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Mac, You are absolutely wrong regarding the alleged effect the Snake River Dams had on the CSP. The advent of barge shipping allowed for the implementation of short haul grain shuttles, e.g. better utilization of existing hoppers. CSP did start such a short haul shuttle from the Camas Prairie to the Port of Lewiston in the 1980's. BN on the other hand arbitrarily shut down the Moscow Arrow branch (after spending quite a bit to rehab the entire line) for the sole purpose of preventing such a shuttle, severely diminishing the value of the Palouse lines to the point of now the State of Washington had to buy them to maintain rail service, while millions of bushels of grain are carried by trucks to the barge ports. Both BN and UP shortly thereafter all but gave up on hauling grain from Eastern Washington to the Coast, regardless of whether it originated on lines with barge competition or not. See the piece by Bruce Kelly on Eastern Washington railroads from TRAINS back in the late 1990's to confirm this. The fact is that the majority of loads on the CSP were and are wood products related, not grain, and what grain moved before by rail is still moving by rail. The region experienced an increase in grain coming into the valley from outside the area when the waterway came to fruition, and some of that increase was a benefit to CSP. To suggest that barge shipping was the cause of rail retrenchment in the area makes one hard pressed to explain the retrenchment of raillines in other areas not served by barge competition. The fact is, rail retrechment in Southeastern Washington would have happed barge lines or not, and the area's shippers were given a lifeline for continuity with the begining of barge shipping. To blaim such abandoments on the dams is just laughable. The barges are best at carrying grain, they are not used for transport of wood products, unless you count containerization. And the containerization would never had happened without the barge lines and the formation of the Port of Lewiston. The fact is the advent of barge shipping allowed a golden opportunity for CSP to increase carloadings out of the LC valley. The Port tried to work with BN for intermodal service to the Sound, but the service was so sloppy that the main customer for container movements switched entirely to COB. It actually took longer to move a container by rail to Seattle than by barge to Portland! To suggest that the Moscow Arrow line was just sitting their with no one using it is a complete denial of the fact that BN would not LET anyone use it! The ports tried again and again to get BN to either reopen the line or sell it, but BN being the poster child of Class I corruption never even met with port officials to discuss the thing. MRL made a bid for it, but BN put the kibbosh on that since they hold MRL by the proverbial testicles. Finally, parts of the line were flooded out, not enough to take it completely out of service, but enough to allow Idaho's DOT to force abandonment of certain portions so they could expand Highway 3 in the Potlach River canyon. As I pointed out in other threads, IDOT claimed it would take $2.5 million to rehab the line ("not cost effective"), and now they have spent 10 times that much to turn much of the former right of way into a paved (and constantly deserted) pedestrian trail. BTW, I never said rates should be mileage based in relation to the L-M rail link. Rather, it is appropriate to associate costs with mileage. What I pointed out is that such a link would reduce rail mileage 100 miles Billings to Portland (200 miles of reduction over the Shelby route), would provide the necessary redundancy and dispersion for the Northern Tier rail corridor to the current funnelling of all rail traffic through Spokane, would allow for rail to barge transload that would reduce congestion on the Gorge lines and allow modal differentiation to a lower cost method (which could then be passed on to the shippers, and provide the morally due federal mitigation to a hard hit region for the whole phony dam breaching scam to begin with. All the dam breaching scare did was turn away several industrial investment plans in the LC valley that would have resulted in both traffic for the barge lines and the railroads. UP and BN's Northwest management only ended up slitting their own throats in the process. What I also pointed out is that reducing mileage and introducing line dispersion has several cost savings on high maintenance equipment such as grain hoppers, a cost savings by reduced fuel useage via the mileage savings, a cost savings on eliminating one whole crew district, and a reduction in the likelyhood of high value intermodal being disrupted by problems on the line due to low value train congestion or destructive disruptions. The added potential savings of transloading low margin commodities to barge is just icing. Just because BNSF charges a rate that incrementally shrinks with added distance is not germain to modern transportation theory when applied to differentiation of co-owned modal forms. BNSF could just as well charge a Midwest to Portland rate that is slightly lower overall than current but could be increased on the rail portion, and make up the difference on the barge rates to actually add to the bottom line. If BNSF acted like a true transportation company and owned both a rail and barge division, they could do this. The idea of "simply adding capacity" to existing lines denies the fundamentals of dispersion of vital corridors to prevent economic hardship due to disruptions "funnelled" traffic. Adding capacity to existing lines is redundant, but if something happens to the parallel line, that added capacity is also taken out. Adding capacity also denies the need to differentiate between time sensitive cargos and heavy haul cargos, in which the lines are designed and signalled for their corresponding speed and axle loading concerns. In case you hadn't noticed, such line differentiation already exists between Spokane and the Sound, with intermodal going over Stevens while grain goes down the Gorge then up I-5. If differentiation wasn't a factor and adding capacity to existing lines was the anwer, then all grain and intermodal bound for the Sound would use Stevens with a few extra sidings thrown in. What strikes me as most absurd is you advocacy of taking out the dams while opposing adding new rail capacity via the L-M rail link. Taking out the dams would cost billions, would eliminate 3000 megawatts of low cost energy generation, would disrupt a vital transportation lifeline to the area, would destroy the region's economy, and most astonishing of all would be money spent to denegrate the U.S. infrastructure. The L-M rail link would cost a fraction of that, would be adding transportation capacity rather than detracting from the nation's best interests, would allow for better transmodal syncronicity, would encourage economic growth, would enhance the export infrastructure of the U.S., would provide a fail safe redundancy to the current Northern Tier rail network, would benefit BNSF, MRL, and any other transportation company with ambitions for the area, and could be done so without giving taxpayer money directly to a monopolistic entity due to the open access status of the line. You can lead BNSF to water, but you cannot make it drink.
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