Railroad Editorial

NW Mailing List nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org
Wed Apr 30 10:59:18 EDT 2008



Thought you all would be interested reading this letter to the editor in the
Hagerstown, MD Morning Herald, 4/29/08
Regards,
Terry Marshall
Trains come out the winner
To the editor:
I've been following the comments in Mail Call about railroads vs. trucks and
have to come down in favor of the rail camp.
The trucks of America used 2,070,000 barrels of oil per day to carry 32.1
percent of the ton-miles produced in 2002, while railroads used 220,000 barrels
of oil per day to carry their share of 27.8 percent of the ton-miles in the
same period. This works out to a fuel efficiency advantage for railroads in
the range of 8 to 1.
In addition, there is no technical reason for a railroad to need oil for its
energy; it can use electricity from a variety of sources (including the wind
farm that supplies power to a modern trolley line in Canada). If we were
really desperate, we could even bring back steam engines on certain lines,
complete with their beautiful whistles!
The real question to ask is why our political mis-representatives do not
embrace this course. It gets even more puzzling as you hear the squawks about
"subsidizing" rail service (primarily passenger lines; freight railroads pay all
their own costs, including taxes on their rights-of-way). Meanwhile, the
highway system is badly underpriced (total expenditures on all levels in 2004
were $148 billion, while fuel taxes only came to $76 billion, supplemented by
$6.5 billion in tolls - a subsidy of 37 cents per gallon), and the air
industry is subsidized outright on a huge scale.
Now, I have to admit I've always been a rail enthusiast and have become more
so as the hassles of driving have increased. But if it is true that our
political mis-representatives have been bought out by the oil and highway
interests, then we are in very serious trouble; our American way of life, as defined
by some as a driving utopia, has become the American security risk.
David P. Lubic
Inwood, W.Va.



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