Bill Stephens’ latest blog post highlights a huge problem looming for rail frieght. Railroads have long held the advantage of being more environmentally friendly, but as trucks achieve zero-emissions, this will no longer be the case.
Paradoxically, when trucks become zero-emissions sooner than rail, rail freight will be more environmentally harmful than trucking. Even if rail achieves zero-emissions at the same time as trucking, shippers who now use rail to reduce environmental impact will no longer have a reason to do so and will likely return to road freight.
Unfortunately, this is another losing battle in the seemingly futile struggle against trucking. I am hoping for the best, but I am not holding my breath.
A lot of electricity will continue to be produced by means that create air pollution, even as coal falls by the wayside. So until all the natural gas power plants and such are shuttered, rail still wins where air quality is concerned as long as they keep pace with progress.
And there’s also an environmental cost for transportation past just air pollution. Safe to say that a busy CTC signaled single track mainline with regular passing sidings takes up a lot less land for instance than the addition of freeway lanes to accomodate substantial growth in freight traffic. And outside of major grain lines, probably kills a lot fewer animals and birds than regular vehicle traffic as well.
And even clean electricity has substantial issues. The backlash against wind turbines for instance due to their noise, decreased property values for nearby residences, bird strikes, and the aesthetic blight quite a few people view them as in regions that often are reliant on their natural beauty to drive tourism.
And hydro dams for another example are rife with environmental issues and such, despite being non-polluting sources of electricity. In fact there’s a lot of push back in recent years against them, even at a time when the fight has intensified to clean up our air.
It’s a problem though for sure, but I believe rail still will hold a narrower lead as the more environmentally friendly mode for the transport of bulk cargo over long distances.
Shippers use rail over trucking because rail is lower cost. Why would they switch to trucking at a higher cost just because trucking is more environmentally friendly?
I was using this as an example. Some shipers tout the environmental advantages of their use of rail. This would no longer be the case when trucks go zero-emissions.
There is already much being made of the residual effects of wind and solar power. Landfills are seeing used wind components, and I recently saw a similar warning for solar components. This is not far removed from nuclear power, where the spent fuel must be carefully disposed of due to radioactivity that will persist for generations.
As was mentioned, the building of many of the “green” power sources isn’t green at all.
All things being equal, shippers would use the more environmentally friendly option for shipping. But all things aren’t equal. For bulk goods shipped over long distances, railroads will still be the less expensive way to ship for a lot of years to come.
One way or another, the power companies will get their bite. And considering that recharging a vehicle will be a demand issue (especially larger vehicles), the power suppliers will charge demand prices.
I’d be interested to know how much it will cost for a fill-up on one of those electric self driving trucks…
I have no fear that the ‘electrical fill up’ will cost very nearly +/- the present cost of hydrocarbon based fuels. The economy does not run on free lunches.
While truck builders may have more money to do the R&D to make effficient trucks, they have more work to do to make rubber tired vehicles more efficient. I would guess that anything they develope in energy efficiency could be scaled up to rail. Rail would convert to the new technology as fast as the left steam by he wayside.
I remember going on a tour of the TVA’s Raccoon Mountain pumped storage facility near Chattanooga many years ago. Since power plants are most efficient when run continually, they use the excess capacity at night to pump water to the reservoir at the top of the mountain. Then, when they have peak demand during the day, they release the water into the turbines to produce power. I guess with all these electric vehicles charging at night, there goes the excess capacity…
I understand Apple has been developing a new type of battery that may be a step forward environmentally. Bill Gates has backed the company involved financially. I think VW is involved, too.
I’ve wondered why the enviros haven’t stumbled upon the environmental impact of tires and braking. A whole new source of handwringing.
Interesting, where is all the electricity going to come from? TMI in PA was shutdown, gone, so has a number of other nuke plants. Coal fire plants have several states pointing legislative guns to there heads, wind power is only available 1/3 of the time (other times the wind don’t blow or blows too hard or fire is burning the turbin down), and I like to see how much output from solar plants there is on a cloudy moonless night, or when it snows.
I am still waiting for answers beside wind and solar. Maybe Tesla will come out with mega-watt batteries? Or waiting for the jump as predicted by Robert Heinlein with the invention of the Ship Stone? (Green Hills of Earth)
Seeing as this forum is an older crowd, I wonder if ttrraaffiicc realizes that we’ll all be dead and gone before any of his pronouncements become widespread (if they ever do) and therefore don’t really care?
I had a over 51 year career with CSX and its predecessors. Virtually every location I EVER worked in those 51 years either no longer physically exist or if they do exist they no longer exist as CSX owned and/or operated property.
The various towers and interlockings are gone. Of the various office building settings I worked, if the buildings still exist they no longer have CSX as a tenant. The exceptions are the CSX Building on Water Street in Jacksonville and the Dufford Operations Center also in Jacksonville.
There are a lot of people “out there” who have no idea where the things they use come from. Electricity comes out of a plug on the wall, their food comes from a supermarket, the list goes on.
The problem is that there are several respects where rail does not scale well to preserve marginal ‘fuel savings’. In particular this relates to the issue of tare weight – no true lightweight train has really succeeded, including the light four-wheel TOFC/COFC underframes or HPIT. There are a number of reasonably practical Class 8 size trucks that are said to get get upward of 12-14mpg – a good battery-electric “equivalent cost per kWh” probably better as long as people believe enough in the electricity fairy. At those levels the tare weight necessary to eliminate things like stringlining becomes a factor. There is relatively less concern with longer doubles or potentially Australian-style road trains should those become “technologically enabled” by evolving work in autonomous assistance and then legalized in some sectors. While technically the friction between wheel and rail is still lower, other factors may render this less important to shippers – such as longer railborne distance or time or multiple runs to produce efficient last-mile delivery.
I don’t see very many markets where ‘boutique’ delivery of typical loose-car rail vehicles will be price-competitive with last-mile intermodal trucking, whether the ‘switcher’ can be made autonomous or not. And I worry that to the extent it can be made to be cost-competitive, it will become less safe to those exposed to it.
Change is hard for many to accept. Backshop is probably correct that it is harder for the elderly but it is not limited to that crowd. As in earlier days, they will rationalize many obstacles to progress and harken back to mythical golden eras. However, some of us see change as needed and inevitable.