Do We Need More Highways?
Long term, we're running out of road & rail capacity
JIM WINSOR
EXECUTIVE EDITOR
Long term, the experts say we're running out of both highway and rail capacity but, surprisingly, some want to put more freight on ships and barges.
Right now we all agree the U.S. economy is largely in recession. In trucking, this translates to reduced freight tonnage, intercity ton-miles and most other measurements, too. Railroad intermodal tonnage is soft, too, and piggyback trailers and containers have been the major growth areas for the rails, plus coal in the bulk products markets.
So what does all this have to do with the trucking industry? Actually, quite a bit when you try to look into the future transportation needs of the U.S. Adding freight capacity isn't simply buying more trucks and trailers. In some markets, we already have highway gridlock, especially in our larger metropolitan centers. It's in these areas where we could use more road capacity, but that seems less likely every year.
Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta in a May 4 speech said: "Our landside transportation system is already stressed to the limit, and currently planned infrastructure improvements and expansion can not possibly meet escalating demand ... There are obvious limits to how much we can increase the capacity of Interstates and rail lines. The waterborne option, by contrast, has underutilized capacity."
What the Secretary is saying is that long-term, the U.S. may need to move a lot more freight by water; that U.S. ports need to be upgraded to handle much greater intermodal freight transfer from ship, to rail, to truck and vice versa.
The likelihood of significant highway expansion where we need it most gets dimmer every year. California governor Gray Davis said just this past August that his state is through building new highways. In the meantime, California adopted a $10-billion 20-year plan to increase passenger and freight rail, especially in the LA/Long Beach Alameda corridor which serves those two giant West Coast ports where containers start their land travel.
On the East Coast, it is generally conceded that I-81, the major north-south Interstate has already reached its truck capacity in sections of Virginia and Maryland. One of the key questions in this area the politicians must deal with is whether the Norfolk Southern railroad which parallels I-81 should be refurbished (at taxpayers expense) so as to handle more and faster intermodal trains, and thus take freight off the I-81 corridor. Or, should lanes be added to increase this road's capacity? And if so, all highway users through the Highway Trust Fund, would foot the bill.
In the meantime, railroad capacity is severely limited on a number of single-track main lines because of inadequate passing tracks, often more than a mile long to accommodate long freight trains. Rail experts say it costs $1-2 million each to build each siding and this is a huge investment even for well-heeled railroads.
But the rails are trying new things to build new business. Writer Bill Stephens in the November issue of Trains magazine, reported on an express train service jointly operated by Union Pacific and CSX railroads to move huge quantities of carrots in rail reefer cars (not piggyback) from California's San Joaquin Valley near Bakersfield to the Hunts Point Terminal market in the Bronx (NYC). Each rail reefer car holds 120,000 pounds of carrots which equates to three reefer tractor trailers. Eighty-five-car trains of fresh carrots and other western-grown veggies now run coast-to-coast with UP locomotives the whole way and stop only for refueling and crew changes.
The train is scheduled to run from Fresno, Calif. to Chicago in 99.5 hours and Chicago to NYC in 66 hours. The train seldom is able to maintain this schedule, which by trucking standards, is rather slow. But considering that 98% of California's vegetables leave the state by truck, the railroad's new Express Lane service is a small but significant penetration into an almost all-truck market. And at 120,000 pounds per rail car and 85 cars to a train, that's approximately 255 reefer semis not making the coast-to-coast run ... even though each could make it in less than half the time of the Express Lane train.
