Lack of Freight Trains Damaging Roads?
More freight trains could remove 350,000 trucks from northern Wisconsin roads, analysis finds.
![An eastbound BNSF train at Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin. Photo by user Slambo on en.wikipedia (same as Slambo here) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)]](https://urbanmilwaukee.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/BNSF_5350_20040808_Prairie_du_Chien_WI.jpg)
An eastbound BNSF train at Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin. Photo by user Slambo on en.wikipedia (CC BY-SA 2.0)
That was the message of a public hearing recently in Rhinelander organized by state Sen. Tom Tiffany, R-Minocqua, and Michigan state Sen. Ed McBroom, who represents the Upper Peninsula.
Freight rail service has been expanding across the state, but far northeastern Wisconsin is an exception. Florence, Forest and Marinette counties on the Michigan border, as well as nearby Menominee County, were the only places in the state that saw a decline in rail service from 2014 to 2017, according to data from the state Department of Revenue.
That means fewer shipping options, and potentially higher costs, for Northwoods businesses. And because the lack of freight train options means logging companies and manufacturers must rely on trucks to move their goods, it means more damage to Wisconsin’s rural roads, too.
A state survey of Northwoods businesses in 2018 found that those surveyed shipped 85 percent of their logs, lumber, wood and pulp products by truck. The 41 businesses surveyed could account for more than 105,218 additional rail cars, the survey found. Doing so would remove nearly 350,000 trucks per year from Wisconsin’s roads.
“There is a direct relationship,” said Rich Kedzior, a Wisconsin Department of Transportation freight rail specialist, “between CN’s rates and damage to state and local roads.”
CN’s Larry Lloyd said the company simply doesn’t see enough demand to justify rail service in some parts of the state.
“Service follows demand,” Lloyd said. “If there was demand to return service on that line, we would do it.”
Tiffany wasn’t buying that explanation.
“There’s much more opportunity out there, and they’ve squelched some of their opportunity, and they need to take another look at their business plan,” Tiffany said.
Tiffany said the state should consider funding infrastructure improvements such as railroad bridge enhancements that could make the lines more profitable. Such a proposal, he said, would need to be tied to some strict requirements on CN’s side, such as minimum service requirements.
Listen to the WPR report here.
Lack Of Freight Trains Does Damage To Wisconsin’s Rural Roads, Advocates Say was originally published by Wisconsin Public Radio.
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Trains have many advantages over trucks;
• they use less fuel
• they pollute less
• tracks use less land but have higher capacity
• they require fewer drivers
• tracks cost much less than highways to build and maintain
Trucks have just one inherent advantage: they can go almost anywhere—although this advantage is less than it seems, since few truck loads travel start-to-finish on a single truck anyway.
But the real reason we have so many trucks is subsidies: highways are provided to truckers far below cost. (Fuel taxes don’t begin to cover highway construction costs.)
We need a federally-funded “Interstate Railway System” analogous to Eisenhower’s Interstate highway system. (Most of the money that funded the interstates actually came from money that had been allocated to pay down the National Debt after WW2, but that’s a story for another day.)
Interstate railroads would be state-of-the art (two tracks in each direction, high speed, no grade crossings, fenced off, and electrified—either overhead wire or third rail). They would be open to any operator who met safety and liability issues. This in turn would promote competition for both freight and passenger operators.
Highways would have far fewer trucks and would become much safer and less congested for remaining vehicles, mostly automobiles. Because these trains would be electrically-powered, the air would become cleaner. Because there would be less highway traffic, highway maintenance costs would drop substantially.
Its construction would be massively expensive and would be a massive job-creator. Once in place, it would require less subsidy than today’s highways to maintain.