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[quote user="HarveyK400"]The reasons given for railroads not electrifying have been the increased long-term debt load for such a massive undertaking and the uncertainties of the business over a span of time.  The sticking point from what has been written seemed to be that the debt load would sap short-tern profits despite anticipated future savings in the cases for the BNSF and UP studies.  Electrification was beneficial; just not soon enough.  Government assistance for electrification, justified on monetized public benefits, could overcome the obstacles of private financing and risk with new legislation to enable public-private partnerships. [/quote] Harvey, I have a couple of thoughts on this. If railroads found that their electrification now made solid economic sense, private capital would flow to the task, and so far, that is not happening.  The government may be willing to take a higher risk on financing electrification, but fundamentally, they bear no financial risk.  As public sector, they cannot fail financially.  So if their investment in electrification fails to return sufficiently in purely economic terms, we all pay the price.   <?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /><o:p></o:p> However, beyond that, the government participation, as defined by its advocates, is motivated by objectives other than rail efficiency providing revenue return on investment.  Their larger objective is to stop using oil and replace it with wind energy.  While electrification is supposed to lower operating costs, that may not be the case at all when electrifying with wind energy.  For that matter, businesses may end up with higher costs arising from switching from time-sensitive trucking to slower service by rail, even though rail is more energy efficient.  If they don’t want to switch to rail, the government may impose taxes as an incentive to switch.  Switching from truck to rail is part of the plan to replace oil.   Therefore, despite the possible outcome of higher costs, the larger goal of a non-oil, renewable energy economy will have been met.  Then, from the government’s point of view, the public investment will have paid off, even though we may all end up paying more for having met that objective than we would have if the objective not been pursued.  So, in those terms, electrifying the railroads with government participation may just amount to another energy tax for all of us in the name of reducing greenhouse gases.  The railroad themselves may actually lose business because of electrification increasing their cost rather than lowering it, and still the non-oil objective will have been met.
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