Intermodal traffic, that is, truck trailers or ocean containers handled on special rail equipment, is the fastest-growing segment of rail traffic. Between 1990 and 2000, rail intermodal grew at an annual rate of 4.6%—much faster than rail carload freight, which grew at an annual rate of only 1.4%. However, during the same period, truck tonnage grew at an annual rate of 6.9%, and air cargo at a rate of 17.9%. The growing rail intermodal is expected to overtake coal as the single largest source of revenue for freight railroads in the year 2004. But railroad intermodal tonnage is not growing as fast as truck traffic, and market share is consequently falling. This is a problem: with total freight traffic projected to grow 57% by the year 2020, all the increased traffic will have to be accommodated on the highway network. The introduction of double-stack rail cars in the 1980s dramatically reduced rail haul costs, and it made intermodal traffic competitive at distances of 500 mi or so, whereas previously rail could compete with trucks only at distances of about 750 mi or more. Still, most rail intermodal traffic remains long haul. Three-quarters of all truck tonnage moves distances of less than 500 mi, and rail does not compete in this market. Rail haul costs are developed for a number of short corridors, and it is demonstrated that although double-stack usage has lowered line haul costs, terminal and drayage costs remain high. If these costs can be reduced, rail intermodal can be competitive even in short-distance corridors. Several ways to lower these costs, both by industry initiatives and by public investment, are proposed. Without some action by the public sector, short-haul rail intermodal will continue to be noncompetitive, and highway truck traffic will continue to grow.

Federal and state transportation planners and others seeking to analyze transportation systems find few publicly available rail analysis models to estimate the operational costs and environmental impacts of rail movements. Moreover, data to populate such models and to test public policy considerations for evaluating public–private partnerships are generally difficult to obtain. This paper, a product of a study funded by Region 6 of the University Transportation Center Program, offers stakeholders the building blocks to develop an integrated rail analysis model capable of testing railway operational and capital investment changes. The paper also reviews the current state of rail modeling, examines selected rail models, and presents the findings of a preliminary intermodal rail costing model developed in the work.

The Shellpot Bridge is a 536-foot swing bridge located on a rail freight bypass route around Wilmington, Delaware. When the bridge failed in 1994, Conrail, then the bridge’s owner, elected not to repair it due to declining freight volume. The State of Delaware reached agreement with the new rail owner, Norfolk Southern Corporation, to provide funds to repair the bridge, with the railroad to pay tolls to repay the state’s investment. Recent volumes of traffic over the bridge indicate that, if traffic continues at its current level, Delaware will realize an annual return of 9.75% on its investment.

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What are some of the practical obstacles to a “shared interests” between a freight railway business and the proposed new higher speed passenger entity? This paper discusses the real “tension” between the two business interests that fund freight trains versus those that support and fund higher speed passenger trains as they attempt to share the same tracks in a safe manner. There are fundamental laws of physics that have to be addressed as the two different sets of equipment are “accommodated” on a shared corridor. This may not always be an easy accommodation between the two commercial parties. One real tension between the two commercial interests involves the physical problem of accommodating two radically different train sets on areas of curved track. For one example, what will be the passenger train required future higher speeds and how will these speeds be accommodated in existing main line tracks with curves varying from 1% to 6% in degrees? How much super elevation will need to be put back into the heretofore freight train tracks? How will the resulting super elevation affect the operation of so called drag or high tonnage slow speed bulk cargo trains? Accommodating such differences in train set types, axle loadings, freight versus passenger train set speeds, requires making detailed choices at the engineering level. These may be shared interests, but they are also variables with far different outcomes by design for the two different business types. The freight railways have spent the last few decades “taking the super elevation out” because it is not needed for the modern and highly efficient freight trains. Now the requirements of the passenger trains may need for it to be replaced. What are the dynamics and fundamental engineering principles at work here? Grade crossings have a safety issue set of interests that likely require such things as “quad” gates and for the highest passenger train speeds even complete grade separation. Track accommodating very high speed passenger trains requires under federal regulations much closer physical property tolerances in gauge width, track alignment, and surface profile. This in turn increases the level of track inspection and track maintenance expenses versus the standard freight operations in a corridor. Fundamentally, how is this all going to be allocated to the two different commercial train users? What will be the equally shared cost and what are examples of the solely allocated costs when a corridor has such different train users? In summary, this paper provides a description of these shared issues and the fundamental trade-offs that the parties must agree upon related to overall track design, track geometry, track curvature, super elevation options, allowed speeds in curves, more robust protection at grade crossings, and the manner in which these changes from the freight only corridors are to be allocated given the resulting much higher track maintenance costs of these to be shared assets.