumed 3 billion fewer gallons of diesel and
emitted 34 millions fewer tons of carbon dioxide than they would have
if their fuel efficiency were unchanged from 1980 levels.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Administration has estimated that a
typical truck emits approximately three times more pollution than a
locomotive for every ton-mile.

Railroads carry 42 percent of the nation's intercity freight ton-miles
but are responsible for just 9 percent of all transportation-related
nitrous oxide transmissions and 4 percent of transportation-related
particulates emissions, according to the EPA.