INTERCITY RAIL'S SOCIETAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL BENEFITS
This section describes rail transportation's environmental and societal benefits - public benefits that enhance the nation's economic well-being and quality of life. Attempts to value the public benefits of rail intermodal projects often become a major stumbling block for local and state officials. The public benefits of intercity freight and passenger rail systems and individual projects include unique contributions of congestion mitigation, environmental quality, energy savings, and land use. These benefits are discussed below and should be considered in project evaluation.
Public-Private Benefits of Rail - Overview
Railroads are private companies operating and maintaining their own rights-of-way and linked together to form a nationwide rail network -- a vital component of our integrated national transportation system. The freight and passenger rail systems link people and businesses in an energy efficient and environmentally sound manner.
In 1997, freight railroads in the United States carried 26.7 percent of all intercity tonmiles -- more than waterways, oil pipelines and air -- and close to the 27.8 percent of tonmiles carried by trucks. In Fiscal Year 1998, Amtrak provided service to 21.1 million intercity passengers and 54 million commuters carried under contract with local transit authorities.
When Congress passed ISTEA, it recognized the inherent values gained from an intermodal transportation system that can leverage the unique characteristics and advantages of each mode. Congress stated: It is the policy of the United States to develop a National Intermodal Transportation System that is economically efficient and environmentally sound, provides the foundation for the Nation to compete in the global economy, and will move people and goods in an energy efficient manner.
Expansion of capacity in the transportation sector to meet economic growth needs will likely occur from better use of existing transportation assets, with greater emphasis on intermodal connections that maximize the particular advantages of each transportation mode.
Highways are effective feeders to the long-distance, high capacity rail system. A 1995 FHWA study of intermodal freight (Fact Sheet in Intermodal Freight Transportation, Volume 2), noted some benefits of rail/truck intermodal transportation: An efficient, coordinated long-distance truck-rail-truck intermodal movement can be up to 3.4 times more fuel efficient than a non-intermodal truck movement while emitting only 20 percent as many hydrocarbons. The study also cited other benefits, such as lower transportation costs, reduced congestion, and higher returns from public and private infrastructure investments through greater use of intermodalism.
Congestion
Congestion on the nation's highways and airways costs billions of dollars each year in wasted fuel and lost time. The Department of Transportation has estimated that highway congestion in the nation's 50 largest cities costs motorists over $40 billion annually, and airport delays impose another $5 billion cost per year on airlines and passengers. Because provision of additional highway or air capacity is constrained by space, costs, and environmental opposition, multimodal strategies are needed to address the congestion problem.
Amtrak service in the Northeast Corridor alleviates congestion between Washington, D.C. and New York City, carrying about 45 percent of all common carrier passenger traffic each year. The recent completion of electrification from New Haven to Boston in the Northeast Corridor and addition of Amtrak=
s Acela express service in this market is expected to reduce congestion at airports in Boston, Providence, and New York. The improved electrified rail line also offers the opportunity to relieve overall highway congestion and specific bottlenecks, particularly in urban areas.
A 1989 General Accounting Office (GAO) Report, Traffic Congestion: Trends, Measures, and Effects, identified six forces that shape traffic congestion: 1) suburban development trends (movement of families, services, and jobs away from the central city and into suburban areas); 2) economic trends (changes in the employment base away from manufacturing and towards services, changes in communications technology, increases in the amount of discretionary travel, etc.); 3) labor force trends (the overall growth in the labor force and women entering the workplace); 4) automobile use trends (growing automobile availability and use); 5) truck traffic trends (greater use of trucks, increases in truck size and weight, and increasing numbers of heavy truck accidents); and 6) highway infrastructure trends (increasing traffic without a corresponding increase in infrastructure capacity).
The 1995 FHWA report cited above notes that intermodal freight transportation offers the promise of . . . reducing the traffic on over stressed infrastructure, e.g. congested highways, to less congested modes. An intermodal truck to double-stack train to truck movement would displace approximately 200 trucks from the line-haul portion of the movement. Such a conversion would lessen congestion of the nation's highways.
