passenger train
Electric trains everywhere: A solution to crumbling roads and climate crisis.
Transportation accounts for nearly a third of the country’s carbon emissions.
Over the phone, it’s clear that Bill Moyer is frustrated. “We’re not talking about some kind of Elon Musk-vacuum-tube-Jetsons-freaking-cartoon fantasy,” the Northwest resident says. “We’re talking about something that has a proven history.”
Moyer has been begging Washington Gov. Jay Inslee to invest in a renewable energy-powered freight rail line from Seattle to Chicago. But the governor has shown little interest, although he recently asked the state Legislature to approve $1 million to study an ultra-high-speed passenger train from Seattle to Vancouver, B.C. “We’d love for him to show some leadership for the entire state on something that’s not so pie-in-the-sky,” Moyer laments.
Futuristic commuter trains are one thing, but Moyer has his sights set on an idea that is at once larger in scope and more firmly grounded in existing technology.
Moyer is a good-natured musician and progressive activist who has lived on Vashon Island, a short ferry ride from Seattle, since 1989. He has a mop of curly dark hair and speaks in the laid-back tone you’ve heard at your local bike shop. These days, he often sports a black T-shirt that proclaims the name of his progressive advocacy organization, the Backbone Campaign.
It was that group that researched and authored the recently released Solutionary Rail, a 126-page book filled with charts, maps, graphs, and tables to support the feasibility of a bold electrified rail proposal.
The idea seeks to address two significant problems facing the country. On the one hand, the overwhelming scientific consensus warns of an impending climate catastrophe for which we are woefully unprepared. On the other, the country’s bridges and roads are, in fact, crumbling. The American Society of Engineers awarded the country a D+ in 2016, as it has consistently since 1998. During his first address to Congress in February, President Donald Trump ignored climate change but called for $1 trillion to fill cracks in the nation’s infrastructure, which largely accommodates fossil fuel-hungry automobiles.
Transportation accounts for nearly a third of the country’s carbon emissions, of which 84 percent is attributed to cars and commercial trucks, the EPA reports. So, as Moyer sees it, it’s obvious that climate change and infrastructure should be tackled in tandem.
“The biggest climate impact we can have is getting the trucks off the roads, and eventually getting people back to the tracks, as well,” he says. To do this, the Backbone Campaign proposes revitalizing and electrifying America’s rail system, powering it entirely with community-owned renewable energy.
The plan would update existing freight railways by adding overhead wires to carry high-voltage electricity generated in towns along the lines and smoothing out turns too tight for high-speed travel. It would swap diesel locomotives for electric engines that are 35 percent cheaper to operate and that haul freight five times more efficiently than trucks.
In many places, it would add additional track to free up passenger rail that would otherwise get stuck behind delayed freight. And it would do all of this with a focus on justice—for the people who live alongside dirty and noisy diesel train lines, for current and future rail workers and the underemployed millions who would benefit from a large-scale infrastructure undertaking, for communities that could find economic security in renewable energy generation, and for those around the world whose lives are already threatened by global warming.
It’s a grandiose idea, perhaps even improbable, but Moyer is known in progressive circles for being someone who gets things done. His track record includes the “kayaktivist” blockade that confronted Shell Oil in Puget Sound and the 150-foot replica of the Constitution, signed by thousands, which tumbled down the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in protest of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision on Citizens United.
In truth, electric rail is not such a long shot. China and Russia have already invested heavily in electrifying more than 40 percent of their railways. The Trans-Siberian Railway—the world’s longest at 5,772 miles—went fully electric in 2002, and Russia now moves about 70 percent of its freight over electrified lines. France, Italy, and Germany have also electrified as much or more than half of their rails, according to the CIA World Fact Book.
As Solutionary Rail recalls, the United States operated more than 3,000 miles of electrified rail up until the 1960s—granted, none of it powered renewably—when the influential auto industry and the subsidized interstate highway system pushed rail to the back burner.
“If Eisenhower had signed the high-speed rail bill instead of the interstate bill, the country would be connected by rail,” says former Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood.
A congressman who sat on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, LaHood had a bipartisan approach that helped him become the only Republican appointed to Obama’s cabinet who had been elected to public office.
In 2009, he was given the unenviable task of rallying votes for Obama’s Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which appropriated about $830 billion to kick-start the flagging economy.
The act leveraged $48 billion for transportation, of which about $10 billion was earmarked to establish intercity high-speed rail, including a line between San Francisco and Los Angeles that’s now under construction. This investment was projected to create tens of thousands of jobs and stimulate U.S. manufacturing while directly addressing global climate change.
“Obama wanted to send a message to the country that we need to start investing in high-speed rail,” says LaHood, who was not aware of Solutionary Rail but has been a staunch proponent of high-speed trains. “If you look at cities all over America, they’re investing in their metro systems, in their bus systems, because a lot of these young people who are moving to D.C. or Chicago or L.A., frankly, they don’t want a car.”
But Republican governors such as Florida’s Rick Scott and Wisconsin’s Scott Walker rejected the money outright, and legislators resisted further budgeting for rail projects.
“Because it was a part of the economic stimulus, Republicans didn’t like it. Because it was Obama’s idea to invest in rail, people didn’t like it,” LaHood says. “Our Achille’s heel in America is that our national government hasn’t invested in rail.” Tired of the bitter political divisions between Congress and the White House, LaHood resigned after one term.
Moyer understands the frustration of waiting on politicians. The Backbone Campaign seeks instead to effect change from the ground up through what Moyer calls a non-ideological coalition of unconventional allies—farmers, environmental activists, renewable energy developers, and labor experts. The idea to focus on rail emerged from ongoing grassroots efforts to resist coal trains and the development of the Pacific Northwest into a fossil fuel corridor to Asia.
Moyer knew next to nothing about railroads or the people who work on them, but he assembled a team of experts that includes a senior Amtrak engineer and a whistleblowing union member who, in 2013, sent Moyer a copy of a paper on railway modernization with a note: “Let’s see if you and your people can green this.”
The team spent three years considering the global context (the U.S. is way behind), studying the efficiency of electric locomotion (even with today’s low fuel prices, the per-mile cost of diesel energy is nearly twice that of an electric train), mapping renewable source availability (every state has something), examining the impact of long-haul trucking (60 percent of highway maintenance costs are due to heavy trucks), and meeting with economists to address the Herculean task of funding.
“Greening” trains was only the start.
Moyer, whose Jesuit parents worked on Native reservations, was born and raised until age 12 on land belonging to the Yakama and Spokane tribes. He was exposed to racism and cultural genocide early on and recognized that, in America, railroads carry a two-faced cultural memory. The trains that connected the East Coast to the West and ushered in an age of industrialization for many also brought a wave of terror and misery for millions, as pioneers continued to colonize, decimating buffalo herds and altering the landscape forever.
Solutionary Rail could not move forward without acknowledging this, and at the proposal’s moral center is a commitment to a just transition—a shift to a sustainable economy that addresses the inequities and injustices currently borne by laborers and marginalized people. The rights of workers and Native people had to be part of the equation, Moyer says.
The team’s ultimate vision is national. They see electric trains zipping passengers between metropolises, picking up grain in rural towns, and delivering to coastal ports. The railways that already crisscross the country offer rights of way that, outfitted with power lines, would allow electricity generated by Iowa windmills not only to propel the trains, but also to power cities many miles away.
Of course, all of this will require major upfront investment.
Single-track electrification costs an average of $2 million a mile. To demonstrate the feasibility of his national plan, Moyer proposes electrifying the Northern Corridor from Seattle to Chicago—4,400 miles in all—at a base cost of $11 billion.
A separate analysis from the Great Northern Corridor Coalition in 2012 indicates that, by 2035, rail service could make up the cost in public benefits, but that still doesn’t resolve the conundrum of initial investment. Backbone’s solution is to couple private investment with a public entity that would issue tax-free bonds at low interest rates and oversee funding and construction.
Given the rail’s potential for American employment, manufacturing, and energy independence, it would seem that a case could be made to set aside a portion of Trump’s $1 trillion infrastructure request to break ground on solutionary rail.
But in March, the administration released a budget proposal that called for significant cuts to long-distance Amtrak service. If the idea seemed like a long shot before, the odds under the new administration appear to have worsened.
LaHood, pointing to the president’s New York connections, expects Trump’s infrastructure vision to go beyond roads and bridges, but he notes that the clock is ticking.
“A president in their first year has an opportunity to get two or three big things done and then their window of opportunity closes,” he says. “He’s talked a good game about infrastructure. If he follows through, Congress will follow his lead.”
Moyer is surprisingly unshaken by the election’s result. “The emphasis was already on the states, not the federal government,” he says, and whether Trump can be influenced is somewhat immaterial to the need for bottom-up organizing.
“The credibility of change agents largely depends on not just their capacity to articulate an oppositional stance on something that is wrong or evil or destructive; their moral authority and capacity to move society requires that they have a viable alternative, a proposition,” Moyer says confidently.
Solutionary Rail is his proposition.
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Gaining traction: Imperial College London to investigate using solar to directly power trains.
Imperial College London has partnered with climate change charity 10:10 to investigate the use of track-side solar panels to power trains, the two organisations announced yesterday.
Imperial College London has partnered with climate change charity 10:10 to investigate the use of track-side solar panels to power trains, the two organisations announced yesterday.
The Renewable Traction Power project will see university researchers look at connecting solar panels directly to the lines which provide power to trains, a move that would bypass the electricity grid in order to more efficiently manage power demand from trains.
According to the university, the research team will be the first in the world to test the "completely unique" idea, which it said would have a "wide impact with commercial applications on electrified rail networks all over the world".
"It would also open up thousands of new sites to small and medium scale renewable developments by removing the need to connect to the grid," Imperial College London said in a statement.
Network Rail is currently investing billions in electrifying the UK's railways in a bid to reduce the number of trains running on diesel fuel, curbing costs, air pollution, and greenhouse gas emissions in the process.
Combining this effort with increased renewable energy generation in the UK could significantly decarbonise train lines by 2050, according to 10:10, but in many rural areas the electricity grid has reached its limit for both integrating distributed energy generation and supplying power to train firms.
"What is particularly galling is that peak generation from solar and peak demand from the trains more or less match but we can't connect the two," explained 10:10's Leo Murray, who is leading the project. "I actually believe this represents a real opportunity for some innovative thinking."
Initially the project will look at the feasibility of converting 'third rail systems' which supply electricity through a power line running close to the ground and are used on roughly one third of the UK's tracks.
"Many railway lines run through areas with great potential for solar power but where existing electricity networks are hard to access," explained Professor Tim Green, director of Energy Futures Lab at Imperial College London.
The university will collaborate on the technical aspects of the project with Turbo Power Systems - a firm which works on distribution and management of power in the railway sector - while 10:10 is leading on research looking at the size of the long-term Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) market for directly connecting renewables to transport systems.
"I don't think you get a better fit for PPA than a train line," added Murray. "A rural train line even more so, the project would open up many investment opportunities across the country and further afield."
The news comes as it emerged that every one of Dutch state-owned railway company NS's passenger trains are now being powered entirely by wind energy.
As of January 1 2017 all trips taken by the estimated 600,000 people who ride NS trains everyday are being powered by wind energy.
Having teamed up with energy firm Eneco in 2015 with the aim of reducing its emissions, NS has now reached its target of switching the sources of power for its trains to 100 per cent renewables one year ahead of schedule, with the firm originally setting a target date of 2018 for the milestone.
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Fuel trains in Wine Country town ignite standoff.
A tiny Wine Country town with little more than a popular barbecue joint and a smattering of homes has become the latest battleground over trains hauling hazardous fuel.
A tiny Wine Country town with little more than a popular barbecue joint and a smattering of homes has become the latest battleground over trains hauling hazardous fuel.
About a mile’s worth of railcars, many carrying liquefied petroleum gas bound for refineries, were recently brought for storage to a little-used track in Schellville, just a few miles south of downtown Sonoma. The tank cars, which sit idle amid sprawling pastureland, have begun to raise safety concerns among neighbors as well as with the operator of the North Bay’s soon-to-debut commuter train.
Last week, the new commuter rail agency SMART — which owns and manages the tracks in Schellville, though the passenger trains aren’t going anywhere near there — flexed its muscle by halting a freight train bound for Schellville with more petroleum.
The company carrying the fuel protested, noting that other goods like grain were also being held up. The railroad industry maintains that shipping and storing petroleum, a standard practice in the U.S., is safe and far superior to using trucks. And now federal mediators have stepped in to try to settle the matter.
“It’s kind of like the presidential debate,” said Matthew Nagan, owner and chef at the Schellville Grill, known for its smoked ribs and brisket. “Everyone’s pointing fingers at each other while the cars are just sitting there and no one’s taking responsibility.”
Suspicion about fuel shipments is up across the nation after a handful of train explosions in recent years. Within just the past month, the city of Benicia rejected a proposed train depot that would have meant more crude oil deliveries to the area, while San Luis Obispo County voted down a new rail spur for a refinery on the Central Coast.
While the issue in Sonoma County is unique, it similarly pits the concerns of residents — which typically involve community safety but sometimes veer into the broader politics of fossil fuels and climate change — against the rights of freight companies to haul goods without local interference.
The Surface Transportation Board, part of the U.S. Department of Transportation, is weighing whether SMART is inappropriately blocking freight service and storage in Sonoma County. The agency entered the standoff after freight train operator Northwestern Pacific Railroad — alongside the regional rail administrator, the North Coast Railroad Authority — petitioned the board on Tuesday.
The parties insist that only the federal government, under interstate commerce law, has the power to determine what can and can’t be on the tracks.
“The only authority (of SMART) is to dispatch the trains … to tell us whether or not the coast is clear,” said Mitch Stogner, executive director of the North Coast Railroad Authority. “It is not the freight police.”
SMART officials see things differently. A 2011 agreement between SMART and the railroad authority, which set the stage for commuter service that will run from San Rafael to Santa Rosa starting in December and will eventually connect Larkspur to Cloverdale, put the new rail agency in charge of dispatching not only passenger trains but also freight.
Although commuter trains won’t run in the Schellville area, and the petroleum trains won’t travel on the new passenger route, SMART officials say the contract authorizes them to prevent fuel storage on their tracks.
“We have no issue with them moving freight or cargo to get to local businesses,” said SMART spokeswoman Jeanne Mariani-Belding. “Our concern rests with the hazardous materials stored on the property. … We believe this is a serious health and safety issue.”
The rail agency only found out about the petroleum cars in recent weeks after a maintenance employee discovered them. The gas is expected to remain in Schellville until winter, when it will likely be hauled to refineries in the East Bay, according to the North Coast Railroad Authority.
In a letter to the Surface Transportation Board on Thursday, SMART officials asked the federal agency not to intervene in the dispute because it involves a local contract, not interstate commerce.
At last count, about 120 cars sat on the Schellville tracks along Highway 121, part of a branch line that extends to Napa County, where the freight trains come through. Roughly 80 of the cars contain liquefied petroleum gas, a flammable material used in heating and motor fuel.
While freight storage on railroad tracks is common, the sight of the tank cars — and the memory of recent accidents — is not going over well in Schellville.
“I know a lot of people here want the cars gone,” said Nagan, at the Schellville Grill. “All it takes is some goofball saying let’s go blow something up, and look out.”
A high-profile train fire in Oregon’s Columbia River Gorge in June didn’t involve liquefied petroleum gas, but rather crude oil, as did a runaway train in Quebec three years ago that exploded and killed 47 people. Less serious accidents, though, have involved the gas.
The North Coast Railroad Authority says the tank cars in Schellville have been inspected recently and meet federal safety standards. The rural storage location was chosen because it’s out of the way.
“There are far more cows there than there are people,” Stogner said.
Since SMART halted the Northwestern Pacific Railroad’s freight train on Oct. 2, the agency has allowed nonhazardous cargo to proceed — mostly grains bound for feed businesses or Lagunitas Brewing Co. in Petaluma.
Stogner said the action doesn’t go far enough. Twelve cars with liquefied petroleum gas remain hung up on the line, which he worries could set a precedent for obstructing other freight, hurting both railroad revenue and deliveries to customers.
Bob Falco, co-owner of railroad client Hunt & Behrens Inc., a feed mill in Petaluma, said he got the grain he needed to make his company’s custom rations for cows and poultry, even though it was on the train stopped by SMART.
“Everybody eats every day and so do the animals, so we have to have that product coming in,” Falco said. “We depend on that freight line.”
Kurtis Alexander is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: kalexander@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @kurtisalexander
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Germany has the world's first hydrogen-powered passenger train.
German rail’s most innovative project for 2017 won’t go especially fast, and you’ve probably never heard of the cities it will link. It will still revolutionize rail travel, with one dramatic change.
Not all groundbreaking changes are about speed.
FEARGUS O'SULLIVAN @FeargusOSull Sep 26, 2016 Comments
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When it comes to rail innovations, it’s usually the fastest, longest and most expensive new connections or rolling stock that grab people’s attention. Next year, however, Germany will buck that trend with something that’s both ground-breaking and singularly modest. German rail’s most innovative project for 2017 won’t go especially fast, and you’ve probably never heard of the cities it will link. It will still revolutionize rail travel, quite possibly across the world, with one dramatic change. In December 2017, Germany will launch the first ever passenger rail service powered by hydrogen.
Unveiled by French manufacturers Alstom this month, the new Coradia iLint will feature a motor that gains its power from a hydrogen tank and a fuel cell. Stored in a tank large enough to fuel a 497-mile journey, the hydrogen’s chemical energy will be converted into electricity by the fuel cell, propelling the train at up to 87 miles per hour. Any energy not used immediately is stored in Lithium batteries attached to the car bottom. Producing nothing but steam as a by-product, the motor will run far more quietly and cleanly than a diesel engine. What’s more, the train’s new fuel source will effectively make it carbon-neutral, albeit in a roundabout sort of way.
That’s because the hydrogen it will use is already created as a waste product by the chemical industry, among other manufacturers. Typically, this hydrogen is simply burned, so using it to power trains would not place any new, additional burden on the environment. Admittedly, the production of such chemicals is itself not always carbon-neutral, but given that these substances are already being manufactured, the train project will at least ensure that this process is more productive.
How Alstom’s new hydrogen-powered passenger train works. (Courtesy Alstom)
This new technology would be truly revolutionary were it not for a simple fact: trains powered by conventional electric sources are not inherently dirty. Their environmental impact essentially depends on how the electricity they generate is used. It’s thus arguably more important to focus on green energy generation, rather than changes to the actual trains themselves.
Still, that’s only the case for railway lines that are already electrified. Across the world many are not, and currently rely on far more heavily polluting diesel engines. Electrifying minor routes with low passenger numbers might not always be cost effective, and with rail in competition with other modes it can be hard to make the argument for investment.
This new hydrogen train is thus perfect for shorter, quieter stretches of the network that electrification hasn’t yet reached. Germany’s first Coradia iLint models are thus being tried out first on an internationally obscure 60-mile link between Buxtehude, a city lying just beyond Hamburg’s southern suburbs, and the small port and beach town of Cuxhaven. Outside this region, three other German states signed letters of intent in 2014 expressing a serious interest in adopting the model, and so the trains could soon be a fixture across many of Germany’s smaller lines.
Also helping with orders is the fact that the new train isn’t an entirely unknown quantity. Beyond the hydrogen tank and fuel cell, the train’s design is no different from a successful Alstom train already in service that can transport 150 sitting and 300 standing. Meanwhile, some existing small light rail systems already run on hydrogen power and fuel cells. The tiny Oranjestad Streetcar on the Caribbean island of Aruba started running in winter 2012, while the larger Dubai Trolley began partial service last year. Neither of these, however, are on anything like the scale of Germany’s new train.
The as yet un-clarified issue is costs. Alstom has stated that the running costs will be broadly similar to those for diesel trains, but as yet no price per unit has been offered. The cost of the package, which will include the creation of hydrogen-loading equipment at railway terminuses, must evidently be considerably lower than electrifying a line, even if it may in the end exceed that for a diesel train. In countries forced to make tough choices to slash their carbon emissions, buying the system may still ultimately seem like a no-brainer.
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