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Wanted: A high-speed freight and passenger rail system
By Gil Carmichael
The US has to radically change the way people and cargo are transported
Gil Carmichael, founding chairman of the board of directors of the Intermodal Transportation Institute at the University of Denver, reflects on what needs to done by the government in the US to avert future transport crises
Like President Barack Obama, a growing number of American people have a vision of a high-speed rail, intercity passenger and freight transportation infrastructure system in the US. It is a logical and necessary next step forward from President Dwight Eisenhower's Interstate Highway System of the 1950s; but proponents have long had a hard time being heard, until recently.
Many of us remember October 1973, when the Arab oil embargo created our first energy crisis. Long waiting lines at service stations formed and many stations turned off their lights on the Interstate. They were out of gas!
Americans woke up and realised that we had built a mobility system on a finite fossil fuel. By 1974, people were abandoning their 4,000-pound, eight-cylinder, six-MPG Buicks and lining up to buy a VW rabbit diesel.
We started to "think small'' and solar and wind energies were being discussed. But by the late 1970s we were seemingly discovering oil under every polar bear in the Arctic. The price of a barrel of oil then went from US$35 back down to $9-$12, and by the middle 1980s we were once again well on our way to preferring gas-guzzling muscle cars, such as SUVs, 400HP V8s, and $70,000 trucks! Fat City was the way to go - until last year.
So where are we today? The truly big energy crisis has occurred. Oil rose to $140 plus per barrel and gasoline/diesel went to $5 per gallon. Oil is down now to about $72 per barrel, as are gas-per-gallon prices, but our airlines have been clobbered by high fuel prices, our Big Three car manufacturers are shattered and the economy is on some sort of life support.
It is quite possible that gas, diesel, and jet fuel prices will go back up in the near future as long as we are held hostage by our dependence on foreign oil and unpredictable supplies, consumer demand, and fluctuating prices. Congress cannot keep prices reduced by legislation. Global economic chaos would result if just one major oil-producing nation has some sort of calamity.
We can no longer afford the lavishness of the past. As soon as possible, the US has got to radically change the way people and freight move in order to avoid long-term economic decline.
We must build "Interstate 2''. It really should be 30,000 miles of high-speed rail and use the huge, wide, existing - and paid for - rail rights of way in partnership with private freight railroads and the states.
The private railroads should be given their 25 percent investment tax credit to encourage them to upgrade and double and triple-track their main lines, to increase speeds and double freight capacity. States should build or lease high-speed tracks to run new, modern, intermodal freight and passenger trains.
So intermodal and high-speed passenger rail visionaries have finally been heard by a young, new President who has earmarked $14.3 billion to be spent on high-speed rail corridors in the next five years, launching Phase I of this century's most important infrastructure programme.
This huge project puts America on the way to creating an "ethical'' intermodal freight and passenger transportation network. We can electrify it by mid-century. It will then be an "ethical, sustainable'' system.
We must create "Interstate 2'', a high-speed rail network reconnecting our central cities, major airports, and ports - recapturing the vital role of the intercity transit system.
We must build a 21st century intermodal transportation system using the "steel wheel and steel rail'' as the fundamental element of this system. Early in this century we can electrify all of North American rail, providing a new source of energy for our transportation system.
We have started. This is Phase I - $14.3 billion of funding and 13 federally designated, high-speed rail corridors.
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