Carolyn Feibel has a great piece in the Chronicle on freight rail. Not only does it take a big big picture look at transportation — which doesn’t happen very often — but it focuses on freight, not people.

Where ever you are, look around. We are all outnumbered by stuff: food, clothes, gadgets, appliances, furniture, building materials. And while that stuff doesn’t travel as often as we do, it all had to get to us. And there’s more stuff moving behind the scenes to make our lives possible: a lot the electricity that’s keeping this computer running comes from coal, and that coal had to get to Fort Bend from Wyoming somehow.

So moving stuff is as important a part of our transportation system as moving people. But look at the comments on the Chronicle web site: light rail, high speed maglev, commuter rail. Invariably the conversation turns to moving people. Our transportation planners and policymakers are the same way. Freight rail was virtually ignored — except as an obstacle for commuters or an opportunity for rail transit — for 50 years. We have a sophisticated model that estimates how people travel to evaluate highway and transit projects, but no such model for freight (A bit of good news, though: stimulus funds are going to a regional goods movement study, and HGAC is now seeking a firm to do that work.) We don’t even know how many trucks use which road. With that lack of data, freight is sidelined to an appendix in the regional transportation plan. But look around: our roads are full of trucks, our tracks are crowded with trains, and the port keep growing. We can’t figure out our transportation system without understanding freight.

And while we’re speaking of the stuff that sustains our lives, I should plug Cite 79, which will be going out to Rice Design Alliance members and to bookstores including Brazos, Issues, and the MFAH soon. It’s about the city as a machine and the often hidden infrastructure that keeps it running. We have maps of sewage, water supply, and landfills, an inside look at a nuclear power plant, a tour of the dispatch center that controls Houston’s trains, and a history of pipelines.

And, yes, Cite is part of the reason this blogs’ been quiet: sometimes, I write online; sometimes I write for Cite; sometimes I make powerpoints (i.e. two hours on Texas transit for a UH architecture class this afternoon.) I can’t usually do all of them. Expect to see more here again soon. Meanwhile, make your own content in our forums.

You’re on Cajon Pass, in the mountains that separate the Los Angeles Basin from the high desert. On a hillside in the distance, big rigs are grinding up I-15. But you’re about to see a lot more trucks on the tracks in front of you. A train is approaching: 4 locomotives pulling 100 truck trailers, belonging to many of America’s biggest trucking firms, in between. And right behind it is another, this one with 250 shipping containers. The two rail lines in this pass combine to carry 100 trains a day. The majority of them are carrying trucks.

What you’re seeing here is the western end of one of the world’s greatest railroad lines, BNSF’s “Transcon.” It links San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Phoenix to Texas, the Midwest, and the East. Where all those traffic streams combine, across Arizona and New Mexico, the line carries 100,000 containers and truck trailers a day. That’s as many as travel by truck on I-40, which runs alongside. All that cargo started its trip by truck and will finish its trip by truck. In addition, the railroad carries another 50,000 trucks worth of freight in tanks cats, flat cars, hoppers, and boxcars. This is an interstate – with a difference. And it’s only one one of two major transcontinental rail lines across Arizona; the other, operated by Union Pacific, links the same places and is similarly busy.

Over the past decade, railroads have been steadily picking up market share from trucks: in 1996, they carried 33% of U.S. ton-miles; in 2005, they carried 38% (pdf). The Transcon saw a 50% increase in rail freight from 1994 to 2004. And this gain in market share has come despite that fact that the railroad was raising its prices.

Trains are benefiting from two major efficiencies: energy and manpower. Because steel wheels on steel rails have less friction that rubber tires on a concrete road, and because a 4,400 horsepower engine is more efficient than a 500 horsepower one, trains are much more fuel efficient than trucks. A train can move a ton of freight 400 miles on a gallon of fuel; a truck can do only 130. Every time the price of fuel goes up, railroads look better. And when the price of labor goes up, railroads look better, too. That train with 200 containers requires a 2-person crew in place of 200 truck drivers. And drivers have been harder to find lately – few people want the life of a long distance trucker.

Meanwhile, railroads have overcome some of their natural disadvantages. By moving traffic in trailers and containers, they don’t need to maintain a spur track to every industry; they can concentrate their traffic on a few main lines. U.S. railroads have 1/3 of the track they did in 1920 but carry 3 times as much freight (pdf). And every shipper in the United States is a potential rail customer; in fact, since most trucking firms use rail as an integral part of their networks, many shippers are using rail without knowing it. Likely, so are you: the biggest railroad customer in the United States is UPS.

But railroads have one huge disadvantage, courtesy of the government. Those trucks on the interstates are being heavily subsidized. One 18-wheeler does as much damage to the highway as 50,000 cars, but it pays only as much fuel tax as 5 cars. That does not even take into account the fact that building highways with clearances, lane widths, grades, and curves to accommodate trucks likely adds a third to the cost of a automobile-only highway. The mainline railroads, meanwhile, get no taxpayer support to maintain their tracks; in fact, they have to pay property tax on them.

The truck subsidy distorts the market in two significant ways. One is that it favors one mode over another. Rail is inherently more economically efficient – the fact that it’s taking traffic from trucks even with the deck stacked against it proves it. Were the playing field level, trains would carry more, and the overall cost of moving goods would decrease. The other distortion is that, by making transport artificially cheap, we’re encouraging firms to do more of it. The loss of industrial production in the United States can be blamed directly on cheap transport: a $1 widget can be shipped halfway around the globe so cheaply that we can make it in China for use in New Jersey. If shippers had to pay the actual price of transport, they would shift supply chains, production, and distribution to be more efficient, and, once again, the overall cost of moving goods would decrease.

Railroads have been investing in improving their infrastructure to increase capacity. Cajon just got a 16 mile long third track at a cost of $90 million. That added as much capacity as two freeway lanes at less cost (pdf). But while those freeways lanes would be funded by the taxpayer, the railroad had to pay for its additional track itself, and as long as we subsidize its competition, the amount of money available to do that will be insufficient to meet the need.

Libertarian think tanks like the Reason Foundation are calling (pdf) for the government to create a network of transcontinental tolls roads to carry truck traffic. But they’re missing something: those toll roads already exist, and they’re maintained and operated by private enterprise without taxpayer help. They just don’t have any pavement.

For more pictures from Cajon, see my gallery.

On Friday, the Federal Railroad Administration comes to town with a high speed rail workshop.

Texas is surely one of the top five high speed rail prospects in the county. Houston, Austin, Dallas, Texas and San Antonio have 16 million people between them, all potentially within 2 hours of each other by high speed rail. That’s no as many as California’s system (33 million) but it’s more than Florida (12 million) or the Pacific Northwest (7 million) and it requires maybe a quarter as much track as the midwest system (37 million.) And, unlike Florida, we’re building good local transit systems that can get people from the high speed rail station to their destinations.

But we’re behind all of those places in implementation. That’s what the FRA wants to talk about. President Obama wants to see high speed rail happen in the United States. He’s putting money in his budgets. But without local effort to organize projects, that’s money’s useful. So what do we need to do to get started on high speed rail in Texas?

We need to get Houston connected to the rest of Texas on the federal map. The feds are only going to fund projects in officially designated corridors. So far, Houston isn’t on the same corridor as Dallas, Austin, and San Antonio. But a bill passed in October requires the Secretary of Transportation to study adding Houston to that corridor. With a push from out local congressional delegation, that should be a no-brainer.

We need to get the state government involved. A private entity — the Texas High-Speed Rail Corporation — is studying high speed rail. Private capital and operations could be a key part of high speed rail. But the state government has to be on board for property acquisition, to accept federal funding, and likely to add some funding of its own. TxDOT says it’s putting together plans. But we have yet to see how large a role the state is willing to play.

We need studies. High speed rail will require environmental analysis, cost estimates, and ridership estimates. California spent ten years laying that groundwork. We don’t have any of it.

We need to figure out where the terminals are. Dallas already has a ready-made rail station. We don’t. And we need to get the trains into IAH and DFW as well. Texas, unlike California, is flat. Getting tracks between cities is easy. Getting them into the cities will be the big challenge.

We need to coordinate with commuter rail. We’re talking about commuter rail in Houston, Dallas-Fort Worth is planning to expand its network, and Georgetown-Austin-San Marcos-San Antonio are doing studies. High speed rail and commuter can share corridors and even tracks. By integrating the two, we can offer better connections, save cost, and minimize impacts. That also opens up more funding sources: federal high speed rail funds and federal transit funds can be combined.

That’s a lengthy to-do list. Texas tried for high speed rail once before; politics killed that attempt. This time, the politics seem better, especially with Continental and American on board. But we still need leadership to bring the pieces together.

Comments? Forums.

We’ve already discussed the disadvantages of streetcars sharing traffic lanes with cars: it results in slower and less reliable streetcar service. That’s not an inherent problem with streetcar technology; it’s a result of how that technology is implemented. Streetcars can also run in their own lanes or outside of streets entirely. That’s not a new idea: streetcars in New Orleans have run in grassy street medians (they call them “neutral grounds”) since the late 1800s. New there’s a name for that, originally coined by Lyndon Henry: “rapid streetcar.” Here’s how it fits in:

The most common rapid streetcar implementation in the United States is the use of abandoned railroad lines. This is very effective, but only if there happens to be an available right of way in the right place, as there was in Memphis:

…or here in Boston. Note the hike and bike trail alongside.

Alternately, rapid streetcar can run in streets, either in the center or along the curbs, in lanes marked off with paving, pylons, fencing, or landscaping, as along the Embarcadero in San Francisco, in a wide boulevard created by the demolition of the Embarcadero Freeway:

or simply with pavement marking, as here in Memphis:

It’s not necessary to separate the streetcars and cars totally: one advantage of a streetcar is its flexibility, and in a tight area, especially one with minimal traffic, a rapid streetcar line can run in traffic lanes for a few blocks. But that affects service. Every block of reserved right of way means faster and more reliable trips.

So far, rapid streetcar is uncommon in the United States. That’s not due to cost: building outside of a street is actually a bit cheaper than building in a street, and the cost of dividers to separate a lane in a street for streetcars is minimal. Not is it because the idea is novel: it’s simply basic good transit practice. Rather, the problem is political. It’s very difficult to take space away from cars. Even in transit-dependent cities like New York, San Francisco and Toronto, where the majority of residents don’t own cars, vocal business owners and car commuters have fought any attempt to give transit its own space. Politicians like streetcars because they satisfy calls for rail transit. But they don’t want to potentially antagonize anyone by taking space from cars, so they put streetcars in mixed traffic. The result looks good, and it’s an accomplishment to brag about. But it’s not actually better transit service than could have been provided with a bus.

Rapid streetcar is another tool for creating good transit. It fits neatly an ordinary streetcar line and light rail: the low cost of the former with the improved speed and reliability of the latter. It makes a lot of sense for corridors where better transit service is needed but demand doesn’t warrant light rail. But doing it right requires the political will to give transit its own space.

Transit, like any other fields, has trends. And today’s hot trend is the streetcar. Portland opened a modern streetcar line in 2001, Tacoma followed in 2003, and Seattle’s Lake Union Streetcar opened last year. Austin, Atlanta, Fort Worth, Dallas, Oakland, Los Angeles, Washington DC, Northern Virginia, and others are studying new lines. In San Francisco (below), New Orleans, Philadelphia, Memphis (above), Dallas, Tampa, and Little Rock, vintage streetcars (or replicas thereof) serve the same function.

So what’s a streetcar? Like light rail, it’s a vehicle running on steel rails powered by an overhead electric wire. In fact, light rail and streetcars are fundamentally the same technology: they’ve shared tracks in several U.S. cities, and in Europe it’s often hard to tell them apart. But in North American practice there are several differences in how the technology is used:

• Streetcars are shorter, narrower, lighter, cheaper, and lower capacity than light rail vehicles.
• Streetcar stops tend to be not only smaller but simpler than light rail stations
• Streetcars often collect fares on board (or don’t collect fares at all), instead of having ticket machines at stations like light rail.
• Streetcars usually run in traffic lanes shared with cars, and they usually use the same traffic control devices (traffic lights or even stop signs) as cars.
• Streetcars are generally built with the idea that it’s acceptable to shut the line down temporarily for utility work. This avoids the need to relocate underground utilities.

The advantage is that these features combine into lower construction cost and less impact than light rail. But you get what you pay for: streetcars in mixed traffic are also slower, less reliable, and lower capacity than light rail. If the Main Street line were streetcar instead of light rail, it would have cost less to build. But it take about half an hour, not 20 minutes, to get from Downtown to the Med Center, rush hour trip times would depend on traffic, and the line would have reached full capacity in June of 2004. If we consider service instead of technology, these new streetcars resemble a local bus route. They are not a substitute for light rail, or even BRT, in reserved lanes.

But there is an alchemy to streetcars: people prefer them to buses even if they do not offer better service. Part of that is the distinctive branding, which distinguishes a streetcar line from the rest of the bus system. Part of it is the certainty of rails: you know exactly where that streetcar is going. And part of it is the lure of novelty and nostalgia. This draws riders onto streetcars who would not have taken a bus. And thus it draws development, too, and that is one of the big lures of streetcars.

Streetcars have slipped into a specific niche in North American transit. They’re a tool for downtown and near-downtown revitalization. They’re intended to promote the construction of lofts and apartments, to draw visitors to cultural institutions and restaurants, and to attract tourists. They’re often constructed outside the regular transit structure, funded through tax increment districts and other local funds, and operated separately form the rest of transit system.

So this is the new U.S. streetcar model: low capacity, low speed, mixed traffic, low impact, low cost, maximum economic benefit. In this model, the ideal streetcar line:

• Serves existing existing or under construction high-density population (so there are riders on day one.)
• Connects to at least one employment center (so the riders have somewhere to go.)
• Serves restaurants, nightclubs, theaters, museums, and other leisure attractions (to draw tourists and locals.)
• Serves areas that have development potential (to generate the tax revenue to pay for the line.)
• Is only a few miles long (so slow speed doesn’t matter as much.)
• Runs on streets that are not too congested (so the streetcars aren’t stuck in traffic.)
• Has a moderate level of transit demand (because that’s what a streetcar can handle.)

Obviously, some of these points are basic to all good transit. But some are very specific. A streetcar has inherent limitations; a good streetcar line is designed to accommodate those. What works in the Pearl District in Portland or South Lake Union in Seattle will not work in every neighborhood, or serve every transit need.

In a small city, streetcars could be the core of a transit system. In a big city, they simply do not have the capacity or the speed for that. But they could be a modest start for rail transit — Dallas had its streetcar line in 1989, seven years before light rail opened — or they could be a local component in a larger rail transit system. That’s the case in Portland, where the light rail line runs one way through Downtown and the streetcar line the other, with a transfer station where the cross, and in San Francisco, where the streetcar line offers local service in a corridor that also has a light rail and heavy rail subway.

The last paragraph could have been written 100 years ago, when streetcars were also a trend. In smaller places, like Houston, they were the transit network; in bigger cities, like New York or Chicago, they were local feeders to subway and elevated lines. Back then, too, streetcars served to stimulate development; neighborhoods were laid out around them, and the lines were often funded through the sale of those lots. Those same neighborhoods remain the places where streetcars work best: they’re close to the core, they’re mixed use, they’re walkable. In many cases, the new streetcar lines are in fact reconstructions of old lines. The streetcar trend is in one sense an admission of error: we would have done well to keep those lines 60 or 80 years ago. And now, in some cases, it makes sense to bring them back.

Read about streetcars in “Street Smart: Streetcars and Cities in the 21st Century” (the first chapter is available as a PDF) and in Paul Weyrich and William Lind’s report.

The Houston Chronicle notes that METRO’s buses are only on time 61% of the time, and asks why. That’s easy. Yes, there are some avoidable reasons why buses can be late. Once, on my commute, the bus driver actually got lost. But there are two major reasons why buses times are unpredictable: traffic and passengers. The traffic is the same traffic everyone else is stuck in. The passengers come into play when there are more of them than usual or when it’s raining and they have to pause to fold their umbrellas, or if someone has to fumble for change, and a 10-second stop turns into a 60-second stop. And there’s nothing you can do about either of those things that doesn’t involve major investments like dedicated lanes or ticket machines. Local buses in mixed traffic run late. That’s what local buses in mixed traffic do, especially on long routes like many of METRO’s.

There is something else worth noting, though: cars run late all the time, too. The only way to make sure you’ll be on time to an appointment you’re driving to is to leave early. But we’re used to that. It’s also a socially acceptable excuse: I can’t begin to count how many times I’ve seen someone walk into a meeting late and say “traffic was really bad” and everyone nods.

For 70 years, in a period where transit and railroads underwent massive change, one thing has remained constant: the propulsion of choice for any new American commuter rail line is diesel. But that was before $125 a barrel oil. If we build commuter rail in Houston, it’s worth asking how it ought to be powered.

The diesel locomotive has a lot going for it. Diesel is easily portable and packs a lot of power per pound. The external infrastructure is simple; trains can even be fueled directly from a tank truck. Diesel locomotives are off-the-shelf, they share most of their components with common freight locomotives, and it’s easy to find people who know how to maintain them.

But diesel pollutes, it produces greenhouse gases, and it’s gotten a lot more expensive. And there are alternatives.

The gold standard for railroad propulsion is electricity, as it has been since it was invented. Electric locomotives are quieter, more powerful, longer-lasting, lower-maintenance, and more energy-efficient than diesel. They emit no pollution from the vehicle itself, and if the electricity is provided from hydroelectricity, wind, solar, or nuclear, they do not pollute at all. In passenger use, electric trains lend themselves to powering every axle, which increases acceleration and reduces trip times. And the electric motors can be used to brake the train as well as accelerate it, returning energy to the system, saving 15% or more.

Electric propulsion has only two downsides. One is minor: the visual appearance of the wires. Modern systems are very simple, and it’s worth noting that the extremely appearance-conscious Swiss have no objection to errecting them in their treasured mountain landscapes. The second is more significant: perhaps $6 million a mile to install the wires. That immediate cost is what taxpayers and shareholders see. But on a heavily travelled route, the lower operating costs –and better service — can justify that. The world’s busiest railroad systems — Germany, France, Britain, Italy, Japan, China, India, Russia — all have significant electric routes. In the United States, New York, Philadelphia, D.C./Baltimore, and Chicago have electric commuter rail, and San Francisco is preparing to electrify its line.

No other alternative to a standard diesel locomotive is as common as electricity. But there are other viable technologies. Hybrid locomotives are in use for freight trains, and they could easily be adapted to passenger use. Likewise, natural-gas powered locomotives are a proven technology. Both are still dependent on fossil fuels. But another proven alternative is not: in 1955 the West German railways introduced ETA 150 battery railcars, which could carry 86 passengers 180 miles at up to 60 mph on one battery charge. 232 were built, and they remained in everyday service for 40 years. Could 2008 technology do better?

In 1998, with oil at $20 a barrel, diesel propulsion might be an obvious choice for commuter rail. In 2008, with $125 a barrel, it seems foolish not to consider other options. Whatever the choice is, it will stick for while: commuter locomotives last for 20 years or more, and electric infrastructure is cheapest when it’s done at the same time as track upgrades.

Above, the worst of both worlds: MBTA’s Boston-Providence route is one of two U.S. commuter rail lines that runs entirely under electric wires but uses diesel locomotives.