The Railway Returns

Railway investments are growing because trains are popular. In the US trains are popular even where service is minimal and everyone is supposed to love their cars. Contrary to the mass media story only about half of all Americans live in suburbs, the rest live in cities and small towns; roughly 15% do not drive, and if truth be known many others probably shouldn't be; and about 30% of the population will not get on any airplane. Where frequent and high quality service is available Americans are as likely as any other group to get out of their cars, but they're more likely to do it for a train than a bus.

Passenger service is growing because trains are marketable to travelers and railways are marketable to cities. Cities thrive by mobility, especially pedestrian activity, and they can be strangled by too many cars and parking lots. Trains can also be uncommonly space efficient. One 26 foot wide double-track railway equals a six to eight lane highway in capacity, and far less or no need of parking spaces. Space matters in cities carpeted in pavement covering up to half their land area, in a world where each car represents up to five parking spaces.

While US freight railroads are just beginning to grow, after declining for five decades, even their current ~8% market share represents more tonnage then they carried when they had a 90% plus market share in the 1920s. Track is generally in excellent condition, and several mainlines are now gaining all new tracks to handle up to 100 plus trains per day - equal to 20,000 plus trucks. The industry is a major user of photovoltaics, for signals and switch power, and recently began taking delivery of hybrid locomotives. US made General Electric freight locomotives are a global standard - even China buys them.

The US freight industry generates $600 billion in total revenue. The US passenger travel industry generates $1 trillion in total revenue, 87% of it by highway, 11% by airlines, and all public transportation capturing $40 billion, or 4%, with trains capturing about 1%. Significantly the passenger business is roughly double the size of the freight business.

The passenger industry on the rails today may be tiny nationally, but it's very large on certain routes. Amtrak trains carry more people between Washington and New York than highways and airlines combined, at 60% of total travel. Manhattan's Grand Central Station recently set a record of 75 million passengers a year. Trains in many states, notably California's "San Diegan" and "Capital" services, are frequent and often at capacity. LA's 400 mile rail system is very busy, and like many systems it's attracting real estate developments, one project includes the venue for the Academy Awards, fittingly it's aside the Hollywood subway station.

Railway development is happening world wide and has been since the early seventies, when the SF Bay Area, Washington DC and other world cities built new rail systems. In North America new light rail lines have since been built in Edmonton, Calgary, San Diego, Buffalo, Portland, Sacramento, San Jose, Los Angeles, Baltimore, St. Louis, Denver, Dallas, Salt Lake City, Jersey City, Houston and Guadalajara; while existing systems have been upgraded in Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Toronto, Montreal, Boston, Philadelphia, New York, Chicago and San Francisco; while all new heavy rail systems were built in the San Francisco Bay Area, Washington, Atlanta, Miami, and Mexico City. There's similar activity everywhere, including new high-speed routes crisscrossing Europe and new rail systems in the Middle East and Southeast Asia, as well as expansion in China and Russia. A new trans-Asian line will soon connect Beijing with London, and another will soon link Spain and Africa. All this activity is paralleled by new railway museums and scenic railways, as well as the restoration of stations, including Grand Central, LA Union and many others.

There are waterways, highways, railways and airways, but the vast majority of freight and passengers are on the highway, and highways are congested almost everywhere. Airports are often at capacity and often handling many short haul flights, precisely the market where rail is ideal. Only one mode can be consistently and economically expanded, while offering dramatic reductions in cost and impacts: railways.

Railways consume less of all resources. Railways cost less than 50% that of automotive infrastructure, so building a railway can save more than it costs. "Double-stack" freightcars typify the efficiency. Invented in the 1980s the concept involves a flatcar with one container sitting in a well between the wheels, with another container on top. Instead of 100 trailers on flatcars the same two crew members now move 200 containers, all within a pathway 26 feet wide. One train replaces 200 trucks and 200 drivers on a pathway at least 75 feet wide.

Suntrain solar rail on Geary StreetDeveloping the Retail Railway

Railways exist and no other system can be expanded rapidly. In North America nearly 200,00 miles of route extend across Canada, the US and Mexico. Today this system does not have sufficient capacity to carry much more freight or passengers, but there is space for second and third tracks. There are also tens of thousands of miles of former railroad rights-of-way, largely ignored or used as trails. Plus, as new trolley lines often demonstrate there is ample space within or aside many highways and boulevards.

According to railway industry averages a mile of track is now worth about $1.5 million. Expanding the existing US system would require roughly 400,000 miles of track; nearly tripling track mileage from 175,000 to 600,000. Track would be added to existing routes, new routes would be added around cities, and several abandoned routes would be rebuilt. Some intercity routes would be high-speed passenger only, but most would carry freight and passenger trains. The track would cost $600 billion.

New stations and trains would also be needed. For simplicity we can assuming stations were self-supporting on retail rents and/or financed by local sources, then the largest purchase is trains. We can use the most most widely applicable type of railcar - a self-propelled 64 passenger coach - to simplify the example. Each coach would be powered by a diesel engine under the floor, as such railcars are powered now, or with a hydrogen fuel-cell power plant using renewable energy and hydrogen. In either case conventional electric motors would drive the axles. No overhead wire, third rail or locomotive would be required and it would use about a quarter the energy of a comparable number of automobiles. Each coach would cost $2 million and we'd need 500,000, say about $1.1 trillion worth.

The total investment, plus track, amounts to $1.7 trillion. Such an investment would be made in increments averaging $115 billion annually over 15 years and spread over 50 states and several dozen cities. Borrowing via conventional bonds would result in annual debt service of $145 billion. Typically such an investment might be split 70-30 between private and public sources. Private sector profits - the cost of money - would be covered by a portion of the fare, which would also cover all staffing, energy and maintenance costs. Public sector debt would be covered by local sales and/or property taxes; the latter from properties developed because the railway was built. Annual debt service on the public investment would be insignificant compared to the larger economy; it would equal less than 2% of total annual automotive expenditures.

This expanded railway system, with say 25,000 stations, would carry all kinds of people making commute, business or recreation trips, and all kinds of freight in all quantities. It would reduce car traffic, truck traffic and short haul air traffic. It might carry three times the freight traffic, at $120 billion, plus $300 billion in new passenger revenue. Railways would generate over 10 times current revenue. If expanded to Canada and Mexico this railway system could reach from Nova Scotia to El Salvador, Miami to Anchorage. It could even be linked to Europe, Asia and Africa via Russia and a bridge or tunnel across the Bering Sea, and via South America via a new route through Panama. Such an expansion would reduce containership traffic considerably.

An investment of a few trillion dollars in US railways would result in annual savings exceeding the annual cost of the investment. Over its 40 year lifetime just one coach worth $2 million would supplant about 1,000 automobiles worth $30 million, and a rail system of such a scale would remove the equivalent of 78 million automobiles from the roads in a given year. This translates to far less of all resources being devoted to transport, far less pollution and the transformation of countless parking lots and garages into far more useful property - or grass. It would save thousands of lives and avoid innumerable injuries, it would cut transportation produced greenhouse gases significantly, and it would make businesses of all kinds much more competitive. Millions of people would arrive on-time.

The money is available. We are already spending it - on driving.

Anyone who's attempted to build any substantial infrastructure would say such a program is impossible, given the bureaucracy involved, in anything less than several decades. But if the Web is used to coordinate development, and computer aided design is used to achieve consensus about every imaginable detail, then it becomes possible to accelerate the process. Given the results, of far less environmental impact and of lower costs for individuals, businesses and government, it would seem the project justifies the most aggressive approval process.

History says we've changed infrastructure in big revolutions several times, with 15 years seemingly the optimum infrastructure revolution time. Again and again the pattern has repeated, with trains, cars, electricity, phones and all manner of infrastructure. The innovation grows slowly for up to 20 years, then suddenly a critical point is reached and the innovation spreads exponentially. That is how infrastructure revolutions happened. The Internet revolution just happened - from nothing to ubiquitous in 15 years.

Infrastructure revolutions often involve far more than just one thing. Railways weren't just single tracks moving stuff or bodies, they were energy, water and communications systems as well. Similarly the Internet isn't just a wire for transmitting raw data, it is also the technologies of mail, documents, games and all media required to use the net. Railways, like the Web, were a utopian network arriving with state-of-the-art technology. The revolution was not merely about mobility, but of how we saw our lives because of the new things we could do.

Building on such precedents a revitalized new railway system could be designed around state-of-the-art contemporary technologies. The new retail railway could be 100% solar powered. An entire railroad, by incorporating photovoltaic cells on railroad ties and roofs, augmented with solar-thermal and wind facilities over railyards, and using hydrogen as a power storage medium, can be powered by the sun. A network of regional railways would not be vulnerable to power outages caused by nature or anyone. Post peak oil prices would be irrelevant, as would oil, coal and nuclear power. Trains would be powered by the wind and the light.

This new railway would be a revelation in mobility. One network capable of moving anyone or anything anywhere in the US, potentially the continent, often at 60 plus miles per hour instead of 30 or less. One system generating thousands of jobs and millions of cultural relationships and uncountable business opportunities. One service where instead of focusing on the highway lanes passengers are talking, or reading or watching the view or a movie or doing e-mail, or working or sleeping or writing or having dinner or dancing in the lounge under the stars. One experience where you might get to know the person in the next seat instead of cursing at the person in the next lane. Trains can be a place to be on the way to a place.

For more information on Suntrain and the railway renaissance please contact Chritopher Swan swantrain@comcast.net.