Edit post

Edit your reply below.

Post Body
Enter your post below.
[quote]QUOTE: Originally posted by greyhounds [quote]QUOTE: Originally posted by Leon Silverman These discussions compare the actions of the Milwaukee Railroad with various European railroads. Milwaukee financed, built, and ultimately discarded electrication as a private corporation. Correct me if I am wrong, but weren't the European railroad electrification financed and built by Government Organizations, equivalent to Britrak, Polandtrak, Germantrak, etc.? The fact that it might take a railroad like Union Pacific ten years to realize a positive return on investment means that electrication in the USA could only be financed by the US government. Considering our current preoccupation with the war on terror and hurricane recovery efforts, this is not likely to happen no matter what the economics are, even if you could claim it would ultimately eliminate our dependency on oil imports. [/quote] No, we haven't shut down the country to repair huricane damage and fight the war. The O'Hare expansion got the go ahead, only to be stopped in court. But the Government was ready to act. Same with a lot of highway projects. The Interstate Highway System was constructed at the height of the Cold War. We can do more than one thing at a time. Mainline freight electrification in the US would produce tremendous benifits - think of what would happen to the price of diesel fuel if the railroads didn't need near as much - but the risks of the huge capital costs have to be mitigated. There is a role for the government here in mitigating the risks. How to structure this is an interesting question. The government can't assume all the risks or money will be wasted. And the taxpayers should get their money back. But expecting a private company to go into a negative cash flow situation for a decade is unrealistic. And any govt funds would include "strings" - these must be minimized. The railroads don't want to become puppets on those strings. Right now, I don't have a clue as to how such a thing shold be structured - but it sure would be good if those perisables out of California (half of what is consumed in the US, not to mention Canada) could ride in the reefer units drawing power from the overhead wire instead of small diesel gen sets. And a train going downhill in dynamic could feed power to a train going uphill instead of wasting the energy, and, and, and!! [/quote] Hmmm. Government participation in rail infrastructure modernization? We covered that in the Open Access thread. Chalk up another for OA!
Tags (Optional)
Tags are keywords that get attached to your post. They are used to categorize your submission and make it easier to search for. To add tags to your post type a tag into the box below and click the "Add Tag" button.
Add Tag