Burning Fires

A Hell of a Road by Ryan Avent (The Bellows)
Upstart Chinese Car Company BYD Releases Plug-In Hybrid. See What You Can Do With No Regulations? by Marc Rose (MatteR Network)
Neighboorhood Design Preferences Change (The Ground Floor)
Sean Sweeney: Soho Must Be Preserved for SUVs by Ben Fried (Streetsblog)
Energizer Getting in on the Solar Battery Game by Hank Green (EcoGeek.org)
Support Olathe’s Bike Transportation Plan (KC BikeBlog)

Dear Joe, I want a Sustainable High Speed Electric Train for Christmas (Part 3)

Follow a variety of discussion at ProgressiveBlue, My Left Wing, and Docudharma. Also at Agent Orange.

This series started with the following clip:


And I have asked for Electric Trains (Part 1) and High Speed Electric Trains (Part 2). But I am greedy, so I want it all. What I really want is SUSTAINABLE High Speed Electric Trains.

First, it appears that Electric Trains, and Electric High Speed Trains, offer an important step in that direction already, since they offer substantial energy efficiencies ... the most sustainable Watt is intelligent design that eliminates the need for that Watt.

Second, the foundation of the nationwide Electric Train system, the electrification of STRACNET, can be the "donkey that carries its own lunch" ... there is an opportunity to use the program to cost effectively accelerate harvesting of our nation's sustainable renewable energy resources.

So, yes, I want a coast to coast, 100mph, electric freight and passenger train system. Yes, I want the break through the bottlenecks for the Acela in the NEC, establishment of the Empire Corridor, Keystone Corridor, Ohio Hub, Midwest Hub, Southeast Corridor, Gulf Corridor, T-Bone Corridor, Front Range Corridor, Cascadia Corridor, and the CA-HSR.

And, being greedy, powered sustainably.


Energy Savings of Electric Trains

STRACNET is not an acronym many people are accustomed to rolling trippingly off their tongues, although I think its a really good acronym as far as aggressively brawny military acronyms go ... STrategic Rail Corridor NETwork. Its the Department of Defense designated network of railroads for "Preserving Strategic Rail Mobility".

And the STRACNET is an aggressively brawny thing, or at least when its written up for a DoD-ish audience:

Tell any mechanized maneuver commander he has to fight a battle without his Abrams tanks or Bradley fighting vehicles, and you probably will see a puzzled look on his face that could be interpreted as, "What planet are you from?" or, "What language are you speaking?" Since it is doubtful that a major conflict will occur just outside the gates of Fort Stewart, Georgia, or Fort Hood, Texas, a key element of a successful engagement will be getting combat power wherever it is needed on time.

Without a reliable commercial rail infrastructure, it is doubtful the tanks and Bradleys will make it to their place of business. To make sure they do, the Military Traffic Management Command developed the Railroads for National Defense (RND) Program in 1976. In 1991, the RND Program was assigned to the Military Traffic Management Command Transportation Engineering Agency (MTMCTEA), which now executes the program on behalf of the U.S. Transportation Command. This program ensures that the commercial rail infrastructure in the United States meets Department of Defense (DOD) requirements for deploying a force. The RND Program works to preserve our strategic rail mobility.

And National Defense is precisely what sustainable electrification of STRACNET provides ... the ability to move freight and passengers from coast to coast and north to south, with sustainable, domestically harvested power, is direct defense of our transportation system from resource depletion, supply interruptions, and currency crises.

And, yes, the ability to move Bradley Tanks even if those nasty furriners interrupt "our" supplies of crude oil (that happen to be formally located in somebody else's country) ... that is open to crass, blatantly self-interested appeals to the crude militarism that infests our body politic. In other words, if some self-styled "conservative" opposes this program, "to ensure that the rail transportation that our military depends upon can never be held hostage by foreign oil producers", why, they are obviously not supporters of the military and, indeed, are not supporting the troops. Indeed, that opposition ought to raise suspicion that they are agents of foreign governments in disguise.

OK, but how much energy savings are we talking about here?

Brace yourself. This is discussed in Alan Drake's proposal, previously linked to in Part 1:

The USA has 177,000 miles of railroads, with the Department of Defense classifying 32,421 miles as strategic (STRACNET). These selected rail lines correlate closely, but not exactly, with what are considered “main line” railroads. DoD only selected one rail line when two main lines parallel and a few main lines are not considered strategic. 36,000 miles should cover all of the main lines.



The Pareto Principle (also known as the 80/20 rule) suggests that the 36,000 miles of main line railroad should carry 80% of the railroad ton-miles, and burn 80% of the fuel (there being no electrified freight lines in the USA), or 185,000 barrels/day.

However, this calculation of 185,000 barrels of oil/day saved seriously underestimates the fuel saving potential, especially in an oil constrained future, Transferring just 8% of the truck ton-miles to electrified rail would save another 204,000 barrel/day. Transferring half would save 1,276,000 barrels/day, plus the 185,000 barrels/day for 1,461,000 barrels/day saved (roughly equal to ANWR at its peak, but electrified rail does not deplete - which ANWR inevitably will). Transferring 85% of truck freight to rail, and electrifying half of US railroads, which the author considers to be possible with a large enough investment (see Appendix Four), would save 2.3 to 2.4 million barrels/day. That is 12% of USA oil used today for all purposes, not just transportation.

Just take the mid-line value ... transferring half of diesel truck freight to electric rail, plus the effect of electrifying diesel rail, would save roughly 7% of US oil consumption, or roughly 10% of US oil imports.

And it could be complete, under maximum commercial urgency, in eight years or less. Even taking one year of lobbying to get this into the consciousness of the general public and the political elites ... it could be finished within an eight year Presidential administration.

1.461m barrels of oil a day is 533m barrels annually ... $21b at $40/barrel, $75b at $140/barrel. At a cost of $250b, for the 79mph network, that is an 8.4% return in terms of import savings at $40/barrel, 30% return at $140/barrel. At a cost of $450b, for the 110mph network, in terms of import savings that is a 4.7% return at $40/barrel, 16.7% at $140/barrel.

Now, what about the energy cost ... electricity aint free, after all. Well, here the numbers are even more dramatic:

Transferring freight from truck to electrified rail trades 17 to 21 BTUs of diesel for one BTU of electricity. Simply electrifying existing rail freight would trade 2.6 to 3 BTUs of diesel for one BTU of electricity.

That is, electric rail freight requires between 33% to 38% of the energy of diesel rail freight, and electric rail freight requires between 5% to 6% of the energy as diesel road freight. So the additional electrical energy required is a small fraction of the liquid fuel energy saved. In other words:

Electrifying 80% of railroad ton-miles and transferring half of current truck freight to rail would take about 1% of US electricity.

Rapid Electric Rail

Our rail system at present is designed to carry the heavy bulk freight where the greater energy and labor efficiency of (diesel) rail allows rail to be cost competitive with road freight, even given the fact that the federal funding of freight rail infrastucture is largely YOYO ... You're On Your Own ... while long haul trucks get massive subsidy in the form of a cross subsidy scheme where by more than 90% of road damage is done by heavy axle load vehicles, which pay far less than 90% of the user fees in terms of fuel taxes, and in turn user fees in the form of gas taxes only pay roughly 80% of the cost of roadworks in the country ... which, of course, means that all road vehicles together get a complete free ride on all of the external costs that they impose.

To add insult to injury, as privately owned infrastructure, heavy freight rail is assessed local property taxes, while public roads are not.

This is, indeed, one of the reasons that private railroads have not invested in rail electrification, despite its substantial advantages. Rail electrification is a capital intensive process, and would add a substantial amount to the debt burden of a rail road, as well as to the annual overheads in the form of higher property tax assessments.

So the proposal here is to level the playing field: the rail electrification infrastructure will be owned by a public authority, receiving a perpetual lease from the private owner of the right of way of air rights and the footprint of electrical stanchions and masts. It will sell the power to the railroad for the cost of the power and a user fee.

Now, that's the electric ... where's the rapid?

As explained in part 1, we have been slowing down our rail for decades, now. Rather than invest in more capacity, freight railroads in the past half century have been investing in less capacity. Shippers of heavy bulk freight that is cost sensitive are, by the same token, not time sensitive. They are willing to trade off uncertain delivery schedules for lower costs per ton-mile. One way that railroads have responded has been to replace double track systems with single track systems, that have sidings to allow trains going in opposite directions to pass each other.

And while the "Positive Train Control" (PTC) systems that would allow safer operation at high speeds was first proposed in the US in the 1920's, freight railroad continue to fight it.

So this is the flip side of the deal being offered to the freight railroads. In order to be first in line to get electrification of their existing lines, they must provide a plan to offer new "Rapid Rail" paths in their right of way. This Rapid Rail path features:

• Positive Train Control for all trains in the path
  
• Speed limits of 110mph or more, or else as high as technically feasible within the physical limitations of the right of way
  
• All trains in the path have sufficient crash avoidance capability to share the path with modern lightweight electric passenger trains
  

Now, there are many ways to offer these Rapid Rail paths. The cheapest is to "time slice" the track, setting up the track so that it is allocated to heavy freight for part of the day and Rapid Rail for part of the day, with portions of Rapid Rail specific track, especially around curves where Rapid Rail requires steeper banking than heavy freight. The most expensive is to place double track freight rail and double track Rapid Rail lines side by side.

Where there is a commercial case for it, and where the owner of the right of way agrees to provide a perpetual lease, the public electrification authority can itself construct Rapid Rail lines, charging an access fee to users of the line, and with the same commercial advantages in terms of lower cost public finance and freedom from property tax as enjoyed by the Interstate Highway system.

Clearly, we do not want to have the public authority building the electric infrastructure in 2012 and then rebuilding it in 2018 in response to the expansion of rail capacity and provision of rail paths. So part of this capacity bidding process involves the presentation of the detailed capacity expansion path, so that electrical infrastructure can be built with the requirements of expansion in mind.

It is clear what the minimum acceptable bid for provision of electrical infrastructure would be: maintenance of the existing heavy rail capacity, and provision of additional Rapid Rail capacity, in a way that allows for reliable, on-schedule deliveries of freight carried on the Rapid Rail system.


What About Passenger Trains

Now, what about passenger trains? First, the Rapid Freight Rail system addresses many of the problems of Amtrak. Rapid Freight Rail paths will be designed to support higher speed operations, and to support more reliable operations for freight that must be delivered on schedule. Second, electrification would allow Amtrak to operate lighter weight, more energy efficient, faster accelerating and higher speed Electric Motor Unit (EMU) trains, so the reduction in trip times and increase in reliability will come combined with lower operating costs. That means that the same subsidy to Amtrak regional train services can support a larger and more frequent route structure.

Second, there are the range of semi-HSR systems at various stages of planning, from earliest technical evaluation to "ready to start spending real money". The public rail electrification authority will already possess the technical capabilities to plan and build electric overhead and the civil engineering expertise on coping with difficult problems in vertical clearances. So all of the many Rapid Passenger Rail systems will also be permitted to apply to the rail electrification authority to electrify their routes. If they can provide appropriate guarantees on minimum annual access fees, this could also extend to the construction of Rapid Rail train paths for the use of passenger trains, outside of the STRACNET system.

And for true HSR systems, the availability of Rapid Rail paths means that true HSR trains can start running when a given HSR corridor is completed, and then continue on a Rapid Rail path to its destination. Then, each HSR corridor completed leads to a reduction in travel time, and the process of building the passenger base can begin well before the full HSR route network is completed.


What About Sustainable Power?

It could be claimed that the electrification of STRACNET is from "60% to 95% sustainable", based on energy saving over diesel rail freight and diesel road freight. However, we can go further than that.

The US DoE publication, 20% Wind Energy by 2030 discusses the requirements of generating 20% of the nation's electricity by harvesting wind power. Chapter 4 (pdf) of the report covers "Transmission and Integration into the
U.S. Electric System".

One common misconception about large scale roll-out of wind-power is the idea that somehow the variability of each wind turbine must be balanced, using some form of energy storage, to create a manageable system. However, at 20% energy penetration, this would be a massively wasteful approach:

Some suggest that hydropower capacity, or energy storage in the form of pumped hydro or compressed air, should be dedicated to supply backup or firming and shaping services to wind plants. Given an ideally integrated grid, this capacity would not be necessary because the pooling of resources across an electric system eliminates the need to provide costly backup capacity for individual resources. Again, it is the net system load that needs to be balanced, not an individual load or generation source in isolation. Attempting to balance an individual load or generation source is a suboptimal solution to the power system operations problem because it introduces unnecessary extra capacity and an associated increase in cost. Hydro capacity and energy storage are valuable resources that should be used to balance the system, not just the wind capacity. (pp. 80-1)

The greater the number of wind turbines operating in a given area, the less their aggregate production variability. (p. 89)

Similarly, as more wind turbines are installed across larger geographic areas, the aggregated wind generation becomes more predictable and less variable. The benefits of geographical diversity can be seen in Figure 4-8, which shows the change in wind plant hourly capacity factor over one year for four different levels of wind plant aggregation. This figure shows the operational capacity factor of wind turbines aggregated over successively larger areas—first over southwest Minnesota, then across southwest and southeast Minnesota, then across the entire state, and finally across both Minnesota and central North Dakota. There is a decrease in the number of occurrences of very high and very low hourly capacity factors in the tails of the distribution as the degree of aggregation increases. A considerable benefit is also realized across a broad mid-range of capacity factors from 20% to 80% (EnerNex 2006). (p. 90)

There are, therefore, two distinct transmission requirements for Wind Power. The first is the problem of "Stranded Wind", where a major wind resource area has far more wind resource than local electricity demand. The second is the problem of interconnecting consuming grids to permit load balancing across a wider area.

One of the problems, of course, is:

Local opposition to proposed transmission lines is often a major challenge to transmission expansion. An AC transmission line typically benefits all users along its path by increasing reliability, allowing for new generation and associated economic development, and providing access to lower-cost resources. Local owners, however, do not always value such benefits and frequently have other concerns that must be addressed. (p. 99)

Which points to the third piece of the plan. Rail lines tend to go to places where people live. And, being ground transportation, transcontinental rail lines have to pass through areas where no so many people live.

And if we are electrifying STRACNET, that means that there will be capital works proceeding all along those rail corridors, bringing project management and work crews all along the rail lines being constructed.

And unlike many property owners, the owner of the right of way would have a direct stake in the provision of transmission corridors, since the railway will be an electricity consumer, once the railway line has been electrified.

Now, railways rights of way do not not always provide the straight as an arrow alignment that would be preferred for a transmission line. However, they do provide one owner to negotiate with, rather than hundreds or thousands, which owner will also be an electricity consumer, and substantial opportunities to share construction and project management costs.

So the third piece of this puzzle is the public rail electrification authority offering the air space over rail right of way for use in providing the Electricity Superhighways that are part of the expansion of wind generation capacity in the US.


Well, so, that's what I want for Christmas

I know that this has been quite a long letter, Joe, but as I noted up top, I'm feeling greedy. Now, its a patient sort of greedy ... I'm fine with the sustainable electric High Speed train being given Christmas 2012, or Christmas 2016, or even Christmas 2020. But that is quite definitely what I want for Christmas.

Burning Fires

A Resolution for 2009: Around the World in an Electric Bike, by Petz Scholtus (Treehugger)
On Systems Efficiency (The Overhead Wire)
Nationalize General Motors by Michael Kieschnic (CREDO Action)
Green Rules by Ryan Avent (The Bellows)
Southern Hospitality (Mass Transit Magazine)
How Does the Post Know What Congress "Wanted?" (Dean Baker's Beat The Press)

Dear Joe, I want a High Speed Electric Train for Christmas (Pt. II).

Burning the Midnight Oil for Living Energy Independence

For the last eight years, development of Energy Independent transport has been faced with a dog-in-the-manger administration fighting furiously to move forward into Cartopian vision of endless crude oil fueling endless road works so people can drive endless hours to actually get wherever they need to go to do whatever it is they need to do.

However, there is hope. The first signs are appearing of tentative steps into the 21st century. This year, the Amtrak funding bill included substantial funding for restoring the North East Corridor to an adequate state of repair (a more impressive achievement than it may sound like, given the obstructionism of the Bush administration). On November 4, California passed Proposition 1A, providing $9b in bonds for the California High Speed Rail (HSR) project, and $950m in bonds to support expansion of transport infrastructure to connect with the HSR project. And then, on November 19, John Kerry and Arlan Spectre introduced the a bill for funding High Speed Rail projects:

Titled the High-Speed Rail for America Act of 2008, the bill would provide money for tax-exempt bonds to finance long-stalled high-speed rail projects. “A first-rate rail system,” Kerry said in a statement, “would protect our environment, save families time and money, reduce our dependency on foreign oil, and help get our economy moving again.”

So let's look at the projects that are on the drawing boards.

Bush Administration obstructionism has prevented breaking ground on a number of projects. Still, the case for progress toward a 21st century transportation system is compelling, and so all across the country, planning and other preliminary work has proceeded.

In Part I, I looked at a nationwide electric rail grid, supporting two classes of rail ... regular bulk freight rail, and "Rapid Rail". However, the most impressive recent progress has been toward funding the next step up from Rapid Rail.

This is true High Speed Rail ... Proposition 1A started the funding for one in California (first clip), following a broad range of experience with successful High Speed Rail projects around the world (second clip) (NB. Yes, that's a sales pitch in those clips):


In a sense, California's geography and population distribution conspired to push it into a true HSR system. The two biggest population centers in the state, the LA basin and the Bay area, are 340 miles apart, line of sight, between four and five hundred miles along a transport corridor. The Central Valley to the Bay would have a hard time drawing enough passengers to pay for an effective passenger alignment between the two, and the same for the Central Valley to the LA Basin. Now, step up to true High Speed Rail, and include trips between LA and the Bay in under 2 hours, 40 minutes ... running with a top speed of around 220mph to achieve an Effective Line of Sight speed of 125mph ... and that is going to attract a noticeable share of a far larger transport market.


It seems that the other recipient for funding for the "very" High Speed Rail funding under Kerry-Spectre is the Northeast Corridor. The Acela tilt-train, a trainset that has a top speed of 200mph, already provides services between Washington DC and Boston.

However, when you look more closely at the Acela, that translates into the 225 mile journey from DC to New York in about 2:50 48 an average speed of 80mph ... while the New York to Boston journey is about 3:40.

Effective HSR service is far less a matter of the top speed a train can achieve, and far more a matter of maintaining a higher overall rate of speed. After all, consider a route with two 100 miles sections, one traveled at 200mph and the other traveled at 50mph. The first section is completed in half an hour, the second in two hours, and the average speed is 80 mph. Double the speed of the high speed leg, and the trip is two and a quarter hours for an average speed of 89mph. Double the speed of the low speed leg, and the trip finished in 1 and a half hour, for an average speed of 133mph.

While the top speed of the trainset is 200mph, the top speed of the Acela in service is 150mph. Further, south of New York, the old overhead electric infrastructure limits the top speed of the service to 135mph. And in Connecticut north of New Haven, the limited separation between tracks prevents the Acela from using its tilting mechanism, which limits its top speed going around curves. So realignment that straightens out some of the Connecticut curves and upgrade of the overhead electric infrastructure south of New York will cut into trip times.

And even so ... the Northeast Regional does DC to New York in 3:15 to 3:40. Cutting 25 to 50 minutes off the trip may not seem like a lot, but its worth a substantial increase in potential market share. NYC to Boston in 3:40 is not going to attract the same market share, but it is still a substantial transport market, and the benefit in cutting off the forty to sixty minutes from the Northeast Regional times of 4:20 to 4:40 is also substantial.

Extensive experience shows that a train trip of under 3 hours can hope to capture 40% of an existing air transport market, and one of two hours can hope to capture a dominant 70%. So investments into the Northeast Corridor to shave minutes at a time off of the Acela routes are an attractive proposition.


And, of Course, America Is Made for High Speed Rail

However, the Northeast Corridor and California are special cases. The Northeast Corridor is a special case because of the high average population density, so that it experiences very congested rail lines. This makes each ten minutes shaved off a rail route a cause for celebration. California is a special case because it is such an enormous state that it almost completely contains two distinct Megalopolitan complexes in Northern and Southern California, with their highest population centers separated by more than three hundred miles.

For most of America, there is a much easier path ahead for High Speed Rail. We can put in place a network of Rapid Rail passenger systems, to provide a platform to build on. From there, we can follow the French strategy of building true High Speed Rail Corridors in stages, with HSR trainsets operating on a true HSR alignment as they are completed, then finishing the journey on the Rapid Rail network.

The map above shows the already-designated "High Speed Rail" corridors. However, in US Legislative terminology, "High Speed Rail" is anything that can run above 90mph ... so many of these corridors are in reality Rapid Rail corridors.

And the actual plans that are in progress, at various stages from the earliest planning stages to already proceeding with infrastructure improvements on existing lines while planning for system expansion, are far more extensive than the corridor designations in the US DoT map:

• The Midwest Interstate Passenger Rail Commission: the Midwest Hub
  
• The Ohio Rail Development Commission: The Ohio Hub
  
• The New York State Senate High Speed Rail Task Force
  
• Southeast High Speed Rail Corridor
  
• The Florida High Speed Rail Authority
  
• Southern High Speed Rail Commission
  
• The Texas High Speed Rail and Transportation Corporation: The T-bone Corridor
  
• Rocky Mountain Rail Authority (Colorado)
  

Some of these projects have been progressing slowly through planning and environmental impact studies, some have had a modicum of funding for modest infrastructure improvements, some were started up, reported, and then put into mothballs ... but all represent a starting point for building up our Rapid Rail capabilities.




Linking Rapid Rail Together: Inter-urban Rail Coast to Coast

Now, the first thing that jumps out from the High Speed Rail Corridor Map is the lack of a national network.

Of course, that is standing on its own. Overlay the existing Amtrak route nastional structure on top of the High Speed and Rapid Rail Corridors, and the routes knit together into a single national grid.


And remember our platform from Part I. A program of electrifying the STRACNET for freight rail rolls out naturally into transcontinental electric passenger trains, with the exact same improvements that allow reliable high speed freight also providing a massive improvement in service level for Amtrak transcontinental trains.

So that is interconnection level one: the existing Amtrak system, including the route expansions and service improvements made possible as a side effect of the STRACNET electrification and High Speed Freight program.


Linking Rapid Rail Together: True High Speed Rail

Consider the Empire Corridor (New York) and Keystone Corridor (Pennsylvania), as they links together with the Ohio Hub, connecting on to the Midwest Hub centered on Chicago.



Now, add a true High Speed Rail alignment, from New York through Northeast Ohio and Northern Indiana to Chicago. At present, that High Speed Rail corridor would connect New York and Chicago, as well as drawing from points in between along the rail corridor itself.

However, if the Midwest Hub and Ohio Hubs are in place, that true HSR route would cast a much wider net. Running from Chicago on a HSR into northeast Ohio and then switching onto the Ohio Hub provides rapid Chicago / Pittsburgh and Chicago / Buffalo routes. Running from New York through to northeast Ohio and then switching onto the Ohio Hub brings New York / Columbus / Cincinnati and New York / Toledo / Detroit into the network.

The key, then, is to get viable regional Rapid Rail systems going as quickly as possible, and then use them as platforms to start the process of constructing the true HSR corridors that will turbocharge the trip possibilities.


Fast-Tracking Regional Rapid Rail

And Part I already laid out a process for fast-tracking Regional Rapid Rail. The electrification of STRACNET and investment in high speed freight capabilities is an urgent program in its own right. A major part of our nation's structural addiction to oil is the fact that we cannot get important freight from coast to coast without relying on crude oil.

The electrification of STRACNET would mean, first, that existing rail traffic would not be threatened by an interruption of crude oil supplies.

Even more important, electrification of STRACNET by a public authority, funded by user fees, would substantially level the financial playing field between rail and the massively subsidized trucking industry. Under anything approaching a level playing field, some 50% to 80% of current ton-miles carried by trucks will shift to rail. That would mean a massive reduction in energy consumption per ton-mile, and a direct reduction in crude oil consumption.

That is the meat and potatoes of the electrification of STRACNET: a major step forward in national Energy Independence.

But at the same time, the program can easily contain a majority of the upgrades required to support passenger Rapid Rail - so the up-front capital cost of a passenger system would be cut substantially. Passenger trains would have to be acquired, stations built or rebuilt in appropriate locations, and rail routes built or upgraded through large urban areas to get to the central urban stations.

However, once the train is out into the Rapid Rail network, the same improvements that allow freight to pass through at 100mph with reliable delivery schedules allow 110mph passenger tilt-trains to pass through with reliable trip schedules.

So the electrification of STRACNET and establishment of Rapid Freight Rail is the foundation, and that foundation already supports substantially improvements to the existing passenger rail service. Then regional Rapid Passenger Rail is the ground floor, offering a large number of trips in the two and three hour range that is strongly competitive with air travel, and substantially shifting the margin of competition between rail travel and car travel. And then true HSR corridors leverage the Rapid Regional Rail systems and provide an even wider range of effective travel.


The Power and the Passion

There is an objection that is sure to be raised ... since it was raised already in various quarters in response to the electrification of STRACNET itself. Where is the energy going to come from to power these trains? Are they, in fact, coal-burning trains, that rely on power lines to hide the coal out of sight and out of mind?

Ah, no, they are not. But that is the third piece of the puzzle, which is going to be picked up in Part 3.

You Take All the Trouble that You Can Afford At Least You Won't Have Time to Be Bored

Dear Joe, I want an Electric Train for Christmas (Pt. I)

xposted to: ProgressiveBlue; My Left Wing; Docudharma; Agent Orange

Burning the Midnight Oil for Living Energy Independence

Joe talks about trains to the National Governors Association:


(h/t Ryan Avent, Matthew Yglesias)

Three special Federal tasks are the provision of a coast to coast system of electric trains, support for a nationwide "Rapid Rail" network, and support for inter-regional corridors providing true High Speed Rail.

If we pursue the opportunities available to use now, using existing, well tested technology, we can have a big chunk of this job finished within eight years, and can have set things in motion to see an absolute Energy Revolution in inter-regional transport in this nations by 2024.

So it may not be this Christmas, but if we hit hard on this issue, its possible for use to say, "New York, you get an electric train. Boise, you get an electric train. Detroit, you get an electric train. Atlanta, you get an electric train. Amarillo, you get an electric train. ..."


The Platform: Electric Rail, Coast to Coast

The platform for this is Alan Drake's rail electrification proposal: electrify STRACNET, the Dept. of Defense designated STrategic RAil Corridor NETwork, and strategic connecting corridors. Alan Drake presented this plan in detail at The Oil Drum (and yes, to help promote this, if you have a Digg account, do click through and Digg that post), among other places.

The problems that it addresses?

• Excessive Oil Consumption by the USA, much higher than OECD average
  
• Economic, Energy, and Environmental costs with related National Security issues that result from excessive oil consumption
  
• No Real Plan to Significantly Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions
  
• Lack of Non-Oil Transportation: there are no alternatives for essential transportation that don’t use oil
  
• Inadequate Railroad Capacity
  
• Speed and reliability of today’s Rail Freight cannot compete with Truck Freight for many cargoes
  
• Weak Electrical Grid with limited inter-regional transmission and stability problems
  
• Lack of markets and transmission capacity for remote Prime Wind Farm Sites
  
• Chronic Under-investment in long lived, beneficial infrastructure
  

And the plan set out for the electrification of STRACNET:

• Electrify 36,000 miles of mainline railroads
  
• Expand Railroad capacity and speed by adding double tracks, better signals and more grade separation
  
• New 110 mph tracks for passengers and freight added to existing rail ROWs as a second step
  
• In many, but not all cases, use the railroad ROW as new electrical transmission line corridors
  
• Promote the use of rail lines, usually spur lines, as wind turbine sites with rail transported cranes and materials
  
• Take advantage of the lower marginal economic costs of railroads, where the more we use it, the less it costs per unit. A diffuse economic benefit for many sectors of the economy.
  

Now, the original plan as set out was under the constraints of the fiscal policy environment of 2006/2007, and involved packages of tax incentives and various measures to support private railroads doing as much of the investment as possible. However, with a consensus developing for a very major fiscal stimulus, its possible to move in a much more direct fashion.

• Build the electrical rail infrastructure, financed by Federal bonds, operated by a public authority, and funded by user fees paid by the carriers that use the electricity to run their trains.

This is very much, after all, like the approach to financing the Interstate Highway system that is currently relied on for the bulk of our oil-dependent freight transport. And while the Interstate Highway system had a Strategic Defense rationale in the beginning, it now contributes to National Insecurity than to National Security.

Alan Drake was able to commission professional modeling of this program, and determined that if pursued with full commercial urgency, the build out could be completed in six years. The cost that Alan Drake gives for this is $250b for a network supporting 79mph rail traffic, and $450b if the network is extended to support 110mph rail traffic (which I will discuss in more detail in the next section).

Any effort to move a substantial portion of current road freight by rail will overwhelm the current capacity of the system. However, given the current state of our rail network (and more about that in the next section as well), rail in most of the country is a decreasing cost investment ... we can add capacity at a lower cost than the original capacity. A big part of this is adding track to existing corridors ... double tracking rail that is single track, lengthening passing lines so that slow bulk trains can stand and wait for shorter higher speed trains to pass, increasing the power of locomotives so that freight can pass through a bottleneck more rapidly.

The flip side of having government invest in providing a lower cost energy supply that allows freight trains to run through the system more rapidly, economizing on both running costs and capital costs of rolling stock ... is that the railroads receiving the rail electrification in their rail corridor must increase the freight capacity of the system, increase the capacity of the system to support 79mph through trains (both passenger and container freight), and allow available rail corridor to be used for the Rapid Rail system (next section).

Now, consider the National Association of Rail Passengers proposal for improved Amtrak service. Compare it to the STRACNET system, and squint closely at the fuzzy little picture of STRACNET above (NB. anyone with a better picture of STRACNET, drop a link in the comments) and you will see that both existing and proposed routes would be included in the electrification of STRACNET.

In other words, when I said, "Boise, YOU get an electric train, Amarillo, YOU get an electric train ...", I wasn't joking.

As electric lines are finished, Amtrak can commission new electric trains, with new passenger cars, and start new runs. And of course, when those runs are replacing an existing run, that means that existing diesel Amtrak trains can then be used to increase frequency on parts of the network that have not yet been electrified, and new routes added to places to start filling in the expanded Amtrak route network in the NARP plan.


A Three Tier System

This is the foundation, but its not the entire house. I am going to pick up the Rapid Rail system in Part II, but first, I want to fill in some blanks about why a three tier system is needed.

At the California High Speed Rail Blog, Rafael explains this well:

In the specific case of the US, there are two major stumbling blocks. First, rail is now used primarily for slow, cheap but profitable heavy freight at interstate distances. The infrastructure is owned by competing freight companies, with some trade in trackage rights. Only a few sections of the US rail grid are publicly owned, e.g. the North East Corridor, the Caltrain SF peninsula corridor and, the Alameda freight corridor in LA. Passenger rail volume is very modest by international standards and, taxpayers have long resisted investing in something that only works well if it is perceived as a public service, rather than a commercial enterprise.

Second, the Federal Rail Administration (FRA) has defined rules that minimize overheads for heavy freight operators. Rather than spend a lot on maintenance, they just keep running a little more slowly every year. They stick with very old, winding alignments with little or no track superelevation to avoid the massive investments needed to support higher speeds. They avoid upgrades to signaling, preferring instead to rely on passive crash safety at low speeds. They do not voluntarily invest in grade separations, diesel exhaust gas aftertreatment or electrification. They even convert dual back to single track alignments and abandon underutilized rights of way altogether, because this reduces their property tax bill. They don't stick to a timetable. The reason for all this is simple: bulk freight customers won't pay a premium for higher speed. All of this works against the provision of effective passenger rail services, as well as regional rail freight of high value goods

Now, the STRACNET rail electrification is a substantial benefit to heavy freight, AFAIU largely because electric traction has better torque moving from a standing start than internal combustion traction. Indeed, some "diesel locomotives" in this country are diesel-electrics, where the diesel engines generate electricity which is used to drive electric motors ... precisely to take advantage of that torque in getting long, heavy trains moving from a dead stop.

Its not the top speed that makes electric rail faster ... its the ability to put on more power for less cost, because the electrical generating plant is not being hauled around with the train.

That is why we can expect that we can swing a deal and have private railroads competing to be the first to get the public rail electrification authority established on their existing right of way. Cutting their operating costs per ton-mile is the core of their current business model. Swapping some capital investment in capacity that they themselves can then use for trains that can complete their routes faster and cheaper, and so be turned around to do another run ... there's a deal to be found there.

However, for an effective high speed freight network, as well as a more effective passenger rail network, we cannot be bound by this operating model. We need heavy bulk freight, that is most sensitive to pure cost per ton-mile. But we also need to be able move time and schedule sensitive freight without relying on crude oil.

That is where a second tier of rail comes in ... what Rafael calls (and which I shall now be calling) "Rapid Rail". This corresponds closely to the expectations in Europe for how a normal rail line operates. Rather than relying on passive crash resistance as the front line of safety, the "UIC" standards relied on in Europe focus train control systems, signaling systems, and other measures focused on crash prevention while maintaining effective operating speeds.

When Rapid Rail is installed side by side with normal heavy freight rail, there will be three classes of trains in the system:

• Heavy freight trains, restricted to the heavy freight network. These are compliant with FRA standards, but lack the train control and other support to allow it to operated on Rapid Rail lines.
  
• Dedicated Rapid trains, with the train control and other support to operate safely in the Rapid Rail lines, but not compliant with FRA guidelines for operating on the heavy rail network. These will often be passenger trains, but can also include express freight carriers.
  
• Compliant Rapid trains, that both meet train control and other requirements for operation on the Rapid Rail lines, and comply with FRA guidelines for operation on the heavy rail network. These would include both "regular" Amtrak services, and single stacked express rail, ranging from high speed transcontinental "superfreighters" to trains like the "Cargo Sprinters" (see picture, below), specialized for shorter distances and smaller numbers of containers.
  

Now, the Rapid Rail system probably does require beating on some heads at the entrenched FRA (Federal Railroad Authority) ... but it has the substantial benefit that it is not trying to get them to change what they are doing for the bulk of current rail operations, but rather to add a new way of doing things for a new network.

Construction of the Rapid Rail system would follow the same lines as the construction of the electrification infrastructure: in cooperation with the owners of the right of way, a public authority would finance the construction of Rapid Rail infrastructure, which would be accessed by carriers ... either freight or passenger rail trains ... paying user fees.

The construction of one or more Rapid Rail tracks in a right of way would be supplemented by some dedicated Rapid Rail alignments, where a new right of way can be acquired that offers electric express trains a substantial reduction in total trip time.


But, I Want High Speed Rail for Christmas! Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!

Patience, patience, its only early in December.

I described this as a "platform" at the top of this essay. And while it directly provides support for substantially improved Amtrak passenger rail services ... I have not yet described any High Speed Rail systems.

That's what lies in store for Part II: Joe, I want a High Speed Electric Train for Christmas.

There's a road train going nowhere Roads are cut, lines are down We'll be staying at the Roma Bar Till that monsoon passes on ... Blue collar work it don't get you nowhere You just go round and round in debt Somebody's got you on that treadmill, mate And I hope you're not beaten yet