Nice map of respective rail freight in countries. The US rules.
Posted on 06/10/2006 3:23:49 AM PDT by decimon
The article is right on that point -- at least as far as coal shipped from a single source. The amount of coal shipped out of the Powder River Basin dwarfs the volume shipped from any one source by the eastern railroads.
Who is "we?" It is not the responsibility of the Federal government to expand the infrastructure for the nation's railroads.
From what I read at the link you've posted, it looks like that organization is a strong advocate of what is called an "open access" concept in the railroad industry. Under this idea, the Federal government would basically legislate the railroad industry out of existence as we know it -- and allow any company that wants to operate trains to run on the railroads.
Here we have huge unmet demand and a license to print money and they still want a subsidy. What the hell?
With more than 200 years of known coal supply at todays usage levels that would be foolish.
The heaven is in the first part of your first sentence. The hell is that a subsidy is almost certainly a propping of the least efficient operation.
By the same comparison of "efficiency" let's look at the Postal Service. Each day, millions of pieces of mail (mostly junk mail) is deposited in it's offices. They sort the mail and have "miles" of trucks, aircraft and trains move the mail.
Now the catch..."efficiency" doesn't mean how much work you have...it's how you process it and how fast you deliver it. For example, back in the 50's I could mail a letter to my next door neighbor. The letter would be picked up by the postman and taken to the post office to be sorted. In-town mail stayed in town and out of town mail was sent out of town. The next day my neighbor would receive his mail.
Now, fast forward to the modern era. I put a letter to my neighbor in the mailbox at my home. The postman picks up the letter (in his little truck...in the 50's they walked) and brings it back to the post office after the completion of his route. The letter is placed in the post office. Here's where the efficiency starts even though the drop boxes outside of the post office and inside read "local mail only" and "out of town only." The local letter is mixed with all other mail going to a "mystery" town miles away for sorting. It is not sorted in the post office for local delivery. If the letter is not brought back in time to be dumped into the daily pile by the 5pm departure of the out of town truck, it will go out to the sorting facility the next day.
To prove the efficiency of the post office, the neighbor may receive the letter no sooner that 2 days and up to 7 days at the latest. We live in Alice, Texas and the postmark may be from Corpus Christi, McAllen, Victoria or San Antonio. That is where the letter finally ended up to be sorted.
Now, back to the highly efficient rail roads, who by the way are so efficient that they all have had their feet at, near, or in the bankruptcy pit Most have been bailed out by some type of Government regulation or help.
The problem with the railroads is management, both administrative and logistical. It is just as bad as the post office. Have you ever tracked a rail car? Have you ever shipped to a customer by rail with a deadline to meet in Laredo? Ever wonder why your rail car was loaded in San Angelo, tracked to Detroit, followed to Memphis (where it sat on a siding for two weeks) and then mistakenly ended up in McAllen and the whole trip took four weeks? Well, that's the efficiency of the rail and postal system.
No wonder most ship by motor freight! It gets there on time! Efficiently!
Railroad ping
good point....ask al, he's probably calculated it>>>
Did the Navajo mines on black Meas Recently close? I somehoe think this very large operation was shut down recently. It supplied coal to power plants in AZ
Sorry but I have no idea.
"Today's railroads use a rail system that had not added track and other infrastructure for decades. In fact, before 2003, railroads had been abandoning miles of unprofitable and underused lines."
And I did read about the addition of one 75 mile stretch. BFD in the entire scope of the issue. My position is that the coal-fired plants and the problem of feeding them via railline is an idea whose time has come to pass. How many gallons of diesel fuel are we willing to commit to run these deliveries when our refining capacity is stretched too the max. Wouldn't it be a benefit all the way down the line to move away from coal-fired plants to something that doesn't require the expenditure of vast quantities of fuel, steel, and land? My original beef was that nothing is being done to address these problems, either now or in the future. That doesn't sound silly or rantful to me. I mean, really, a rant? I only used caps at the start of the sentences, not the whole sentence. Hardly a rant by any stretch.
Exactly my point. Go nuke. Yes it would take time, but it's going to take even longer if we don't start at all.
I don't want to nationalize anything. I want W to take steps to clear some of the beauracratic bravo sierra so that we can start to dig ourselves out of this energy deficit.
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