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arbfbe, Your figures would suggest over 2,000 gross ton/miles per gallon! (What is the net?) Do you have metered figures to back that up? Even if true (and it is possible since it is downgrade from Missoula to Spokane), it is apparent that the railroad is not passing these savings onto the Montana grain shipper, otherwise the current long haul grain trucking business between Lewiston and Montana would not exist. The figures I am using come from the Iowa Grain Quality Initiative <http://www.extension.iastate.edu/Pages/grain/publications/buspub/baumel01.html> which shows 437 ton/miles for West Coast moves and 640 ton/miles for New Orleans moves. The 1500 net ton/miles for barges on the Columbia Snake River waterway come from metered fuel use statictics provided by Foss Maritime at my request. Both the latter and the former data sets are several years old, and it can be safely assumed that fuel efficiency has increased since then for both modes. If indeed fuel consumption for unit trains is lower than that for barges, then there would be no fuel savings via a rail to barge transload. Common sense would dictate that fuel use for barges on the Columbia-Snake River Waterway will still be lower than that for unit grain trains, since efficiency technologies are generally available to both modes. It is also useful to think in terms of energy use, and the energy used to maintain a prime railroad bed is significantly higher than that used to maintain a waterway. There is still a vastly greater savings of barge over rail in terms of maintenance and captital costs of grain moving units. There is also a savings currently inherent in that capacity is abundant on the river system, while the rail system is nearing capacity limits. Then again, issues of rail car availability would be ameliorated with a rail to barge transload since the cycle times for the rail segment would be reduced. All these factors would have to be analyzed for a proper consensus of whether rail/barge intermodalism would be viable. The fact that rail to barge transload already exist in the PNW between shortline operators and the barge lines is further evidence that such could work on a larger scale. The shipping portion of the C of E budget is very small, most of it goes to maintenance of the hydropower system and the subsidy of commercial and tribal fisheries. The barge lines do pay a user fee to use the navigation system, while recreational users do not, thus the barge lines are subsidizing the recreational users of the locks. Lastly, let's not forget that the entire MRL system came about due to some of the largest land grants ever commissioned by the feds. If not for the land grants, the current MRL alignment would not even exist. If land grants were appropriate for past rail construction, why are they not appropriate for new rail construction today? Indeed, is it not appropriate that the feds continue to provide the necessary incentives to constantly enhance it's transportation infrastructure, whatever form it entails?
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