Post Carbon Cities Blog
This weekend I took a pleasant train trip from Portland to Seattle to visit with family for Christmas. For me, the travel itself was one of the most enjoyable facets of a very full weekend. Both passenger and freight rail traffic have been increasing as fuel costs soar, making it clear that a functional rail system will be a real asset in an energy uncertain future.
This weekend I took a pleasant train trip from Portland to Seattle to visit with family for Christmas. For me, the travel itself was one of the most enjoyable facets of a very full weekend. Both passenger and freight rail traffic have been increasing as fuel costs soar, making it clear that a functional rail system will be a real asset in an energy uncertain future.
This weekend my partner and I took a pleasant train trip up to Seattle to visit family for Christmas. For me, the travel itself was one of the most enjoyable facets of a very full weekend. Amtrak employees rose to the occasion of the busy season with charm and efficiency, making cheerful quips as they worked their way along long lines and helping laden passengers with their holiday packages. Most everyone on the packed-full train laughed when the stop for "Tacoma - City of Destiny" was dramatically announced over the intercom. We got to read and knit, work crosswords, and gawk at the new Tacoma Narrows bridge, which was just being assembled the last time we made that trip.
We left from Portland's beautiful landmark Union Station and arrived at Seattle's King Street station, which retains (and is in the process of restoring more of) its former beauty. Both stations are within the downtown areas of their respective cities and easy to connect to from other modes of transport. Excuse me if I gush, but like so many of my generation, I grew up in places where one needs a car to get around; so in a way, rail travel feels like freedom.
Others are coming around to train travel, too:
"[Amtrak] Passengers for the fiscal year that ended last September numbered 24.3 million, setting a record for the fourth year in a row ... Between last October and March, Amtrak's riders numbered 14.3 million, up 5 percent over the previous year and sailing toward another record."
(Associated Press, 22 Dec)
As our departure from Seattle was delayed, we had an opportunity to eavesdrop on a conversation between an Amtrak employee and an older gentleman who was also waiting. The main problem with delays on Amtrak trains, as you may know, is that they share track with freight trains -- especially along the West Coast. The scoop from that overheard conversation was that "they" have been working hard in Washington to reduce those delays by arranging local freight movement so that it does not impede the major north-south tracks. One example of this effort to help these two uses of the track work together may be the Washington State DOT's current Vancouver Rail Project, which will create a bypass for passenger trains through the busy Vancouver (WA) rail yard.
There are good reasons that the tracks are again in high demand both for passengers and for freight. As fuel costs rise, rail freight becomes a much more appealing option for many businesses, especially along the coasts with their ports and global shipping ties. Rail freight carries a lot, and caries it efficiently: "a single intermodal freight train can take nearly 300 trucks off the road. ... on just one gallon of fuel, one train can move one ton of freight 423 miles." (The Times, Trenton (NJ), 6 June 07) Moving freight from trucks to trains can cut down congestion, pollution, and energy use. Yet as we've seen in the case of the often-late Coast Starlight train, increases in freight traffic can make passenger rail less dependable and therefore less appealing.
New rail infrastructure could sure help, but it's abundantly clear that the political will is not there to fund them. What I occasionally worry about is a trend that I would otherwise be entirely in favor of - converting old railways to recreational trails. As we start to come back around to the wisdom of the steel rail, is it really prudent to tear out the tracks we have left?
Transportation for people and goods promises to be the biggest issue we'll need to tackle in light of energy and climate uncertainty. I look forward to reading the new book by Richard Gilbert and Anthony Pearl, Transport Revolutions: Moving people and freight without oil, which promises to have interesting analyses of how transport can develop in an energy-constrained future, and what we can do to respond to the "transport revolution" that is upon us. Meanwhile, I'll take advantage of our remaining nineteenth-century technology to get where I need to go, in an enjoyable way, without taking part in the holiday tradition of backed-up traffic and cranky people.
(And I promise I won't write about some form of rail in every single blog post. My next, I promise, will even feature a car!)
Photo credit: Brian Bouchard 
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Post Carbon Cities is one of the key resources focusing communities on addressing peak oil as well as climate challenges. The inspiration, updated information, and pragmatic assistance that you provide is truly needed at all levels of government.
Converting old railway lines to recreational trails isn't necessarily a bad thing. It ensures that the land is kept in public ownership so that it would be easier to convert it back to a railway line in the future if needed.
Oh, I wouldn't say that it's necessarily a bad thing at all, and you make a good point about maintaining ownership; the land and rightaways that the rails represent make up a hugely valuable and irreplaceable public resource regardless of whether the steel track is still there. The rails-to-trails comment is more of a personal musing, as I hate to see energy wasted, which is what converting away from and back to rail would be. (And of course that assumes that the location in question would eventually want to convert back... each place will be different!) Creating trails where cyclists and walkers of all ages and skill levels feel safe and enjoy themselves is an admirable project.
Thanks for your comment. I considered cutting that bit out of the post - now I'm glad I didn't.
I have done some back of the envelope calculations on the cost of rail vs the cost of a truck to move tonnage. Rail appears much cheaper if the cargo is high mass where the ratio of the car weight to the cargo weight is low. ie.,Carrying coal is economical, carrying potato chips is not. Could you consider trying to find out a quantitative answer so we can see the efficiencies of the two modes of transport? Of course there are many factors in the equation such as the cost and service life, subsidies overt and hidden, wages etc. I love hearing you gush over rail transport. Take a ride on the fast rail systems of Italy and France and your gushing will go into overdrive!
I have to admit that my strengths are not in statistical analysis; my numbers would be probably about as reliable as your back-of-envelope calculations, if I were lucky! Your cargo weight consideration is instructive, though - smart enough that it's probably old news to shipping pros, whose ranks I have not breached. It seems to me that it may also hold true (to a lesser extent?) for truck-based shipping.
(Or maybe, for trains, we want to talk about the product-density, rather than weight; barrels of wine intended to be bottled near POS being more product-dense by weight than bottled wine. I just made that up, so I don't have any formulas for "product density" or anything.) This leads me to two speculations:
But all this speculation about weights and measures is not my strong suit; my strong suit is, apparently, gushing. I have indeed experienced the high-speed train systems in France (what fun!), regular trains elsewhere in Europe, and the extensive rail network in England, where I could go from a tiny town to just about anywhere else in the country so, so easily, and meet people, read, and see the countryside on the way. I never felt so free and capable.