Lately, after hearing about how all the truckers are complaining about the high gas prices, it occured to me that here in L.A. the majority short-haul rail lines and spurs that were once used to distribute freight from a central depot to various points around the city are pretty much all gone. A lot of rail lines I remember as a kid are now gone, and the rights of way, in many cases, are paved over and built on so you would hardly know there were ever rails there.
There still is a line from the ports to downtown, of course, and a few other lines left, like the one that runs through El Segundo, but that’s about it.
Have the local rail lines been obliterated to the same extent in other cities?
That’s the case in Minneapolis/St. Paul and many areas in Minnesota. A lot of these have been converted to pedestrian/bicycle trails. A boon for recreation but it will turn out to be a problem if there is ever a push to regenerate short run rail lines.
From a planning standpoint a few areas are experiencing a “D’oh!” moment when they realize the old rail line, now used for other purposes, could have been a good candidate for light rail.
There also came a time when there was no need to put your warehouse on the spur line, so those people wouldn’t benefit if they started running trains again.
In St. Louis there’s still the Terminal Rail Road Association, which does exactly what you’re talking about. But it abandoned several of its major lines decades ago (one is now being used for light rail) because the major manufacturers and warehousers had already moved elsewhere.
This has been a continuing problem with urban rail in the U.S. ever since the first trolley lines were built here in the 19th century. The area along the line gets built up, overcrowded and expensive. Then development moves to a less crowded, less expensive area. The homes and businesses along the original line eventually slide down the economic scale and the line itself loses its purpose.
I used to live near where the 10 crosses Palms. The tracks were a block away. I’d drive over them going up Westwood. I’d cross them and drive next to them in Santa Monica. A couple of years ago I MapQuested an aerial image. Much of the right-of-way now has industrial buildings in it, or else little strip parking lots for the businesses. I noticed the tracks over Westwood had disappeared when I was still living there.
Actually, Toledo still has a nice selection of available local lines, mostly because there is an active connector system to the local port on Lake Erie.
Still, there are plenty of lines that used to exist that no longer are available.
Besides, who is to say that hauling by diesel locamotive is any more fuel efficient than hauling by diesel truck???
The train carriers, of course! They’ve been running TV ads claiming that on a per-ton hauling basis they’re delivering 400+ miles per gallon.
I’m pretty sure that only applies to long trains traveling long distances. Local service? Probably not so much. I wonder about traffic. With a train there are set crossings where cars would be held up for a few minutes. A truck would be slow at every intersection, and would back up traffic every time it turns a corner. OTOH, you’ll still have the trucks to move the goods at the end of the rails; so the problem just shifts from one area to another. But from a purely selfish standpoint, where I used to live and the routs I drove would probably be less congested if goods were transported by train instead of truck.
I’m going to talk from an Australian perspective, but I’m sure (and it seems from the OP) the case in the US is more or less identical.
Trains arrived in the 19th century. All that sudden spurt in Yankee/British/Industrial knowhow meant modern factories and supply lines. The days of never having been outside your village were over, but there was a need for transport to support this new economy, and the horse and cart wouldn’t cut it. Motorised road transport was decades away (or in its infancy), so step in the steam locomotive. The result was that every little tinpot factory or warehouse had its own private siding, and there was a “mixed goods” slow freight that would come along once or twice a week and couple up Joe Factory Proprietor’s one or two wagons, and be off. This infrastructure was massive, expensive, and complicated. Naturally, the rise of the semi truck wounded it, and containerisation killed it. I’m a railfan, but even I can’t justify the need for individual sidings. So now we have “intermodal” transport. Containers move by road to a city’s one or two rail freight hubs, get moved hundreds or thousands of miles by train, and then the process is done in reverse at the city of arrival.
To the politics…
Trains are more environmentally friendly. And they are more efficient (if it is done right). Two men can operate a train of several hundred containers of freight, as opposed to one guy for each one or two. And while they’re at it, they’re not terrorizing private motorists on the interstate. And steel on steel rolling resistance is far superior to rubber on bitumen. Once a train is up to speed, the engineer can shut off and coast for incredible distances. Trains remain pretty green.
We are probably (hopefully) on the verge of a second grand age of rail. It won’t be as romantic as the first, but it will be a godsend, provided it is done right. I’d rather be held up a few minutes at a crossing than be creamed by a semi driver who has been driving on uppers for fifteen hours. And all for a load of cheap Chinese t-shirts.
I’ve seen those ads and have a hard time wrapping my brain around that figure.
On the other hand it stands to reason that metal wheels on metal tracks are going to be a great deal more efficient to propel than rubber tires on asphalt, probably by an order of magnitude.
Would the traffic from using more local rail for freight really be as bad as all that There would be fewer trucks on the roads and streets by way of compensation.
Anybody who catches the subway can test this. With a bit of practice, you can hear/feel the acceleration, coasting, and braking phases between stations. Say two stations are 3/4 mile apart. You’ll sense the acceleration up to line speed (about 20% of the time between the two stations) then the coasting, and then braking (about 15% of the time). 65% is spent coasting! Now, to drive 3/4 of a mile in a car or truck, you’ll be on the gas all the time until just before the end.
On longer routes, or interstate freight runs with multi-thousand ton trains, the engineer only needs to give it a touch of throttle every now and then to keep the thing rolling along.
And we haven’t even discussed regenerative braking yet!
Don’t forget to factor in the lack of stop-start traffic and hills. It can take ten or fifteen minutes to get the heaviest freights up to line speed (impresses the chicks - "Baby, this thing does nought to sixty in… um, about a quarter of an hour), but once they’re there, they’re there and they ain’t stoppin’. Trucks wouldn’t be allowed on the road if they disrupted traffic with that sort of acceleration (or lack of it), but on the rails, it’s fine, and it’s a big part of the fuel efficiency.
Our local light-rail system (St. Louis) is built largely on abandoned freight lines. I don’t know what the exact legal status of these is, but I do know that the transit agency had to buy them (for $1) from the rail companies. There are tons more that are just unused, and many would be viable if the tracks themselves were replaced. Some have been paved over, and it’s not rare to see old rails peeking through after winter has done its usual destruction of the overlay, in places that wouldn’t seem obvious.
I, for one, would love to see rail make a comeback. (Got hooked when I took MuniMetro and BART for my daily commute)
ETA: Denver has many such lines too. They’re everywhere! I even saw one in a little town in Nevada!
“Men” because it remains a male dominated industry, and because three letters is simpler and easier than “men/women/transgendered people/sentient grasshoppers/etc.”
There are women train crew (I know some personally) and plenty of women driving some kickarse big rigs. I must admit I have failed the SDMB PC test. Re-education is still 9am in training room 1B, I take it?
It doesn’t appear that the OP’s question has been fully answered yet, so I’ll have a go.
Local rail lines in the USA are fewer than they used to be mainly because freight railroading in the US has moved to a business model that favors bulk transport and intermodal (container/trailer) movements, over single-car (or less) shipments. A lot of this had to do with the (formerly) highly-regulated environment in which railroads operated, up until the near collapse of several systems in the 1970s.
Under those conditions, local freights made up of a small collection of single-car shipments tended to be more expensive to run per ton-mile than long-haul or trainload shipments, because of the labor-intensive switching of cars at sidings, along with making them up into trains at central yard facilities. Likewise, unless the railroad was a real crackerjack operation, transit times for shipments could be extremely long compared to trucking, due to the multiple switching moves required, and the time spent in yards along the way. Prior to deregulation, railroads had a hard time charging rates that could cover these expenses, and the growth and flexibility of trucking (usually allowing much faster door-to-door transit times) was squeezing them out of this market anyway.
To some extent, the subsitute for local rail lines has become an intermodal facility where trailers or or containers are transferred from rail to road for local delivery (‘local’ being as much as a couple hundred miles away). Otherwise there are still numerous local lines in use, often run by a short line with lower operating costs rather than one of the large linehaul railroads. Where these still exist, it is because there is enough business to continue justifying the operation of local freights, but it seems safe to say that the major railroads are not much interested in pursuing this type of business, due the perception that it is a small but very high-cost market to service.
San Francisco still has one freight railroad, which runs at least one train per day connecting to the main US freight network, via the tracks used mainly by the Caltrain passenger service.
FWIW, I noticed at least one line paved over when I was in El Salvador, Bahia, Brazil last summer. I may have seen two, or it may have been where the line went under the pavement and came back up.
I know there were once trains all over L.A., but I thought they were only passenger railways. (Is this what you remember? Because that was a long time ago.) San Diego also had trolleys all over town. In fact, a lot of U.S. cities that had them in the past now don’t. They usually were operated by private companies. (Cecil says the that the L.A. system wasn’t profitable, but I’ve read elsewhere that the San Diego companies were.)
Anyway, you can see where they went on many streets that have really wide medians (Vermont, Santa Monica Blvd.) now just grass.
If it consoles you at all, downtown L.A. does still have its own railroad, though it got shut down for killing a hapless tourist.
