BIKEPGH MESSAGE BOARD ARCHIVE

It is such a sad statement about our country that people can get elected with vocal campaigns opposing trains.

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10339/1108086-155.stm

Sunday, December 05, 2010

By Brian O'Neill, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

This was a good year to run against trains.

New Republican governors of Wisconsin and Ohio both vowed to kill the high-speed rail projects in their states.

The rail advocacy group, All Aboard Ohio, may have to change its name to Everybody Off Ohio. The state will have to give back its $400 million federal rail grant if Gov.-elect John Kasich (a McKees Rocks native) is true to his word in running the Cincinnati-Columbus-Cleveland train off its still-hypothetical rails.

Ditto for the $810 million going toward a Madison-Milwaukee train in Wisconsin. Use it or lose it. U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has said that money could be used for rail projects elsewhere.

Don't expect any of that to come to Pennsylvania, though.

Rep. Jason Altmire, D-McCandless, had been working with his colleague from northeastern Ohio, Rep. Tim Ryan, to extend the Keystone High-Speed Rail Corridor by running a train from Pittsburgh to Cleveland. That project has no chance if Gov. Kasich stands firm, Mr. Altmire said Friday.

That's a shame because it will reinforce this Pennsylvania truth: Train service is phenomenal east of Harrisburg and abysmal west of Harrisburg. Pittsburgh has just one daily Amtrak train to and from Philadelphia, while 14 run between Harrisburg and Philadelphia.

Recent federal spending emphasizes our split-rail personality.

Trains run fast and nearly filled from Harrisburg east because there's a dedicated, electrified passenger line. To the west, passenger trains share the heavily traveled Norfolk Southern freight line.

Pennsylvania received a $750,000 federal grant to pay half the cost of a study into improving the Pittsburgh-to-Harrisburg line, but we already have studies of choo-choos out the wazoo. We're still waiting on a train.

At the same time, $26.5 million in federal stimulus money went to remove three remaining grade crossings on the Keystone East corridor to further improve the 110-mph service.

We are, of course, in an era when all federal spending is suspect. The soaring national debt produced only yawns in the 1980s and the early years of this century, but voters are awake to the numbers now. So transportation investments will get more scrutiny, and they should, because we live in a country built almost entirely on the premise of cheap gasoline. Does anyone still think that will last forever?

Evidently, many do. Highway proposals don't get nearly the scrutiny that rail does. There's a widespread mythology that rail is the only subsidized form of travel. But, in fact, car travel is subsidized in hidden ways. Gasoline taxes pay only so much. Snow removal, road salt, traffic lights, street maintenance and highway patrols are just less obvious subsidies.

I asked Henry Posner III, who owns railroads from Iowa to Peru, what he thought about the recent turnarounds in Wisconsin and Ohio. The Pittsburgher returned my call from Paris, where he's looking over European investments.

"I think it's healthy that this is going on in some states,'' Mr. Posner said. "States that are serious are being separated from ones that aren't.''

He didn't like that Ohio's project lacked mass-transit links at the train stations in Columbus and Cincinnati. Wisconsin was building on strong passenger service between Milwaukee and Chicago, but if the commitment isn't there to expand, the money should support the best rail plans in other states.

"What this country needs is a handful of successful projects,'' Mr. Posner said, "real success stories rather than embarrassing boondoggles that give high-speed rail a bad name.''

He's in Europe because his company is launching an intercity high-speed rail business between Hamburg and Cologne, Germany. It will run three trains daily on existing rail "because Germany has invested in infrastructure to run at high speeds'' and has transit links all along the way.

Meanwhile, in the USA, where we rely on imports for more than half our oil, we have few alternatives to the highway or the airport. We have no coherent rail strategy. Maybe the states that pick up the dollars that Midwestern governors threw off the train will be the ones that get us on track.

its so sad. maybe in 50 years after they build a successful high speed hub centered around chicago and the east coast cities, pittsburgh will be fourtunate enough to be along a high speed connector between the two.

though, 110mph isn't that impressive on the international scene. admittly, its pretty amazing compared with the pgh-harrisburg link on the amtrak. after a recent dc to pgh trip i'm thoroughly convinced that rail traffic cannot succeed in this country when it shares line with freight traffic.

for some reason I thought of the robber-barrons who built cross continental railroads in the 1800s on the backs (and graves) of waves of poor immigrants. We need some of that, with less death and suffering.

The civil war killed the train in the states. We dug up the rail of our enemies so they couldn't get supplies. We done it so good, rail died.

I was surprised to hear the Ohio govenor speak out so negatively about the project. I don't know why I'm still always getting surprised by these things.

It's true that we'll probably have to see models of successful rail projects in other states before the political will to develop them here builds up. A shame though because as usual we'll be behind the curve and losing population to more livable areas.

The civil war killed the train in the states.

Uhhh... what? I've read that 1920 is reckoned to be the high-water mark of rail travel in the U.S., decisively after the Civil War. World War II, maybe?

Refresh my memory.... wasn't the cross Ohio rail project the one that would have taken back the Panhandle Trail?

ieverheart - I heard that the northerners, when they went down south to quell rebellion, they dug up all the rail they came across so the southerners couldn't get manufactured goods, and that rail throughout the south never quite recovered. Maybe there's a difference between freight rail and rail travel?

Mebbe I heared wrong, my mom's side is southern and prone to alternate interpretations (literally, War of Northern Aggression, it's weird, like they don't know they lost & winners got naming rights ).

In the American Civil War both the Union and the rebellion destroyed rail lines. But the country recovered, and so did the railroads.

Ej, I think what you say about Northern troops destroying rail lines in the South is correct, but I don't think it was linked to the general decline of rail. It probably never fully recovered in the South because after the war almost all finance, industry, and transportation was left in the hands of the North-eastern "baron" class.

bah! Yankee Hippies telling Northern Lies!

oh, wait... I was born in the north...

This is why girls from Nashville shouldn't procreate with Canadians. It produces the most confused offspring. Thank you for setting me straight.

The rebellion controlled states had little industry before the war. It's pretty much a miracle for them that the war lasted as long as it did. The 'South' is a good example of what happens when you pin an economy on a single crop. I believe it was Frederick Douglass in one of his autobiographies who cited that as evidence that slavery is as bad for the master as for the enslaved. (Please don't make me look it up, it's early.)

historian - I've long held it's a miracle that any of us have lasted as long as we have, our species is . I never knew Frederick Douglas had multiple autobiographies. For some reason, that makes me like him more. You add very interesting (and much more accurate) thoughts to this board, I'm awful glad you've showed up

Douglass wrote his 'life' three times. The one that's always reprinted is his first, the "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass." That's as much a tract as a book. His second was published in the 1850s, and the third in the 1880s. Library of America has a nice set of all three books bound as one, and it's available in an oversized paperback. Besides being a remarkable man, Douglass is also a brilliant writer.

I don't think he rode a bike, however.

@historian - the Ohio project that is proposed to be "defunded" by the new governor is the 3-C route, which would have connected the three largest cities in Ohio (Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati) by rail. It may have included routing over some of what used to be known as the Panhandle line, but not in our area.

There are/were plans to look at FUTURE or ADDITIONAL rail development in Ohio that included possible connections from Columbus to Pittsburgh. That implementation of that plan could, and probably would, call for the "unrailbanking" of the Panhandle Trail in Pennsylvania. That would then require the long drawn out process of developing a "rail with trail" plan and agreement, or the loss of the Panhandle Trail as we know it. BUT, those plans were always "future" and "conditional." I think with the election of Kasich and the need to swing him around to rail support, the Panhandle project becomes more and more unlikely (at least in my lifetime).

Thanks, Swalfoort. I recall reading the Panhandle Trail was going to be the first legal test of railbanking, but it seems that isn't going to be the case.

Two legal tests of railbanking currently underway in Pennsylvania; Armstrong Trail in Armstong County (unrailbanking has already occurred, rail with trail options/opportunities currently being debated among state, trail group, railroad and others); In Centre County, another trail is proposed for unrailbanking, corridor apparently too narrow for rail with trail, so routes for alternate trail alignment (to be paid for to a large extent by railroad) are under design and should decided in the not too distant future.

I need to read more about Douglas, that's a big gap in my reading. Recommendations?

edmonds59, get the Library of America paperback I mentioned. It's available cheap from resellers on Amazon. All of Douglass' writing is in the public domain, so Project Guttenberg probably has all three books.

(caution: large amounts of esoteric trivia below)

I believe the peak U.S. railroad years were long after the civil war.

The topic of cival war railroads bring to mind the image of Robert Barnwell Rhett, Sr.

He was one of those peculiar southerns of which if you had knocked off a dozen of these guys in 1858, there would not have been a civil war [see Laura A. White. Robert Barnwell Rhett: Father of Secession (1931) ]

However, if you knocked off the same dozen guys in 1862, the south would have won.

While arguing about funding for railroads in the Confederate Congress, he made the claim that Railroads were a luxury for the army not a necessity, and hence killed confederate railroad funding. By 1864, it took as long to transport troops by rail as it did to march them.

If you were looking for evidence that slaveholders were @33h07ez, or evidence that the civil war was not a "war of northern aggression," reading of Mr Rhett's life would provide that evidence.

Although Wikipedia says he lived from 1800-1876, my confidential sources assure me that he has been reincarnated as the governor of Ohio.

Also, on railroads, it is true that the Europeans have effective passenger trains and we do not. However the Europeans do not have good rail freight and we do. They tend to ground ship bulk frieght using highly-polluting, fuel-inefficient trucks, which add to highway congestion, where we use extremely economical and far more environmentally-sound rails for land freight.

Mick - do you know if there's a comparison between goods shipped by freight train vs. goods shipped by tractor trailer truck in this country? The number of trucks I see on highways and the number of trains I hear on the tracks near me make me unable to even SWAG about which moves more weight or volume.

I'd love if there were more trains, since now a vast majority of my family are about a half a day's drive away, and I hate driving.

If I can't have trains, there's always ferries. Yes, I did, I brought up ferries again. Why is there no international passenger ferry hopping around the great lakes from metropolis to metropolis?

according to this website: http://www.bts.gov/publications/freight_in_america/html/table_01.html

trucks moved 34%, rail 31% measured by ton-miles, or put another way: trains moved less stuff further. notably, water accounts for 11% of freight. in the recent past, the freight system has been overcrowded. maybe not so much during the recession. Norfolk Southern recently upgraded a number of their mainlines to accept double stacked trains. CSX is currently working on this with help from the feds, this will help move more freight to rail as it connects ports to markets very efficiently. unfortunately, if we want a viable freight system and high speed rail we will have to build a separate train system. this will be very expensive.

Periodically somebody tries to run an international ferry, and it goes under. Most recently it went between Rochester and Toronto. Winter seems to put the final kibosh on what is already a marginal proposition.

The ferry cost $30 each way and only knocked half an hour off the trip. It was one of those hydrofoil fast ferries, but various regulations on traffic in the lakes meant it never got up to full speed. Rochester did get a nice new harbor and a ton of waterfront development out of it though.

It was one of those hydrofoil fast ferries...

You would think Toronto-Rochester would be a good route for a hovercraft - works fine over sheet ice.

lake ontario doesn't freeze.

and i'm sure that ferry will be back. it seems like it happens every decade or so.

lake ontario doesn't freeze.

It doesn't?

The other Lakes do. Even Erie.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lc9uEHdUi-g&NR=1

It's been couple of year since Superior froze over, though. I've heard it's 5 degrees warmer than it was in 1980. Swimming in it is more tolerable than when I was young and I don't think it's because my balls are bigger.

Nope Ontario really doesn't ever freeze over all the way. it can go out for a mile or two at times, but for whatever reason it doesn't freeze. the lake usually turns over at least once in winter and then in the spring when the top layer heats up a lot. Not much stinks like the lake turning over...

If there is a ferry again i doubt it will be in Rochester. That was the first time they tried it there (at least in my lifetime) and the city got burned HARD on that deal.

Erie is really shallow, only 80 feet or so in the eastern half of it. Ontario is very deep. Much of its floor is below sea level.

Stats.

@ejwme, @thehistorian

I've always thought winning WWII was what killed the train in the states. Eisenhower signed the highway bill and we never had an infrastructure to rebuild like Europe or Japan.

@Stu Thats also why we get more snow in the Ontario snowbelt than Erie does. All that cold air coming down from Canada is moving over way more liquid water in Ontario so it picks up way more moisture. If you guys think snowmagedon was bad, talk to anyone who grew up on the southeast shore of Ontario. a 3 foot overnight snowfall is a fairly routine thing there. happens at least a few times every winter, plus they routinely get snowfall of over a foot, routinely as in damn near weekly. in Rochester, especially north of the ridge where i grew up, we get snowfalls of over a foot about once or twice a month all winter. and over 2 feet a couple times a year. Plus up there is doesn't really get warm enough to melt any of the accumulated snow base until mid march. its not unusual for the snow piles in mall parking lots to last well into may. and not unheard of for us to have some snowfall in may. halloween to easter, it snows.

I'm guessing there is enough ice on Lake Ontario to play havock with hydrofoils most winters. And as cburch says, winter lasts from October to May.

yeah it ices up for about a mile from shore most winters. not a big deal at the Rochester end since the port is in the mouth of the Genesee and away free of ice, but the Toronto portion, not so awesome. What really killed it though was the fact that it cost twice as much as driving to Toronto and took almost as long.

@nick according to this website: http://www.bts.gov/publications/freight_in_america/html/table_01.html

trucks moved 34%, rail 31% measured by ton-miles, or put another way: trains moved less stuff further.

Through a link from Nick' reference, I found some stats for Germany, 2008

http://w3.unece.org/pxweb/

You have to go to mutiple tables and pick variables but in Germany, in 2008, there were 341,4551 million Tonne-km by truck and 12,835 million tonne-km by train.

So the US is roughly 1:1 truck:train for freight and Germany is about 25:1.

If we lost our freight rail system - or had it switch to high speed passenger without adding infrastructure - we would have almost double the truck traffic.

(I tried to post this a few days ago, in a timely fashion, but the board wouldn't let me post, then.)

ditto Mick's comments about attempts at a more timely expense.

Actually, the rail freight "traffic deferral" calculation that Mick mentions is somewhat low. The US DOT uses a 4 truck=1 rail car equivalency. So,if we lost our freight rail network, we'd see something more like 4 times the number of trucks on the roads. It's even worse if we lose the option to barge materials on the rivers. Here's a graphic:

http://port.pittsburgh.pa.us/home/index.asp?page=181

P.S. 86 percent of the communities in Pennsylvania rely exclusively on trucks for delivery of goods and materials, as they lack rail or river access (per the PA Motor Truck Assn.)

I wonder how the Germany statistics would compare to the US if our consumption were scaled to match theirs... Like the US buys more stuff in general but maybe some stuff disproportionately - like food maybe more proportionate to German numbers than electronics, for instance (we really can only eat so much).

So if you took a per-capita look, or a per $ spent look, or per mile, or some combination, how would the two countries compare then? Are some categories of goods more amenable to rail transport than others? Or is it just location, destination, availability, and price that determines rail vs. truck?

Some products are more amenable to movement by one mode over another. The calculation is often based on a weight to value to distance equation. But, there are vast areas of the US that don't have reliable rail service. Even if every freight line was operating at capacity, we'd never compete with the European percentages. In any case, everything that is shipped by rail has to be moved to and from the train - from manufacturers to the rail, and then from the rail to the consumer. That pretty much all happens by truck - regardless of what country you are in. So, what you are trying to evaluate is what percentage of the total trip length is conducted via rail, as opposed to via truck. In Europe, where all distances are shorter, the truck distances will be shorter (although not necessarily the percentage of total distance by truck). In the US, distances may be considerably larger.

@swalfort The US DOT uses a 4 truck=1 rail car equivalency. So,if we lost our freight rail network, we'd see something more like 4 times the number of trucks on the roads.

But the stats Nick and I quoted are in "ton-miles" Or "Tonne-km" of freight for both trains and truck. If we lost the trains,, the ton-miles carried by trucks would not quite double, hence the number of trucks would not quite double.

@ejwme - Are some categories of goods more amenable to rail transport than others?

That is true enough. Rails are more amenable to bulk cargo - like coal. There is a difference between US and German consumption, for use, but I'm guessing that is a minor part of the discrepancy between about 30% of us ton-miles by rail and less than 3% of german tonne-km by rail.

I would think that the population desity of Europe would make them more amenable to rail freight - as they are to passenger trains.

Yes, some of Germany's lower freight use is simply that it's much smaller than the US. It's smaller than Oregon and Washington combined, about 400 miles across, so a typical trip within Germany might be 200 miles or so. (Also, until reunification 20 years ago, Germany was two countries with separate rail systems. Reconnecting highways is much quicker and cheaper than reconnecting rail networks that have grown independently.)

So it might not be worth the bother of loading goods onto rail to avoid a truck trip of a few hours, when final delivery will often require trucks anyway.

If we lost our freight rail system - or had it switch to high speed passenger without adding infrastructure - we would have almost double the truck traffic.

Well, I think high speed passenger service would only be possible with better infrastructure. From what I've read, our old tracks aren't designed for really high speeds.

But once we had better tracks and equipment, I'm not so sure passenger service would force freight service onto trucks. Seems to me a well-designed modern rail system could do both, even if our current creaky system can't. The fact that Germany has better passenger service but less freight by rail doesn't show that one causes the other.

the us buys a lot of crap from overseas. the intermodal shipping container has streamlined the process, so that a fully loaded cargo ship from china can off load onto a number of double stacked trains and take it to intermodal rail yards where it then is quickly offloaded onto trucks for final delivery. there is increasing investment in this system and it is rather efficient. we have to be careful while pursuing high speed rail to not threaten our freight system. separate tracks are the way to go.

@Nick +1

ferries wouldn't threaten the existing freight rail system.

I hate when our servers are down.

Passenger rail might have a better chance if our outgoing governor had his way. Remember this story about ending air travel of less than 500 miles from a year or so ago?