Vicksburg bridge must be electrified.

KCS Meridian Speedway.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SPlbDzLXIY&feature=related

To take pressure off Memphis, if nothing else.

And/or electric must be able to switch to diesel.

Alan,

It reads well; a great proposal! I have no technical criticism...so much for the TOD meat grinder. Do you want grammatical/punctuation corrections as well?

No, AC is still cheaper than DC for a substation every 30 miles. I just worry as electronics get cheaper, AC is going to become a dinosaur. But not yet. Say the railroad puts wind and solar along the way. Than it will be easier to interface to DC. But one humungous project at a time I guess.

Also, the power feed line for 25kVAC is lighter, along with all associated support structure, than for 1.5kVDC - 3kVDC ... and the substations are not only more costly, but have to be put at closer intervals.

On the Sydney forum of the Australian railpage, bemoaning the failure to start the conversion from DC to AC is a recurrent theme. Its one of the big obstacles for electrification from the regional center of Newcastle to Maitland, the country town an hour rail commute up the line.

Alan, all I can say is "go ahead knock yourself out", continue the rhetoric, dream on and further encourage the cornucopians.
But, you had better get it done before the people start to move, before any economic collapse.

As usual assume BAU for the future. Even be so bold as to assume business growth.
Assume if capital is pulled from somewhere that no other department will suffer, and
Assume costs won't rise, assume construction, steel, copper and fuel costs remain steady while the job gets done. Assume a constant supply.

Assume there will be plenty of business for goods and personnel traffic to pay maintenance and wages.
Assume power generation will be continuous and low cost.
Assume we can engineer and buy our way out of any mess we get into.
We should expend all the energy we want now to build a better future for.........well who? Us, or future generations?
We should assume we know best for future generations, just as past generations knew and cared about what was best for us.

Of course, as the reality of our plight hits well and truly home, all kinds of desperate engineering feats will be posed and attempted.
Electrifying railways will be one of them.

While the cost of fuel and energy keeps rising but availability manageable the populace will continue to battle with what they have and can afford.
When shortages bite and hoarding begins, a new type of economy and political climate will emerge.
It's anyone's guess as to what life will be like then.
I assume it won't be BAU. We won't be moving billions of tons of freight around the country.
Unless it's coal.

Or as I have read before its because we'll have electric railways to be able to go on vacation, visit grandma and Disneyland.

Meeting the U.S. DOT’s forecast demand will require the Class I freight railroads
to increase their investment in infrastructure expansion. The AAR estimates that
between 2005 and 2007, Class I freight railroad capital expenditures for infrastructure
expansion averaged $1.5 billion per year. To meet the U.S. DOT’s forecast
demand for 2035, the Class I freight railroads must invest $135 billion over
the next 28 years or about $4.8 billion per year."

national_rail_freight_infrastructure_capacity_and_investment_study.pdf_

One alternative is Industrial Revenue bonds - a lower cost to the railroads and a higher cost to the US Treasury. However, a series of delays are endemic in issuing these bonds. A policy decision is needed to determine whether we should encourage these or not.

Another alternative is an US Treasury guarantees for railroad or electric utility bonds issued to support electrification and improvements to electrified rail lines. Such guarantees would use the rail lines as collateral. These bonds could be issued quickly, in volume and at reduced cost to the railroads or utilities

It would be a stretch, but Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffet's firm, could finance the electrification by themselves.

These are long lived and valuable investments. Retirement funds should find these better investments than many on their books. Or the Sovereign Investment funds (30% to Norway, 25% to Kuwait, 10% to Qatar, 35% to Dubai ?) should be an easy sale.

The sums involved over the time required are not outrageous. I would be pleased to take a 0.001% commission.

Alan

How about a bake sale?

$200+ billion per year by getting out of Iraq, $500 billion per year by eliminating subsidies to the fossil fuel industries, billions more from carbon taxes...you could build a lot of rail for that kind of money.

There is AT LEAST $200B of military spending per year being spent on advanced aircraft (1 generation better those that "won" the cold war), a 2nd new class of nuclear attack submarines (Virginia class) better than the LA Class which was (and still is) superior to any other nation's submarines, that is next to militarily useless (or really useless) for anything except political purposes (i.e. political clout in certain key electoral districts). Much of US military spending is of NO military use. NOTE that this does NOT include the spending on Iraq. The US spends MORE on military spending than the REST of the World put together. We could half our military spending and redirect it to your electric rail idea (and still reduce the deficit). What about $100B-$200B PER YEAR? Would that help?? If we could convince the US electorate that military spending on militarily useless advanced weapon's systems is MUCH LESS important than spending on building infrastructure that we need, we have a chance to mitigate some of the cataclysm from Peak Oil.

Ian

My thoughts exactly. US treasury will go belly up.
Federal USA will break up like the former USSR.
Improved national rail is as likely as single payor health care.

It's a capitalization mountain for the private railroads even the states have funding problems for small transit projects:

http://www.dullesmetro.com/info/faqs.cfm

It doesn't help that these projects become fiendishly complex with overlapping specifications. Everything winds up costing $2 billion.

An alternative is the Highway Trust Fund approach that has the rail trackage nationalized and administered by the states, with the Feds taking upon themselves the bulk of the funding requirements. In today's 'nationalize this, nationalize that ... ' environment, it might not cause a stir. The railroad companies would own and operate their equipment but not the road. Any railroad could operate on any track, and any number of railroads could exist which would dampen the tendency of the 'Big Four' towards monopoly. Even trucking companies with access to capital could get into the rail business, such as Schneider National or UPS.

The Trust Fund would add needed ROW by eminent domain which would allow for more economical routing and expansion as necessary. US railroads are grossly inadequate for anything but trunk cartage of bulk carges; the country has simply outgrown the 1930's era trackage and routes. Even with Alan Drake's plan there is the cost issues associated with real estate acquisition for power substations, access roads, modal yards and non- grade crossings. Don't forget stations. The government's eminent domain power would be the only way to move forward.

A trust fund is one way to fund and build such a system in the current environment. The fund would issue bonds for itself and no other purpose, guaranteed by the Treasury that would have a dedicated funding source, such as a gasoline tax or excise on imported petroleum. Some will complain about the subsidy, but ALL forms of transport are subsidized. The issue is more one of priorities.

The credit system is in terrible shape and more and more government projects -and even many private initiatives- will have to be incorporated into some form of trust. If the trust is initially a government creation, it can over time be taken private when the markets for equities and debt improve. (Which may take years.)

BTW, this country is not insolvent. It has a serious problem with the mis-allocation of capital. Sub- zero interest rates don't help at all! The problem is serious, but not fatal. This railroad project is affordable; a small fraction of the $400b lost to date in suspect mortgages would pay for the entire electrification project and leave a couple of hundred billion left over for all the golf courses.

Ultimately, The trunk rail corridors should all be four tracks, BTW.

The 'Big Three' automakers in Detroit should get into the street car business. I told a friend of mine that the old Packard factory could be turned into street car plant and it would make money. This was over five years ago. In ten years every middlesx city and town will have streetcars. Streetcars are fun! They are also ironic:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Electric_Railway

The high tension conductors should be placed underground. Ultimately they would be cryogenic superconductors:

http://technology.newscientist.com/article/dn11907

At one time, the major railroads in the Northeast began a complete electrification; this began with the Pennsylvania Railroad and included the B&O, the C&O, the New York Central and the New Haven Railroads. Pennsylvania RR used the famous 'GG1's:

http://www.spikesys.com/GG1/

Now, Amtrak uses the old Penn Central system, including the catenaries and substations.

I may be forgetful, but most transit systems such as the NYC subways and DC's Metro use DC voltage for power; easy to reverse the traction motors. The line roads such as Amtrak use AC power.

Cut the military budget!

I would buy bonds from BNSF for an electrification project.

I agree that getting the resources to do these things is a problem. Any plans now on the drawing boards (these are not yet even at that stage) will take years to get into the field to start. By that time, we likely will be facing an annual decline in world oil production, meaning less energy to survive on much less to pour into all the grand schemes to build an alternative infrastructure.

All projects like these initially drain energy because the investment in up front; the savings if there really is any comes dribbling in later. And everyone has their scheme, most wanting government money to fund them. Problem is the government is broke and is just getting by themselves by monetizing debt (printing up new money, diluting the value of existing money). Some, many, most ?? of these projects will actually never even work as they are planned, so there is a substantial argument that they should stand the test of being capable of gaining private funding on their own merits; efficiency is more and more important as we have fewer and fewer resources to squander.

My own pessimistic view is that we are much, much too far down the path of having squandered the planets savings account to expect anything buy less of everything; schemes to have an alternative version of life as we know it, I think are more in the dream department.

Funding?

There is discussion of perhaps releasing limited amounts of the SPR.

If 200,000 barrels/day were being released from the SPR, that is $25 million+ per day (assuming some fall back from $140+ plus costs of operating SPR). That $25 million translates into about $10 billion per year. Something like 20 percent of that for the federal portion of helping spark electrification of rail? Does that $2 billion start to influence things?

If the US has the slack production capacity, then the only real financial constraint is financing the import bill ... and that is a pure finance question, because in terms of the external balances, this is self-funding ... it saves far more in imports than it will ever cost.

If private markets cannot come up with the finance, then the government can do so. Its not like a major investment in a massive productivity gain during a time of recession is going to be inflationary!

Well chimp, we have a chump in the white house who has had no trouble spending a trillion invading a foreign country for no discernible benefit so far. could we not spend a trillion to save our transport system?

In greater detail, the trolley wire would have transformers every 20 to 30 miles to the HV AC.

HV AC has definite limits in transmission distance before the waveform deforms from capacitance, etc. and little usable power is left. Interfacing with loads (cities & towns) and especially generating plants along the way can extend this range. (I am trying to keep this accessible).

It is my understanding that modern DC rectifiers can supply reactive power, which can help reform AC power that has been transmitted a long distance. Thus I said that DC rectifiers would be every 200 to 500 miles to interface with the HV AC lines.

I propose trolley wire only (transformers supplied by local power), trolley + HVAC (which supplies the trolley voltage & power via the transformers) and trolley + HV AC + HV DC. Which of the three "depends" upon local conditions and business decisions.

I hope this clarifies my concept,

Alan