Dear Tim:
And again that doesn't include all the costs for doubling the line, and more importantly doubling the main lines would provide transportation to only a small fraction of the places that the new road construction each year would allow people to access.
That figure (about $33 billion IIRC) made all mainline track doubled that is currently single track which is most of it. In 2001, $154 billion was used for highways both repair and new construction. $8 million is what it costs to build 1 mile of 4 lane rural interstate ( dot.state.fl.us ) in Florida (here in Wisconsin it is higher due to shorter construction year and many freeze/thaw cycles per year). $12 million for 4 lane urban interstate. So for $33 billion, you could pay for about 4K miles of rural Interstate. Per one mile of 110MPH capable track including signaling is $2-3 million. For $33 billion thats 13K track miles or 3.25 times the miles of what 4 lane Interstate gets. Now if you double track that (remember the above $33 billion just adds one more track to an existing track), you still get 6.5K miles of new double track main line. See: midwesthsr.org
Also 4 lane 2 each way of Interstate can handle 3600 cars per hour at an average of 1.5 persons per car which yields 5400 people each way. With 2 miles between 110 MPH 1 mile trains, you get 36 trains each having 58 88' cars. At 80 people per car (most commuter are single deck, but Amtrak uses mostly double deck on their long distance trains), you get about 167K people each way. Thats over 30 times what the highway will support. And maintenance is about $500K every 30-50 years per double track mile, far less than Interstate repaving costs ($1.2-1.4 million per mile of 4 lane Interstate in Florida) every 15 years (10 years in Wisconsin at higher cost). Over 100 years that is $9 million for (assuming flat land and no bridges) maintenance for Interstates and $1.25 million for double track rail.
And just getting the long distance heavy trucks off the interstate will decrease road damage by 1/3 to 2/3rds allowing a cut of maintenance costs of $3 to 6 million per mile every 100 years. There are about 46,700 miles of interstates in the country. That would put savings at $1.4 to 2.8 billion a year just in maintenance costs alone. The cost to place a single 110MPH track for every Interstate mile, is $100 billion. There is 70K miles of Class I track (heaviest freight duty main line). The estimated cost to double track it all is $71 billion in 2001 (plus improvements in stations, signaling, road crossings, etc.). ( larouchepub.com )
In short, 50% more miles than the Interstate system. That would bring it up to 79MPH capable. $140 billion would upgrade it to double track 110MPH. About 90% of one year's national highway funding to go 50% more places than the Interstate. I am not advocating that all highways be subsituted, just the Interstate between cities. Because that would get the most bang for the buck and the greatest reduction in oil use per dollar invested.
Not many people commute 2.8 hours. Examples of such long commutes aren't fictional, but they aren't very relevant to the typical commuter.
Tell that to people who commute by car in Chicago, New York, Atlanta, Boston, San Francisco Bay area or the most typical, LA. BTW, where are you and how far and how much time does it take for your commute? In Milwaukee, the typical commute is between 25 and 35 minutes (15 miles) depending if you have to go through the Zoo and/or Marquette interchanges, or not, the latter of which is under construction (3 year replacement with safety improvements).
Even with trucking I doubt long distance is greater than 10% of the total of all miles driven. Since you where talking about 10% of long distance highway use, that probably means less than 1% of total miles driven.
From: fhwa.dot.gov ,
45.6 billion miles of semi truck travel occured on rural Interstates compared to 694 billion miles for all vehicles. Assuming this was mostly intercity long distance hauling (I didn't include 23.8 million semi urban miles traveled), that is 6.6% of all vehicle miles traveled. Now if we assume that we could get rid of 90% of it at 7MPG, thats 41.0 billion semi truck miles, about 5.9 billion gallons saved, 147 million barrels of oil saved or 400K barrels a day. Thats 2.5% of all oil imported into the US. It has been stated elsewhere that semi trucks damage the road equivalent to 40 cars. Thats 1.64 trillion car miles of damage per year. Since cars traveled only 598 billion miles (rural + urban) that means that long distance semi trucks cause 2.75 times the damage to the Interstates that cars did.
Again assuming long distance cars are about 50% of rural Interstate travel, that means that 112 billion miles were traveled by long distance intercity cars. Reducing that by 50% and assuming 25MPG (there are enough lead foots out there that get quite a bit lower than EPA highway that fleet wide real MPG takes a dive from the CAFE standard mandated 25.5 MPG), we get 56 billion miles, 2.24 billion gallons, 56 million barrels or 153K barrels a day saved. Thats about 1% of the oil imports on any given day. As you can see, long distance semi trucks use more fuel than long distance intercity cars (1.5 times as much).
I'm not sure whether your just talking about Milwaukee or all cities. If your freeways covering most cities, then the assertion that most of them go along old trolley routes is just false. If your talking about Milwaukee only, well then it might be true, but I have some doubt, esp. if you mean most of the miles of the freeway system, not just some part of most of the freeways.
Since I talked about WEPCO, I meant Milwaukee, WI and its suburbs, of course. But as you see from above, there are 50% more Class I track (single, double or more) main line miles than Interstate miles.
I never made any such contention. Both light and heavy rail do go in to the suburbs. What they can't do is cover all the various suburb to suburb commutes.
Going by Chicago and CTA, you can go from suburb to suburb using rail. And bus allows you to go within each suburb, so a suburb to suburb can be bus, rail, rail and bus in general. Currently there are no rail rings out in the suburb ring. Bus, rail, bus would be more likely in the outer suburb rings with bus and bus being more likely for adjacent suburb commutes. Once a ring got a lot of passengers which use a lot of buses at a range of given loop distances, it is then likely to be upgraded to rail to save time, money and wear & tear. Besides going between Midway and O'Hare airports for example takes only 60 minutes on Metra, 70 minutes on CTA or 120 minutes or more by bus during rush periods. The bus takes 55 minutes during normal hours.
The real problem in Chicago is the sheer number of controlled intersections you must pass through to get anywhere. On a typical suburb to suburb route, you pass controlled intersections every 1/4 mile. And the lights are not synchronized for steady travel and back up quite severly during rush periods. It might take two or three light cycles to get through some on the main arteries. That's 5-10 minutes a mile or 6-12MPH. So going 25 miles between suburbs could take you 2 to 4 hours.
Pete |
