{"id":193151,"date":"2009-01-15T06:08:00","date_gmt":"2009-01-15T11:08:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/01\/15\/upgrading-freight-rail-as-stimulus\/"},"modified":"2009-01-15T06:08:00","modified_gmt":"2009-01-15T11:08:00","slug":"upgrading-freight-rail-as-stimulus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/01\/15\/upgrading-freight-rail-as-stimulus\/","title":{"rendered":"Upgrading Freight Rail as Stimulus"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Phillip Longman makes the very good point that while people are talking up bullet trains, they are <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonmonthly.com\/features\/2009\/0901.longman.html\">ignoring freight rail infrastructure<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>I used to work as an engineer at GE Transportation Systems<sup>*<\/sup> on their locomotives, I was Lead Engineer on the Blower Cab Structure on the AC6000 Locomotive, and as a result, I consider myself to have some background in this industry.<\/p>\n<p>Simply put, it is easier, cheaper, and faster to upgrade or repair existing for rail, and medium speed (say less than 150 km\/h) rail than it is to construct new rail for what <a href=\"http:\/\/www.eschatonblog.com\/\">Atrios<\/a> calls &#8220;Supertrains&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Cargo transport is energy inefficient in the US, and the upgraded infrastructure would increase speeds, even for short haul passenger rail, and reduce accidents.<\/p>\n<p>Best of all, this is all shovel ready, you don&#8217;t need an environmental impact statement, or to go before a planning board, or to seize land by eminent domain to repair and upgrade rail lines.<\/p>\n<p><sup>*<\/sup><span style=\"font-size:78%;\">Yes, I have worked everywhere. Maybe I can&#8217;t hold down a job, but more likely this has been my role as &#8220;technical hit man&#8221;, where you are parachuted in to take care of a specific need.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Phillip Longman makes the very good point that while people are talking up bullet trains, they are ignoring freight rail infrastructure. I used to work as an engineer at GE Transportation Systems* on their locomotives, I was Lead Engineer on the Blower Cab Structure on the AC6000 Locomotive, and as a result, I consider myself &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1038,1135,1035],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-193151","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-budget","category-energy","category-transportation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193151"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=193151"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193151\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}