That’s a lot of news….what’s it all mean? The Waring blender

Nothing but questions today.

…I’m not sure I’ve ever seen the environmental case made for additional highway design and construction, or perhaps it’s better put to say the that people who read green-based publications have only modest overlap with the people who read about the pouring of concrete and the clearing of rights-of-way.

Doesn’t seem like a good fit, does it? And I’ll give you that…but I’ll bet it’s borne out by the data.

The data in question would be that big report issued each year by the fine people at The Texas Transportation Institute, the Urban Mobility Report, which carries an abundance of facts that builds to a familiar conclusion: the cost of traffic congestion in fuel wasted, time wasted, wear and tear on autos and the delay in shipment of goods rises each year, most recently to over $87 billion, which even in this day and age catches the attention. The chief economist at the US Department of Transportation has further extrapolated that figure to a total cost to the economy of $170 billion per year.

Let’ switch gears to the green side of the house.
The bulk of these costs above is in wasted fuel, but that fuel comes at a cost not only in price at the pump, but in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Transportation broadly accounts for 29% of all GHG’s, within that amount, passenger cars and light trucks account for a full 60%. The amount of traffic experiencing congestion in our busiest urban areas at peak hours has doubled from 32% to 67%.

Our environmentally minded friends have no love for highway construction; their minds are tuned towards emissions mitigation via increased energy efficient, decreased GHG content of the fuel, and reduction in transportation activity itself. They will have, rightly, a preference for high speed rail when it gets built out, mass transit of all sorts, and the more homely and familiar means of locomotion such as walking or biking. They may have only a shadowy awareness that even the most impressive gains in fuel efficiency will be wiped out and then some merely by the growth in population which comes with almost absolute certainly, to the tune of an additional 27 million people in ten years, 450 million or so total by 2050.

Let’ switch gears back to the highway-building side of the house.

Our friends at AASHO chime in with some wonderful reporting of their own, noting that 95% -- which is a fairly overwhelming and likely-not-much-reducible number – of all passenger travel today takes place by highway, and 93% (by value) of all goods in the country moves thereon.. Those roadways are less and less able to efficiently deliver people and goods as is, not to mention that by 2020 the trucking industry will need to move an additional three billion more tons of goods, requiring an additional 1.8 million trucks.

Those goods, our friends in freight transport will be happy to tell us, are not going to be traveling by high speed rail or subway, one way or another they’ll conclude at least the last leg of their journey via truck or car. All of which, if they are struck on antiquated roadways subject to numerous bottlenecks along the way, will be emitting, in their great numbers, very high totals of GHG’s.

Well, you see where the argument is heading. A reliable, efficient, non-congested and competitive highway system -- which will certainly call for tens of thousands of miles of new roadways – will in fact provide a plus to the environment via the great reduction of GHG’s emitted in the course of highway congestion.

One thing I lack is some measure of what the carbon footprint is that can be attributed to highway congestion. I’m betting it’s huge though.
Now, how have I done? We’re all green these days, how about my very, very green friends? Do I have a point?

…I don’t know if there’s a more interesting question in the transportation economy right now than whether freight rail is grabbing market share from trucking in a permanent manner.
Let’s argue FOR the motion first.

Freight rail is going reasonably great guns and the latter is only now starting to get traction.

Freight rail – more consolidated and more profitable – has used this period of recession to invest in track, new facilities, broader and higher tunnels, the very things that make it more competitive – while truck enjoys no such comparable ability to invest. For a certain amount of goods movement for a certain lengths of trips, the two are absolute competitors, and we know, for instance, that in 2006 trucking had 80% market share for hauls between 700 and 1,000 miles, now the two modes split it 50/50.

AGAINST that you would have to put the intensity and depth of the recession and the intermittent nature of the recovery. That makes for cloudy data. It’s not a time for hard and fast declarative sentences. Some of the gains in freight rail can be explained by certain industries rebounding quicker than others - and those that are doing well tend to migrate to a certain mode. As fuel prices, differences in speed requirements in the supply chain, inventory building (willingness to take on larger shipment sizes) etc., start to seed into the economy – we may see mode competition intensify…but that’s yet to be seen. In fact, rail loadings have already started to flatten out. If there is a capacity crunch in one mode, there will be mode flight. It’s uncertain if capacity or fuel issues in the supply chain are big enough right now to dictate one mode over another – it may be more that the supply chain requirements are determining mode more than anything.

I suppose it’s not fair to raise a question without leaning one way or the other in response, and that 50/50 split in certain length shipments is pretty danged compelling; I think there is some market share grab to rails gain and trucking’s expense. We’ll see if the trend – and this theory – holds. – Larry McGurn