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GUEST COLUMN |
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE |
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State Rep.
Joseph Markosek State Rep.
Rick Geist
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March 24, 2009
Use stimulus dollars to make smart investments in rail expansion
by House Transportation Committee Chairmen Joseph Markosek and Rick Geist
A few days after this week’s announcement that $1 billion in federal stimulus funds would be dedicated to locally vetted transportation projects throughout Pennsylvania, Gov. Rendell made the case for urgent action to ensure the state economy keeps moving even if the country’s does not.
"We cannot afford to wait for someone else to draw up a road map," the governor said. "Now is the time to get in the driver’s seat, restart our economy and get it moving ourselves."
He’s right. But forget the driver’s seat. We should hop into a locomotive.
Freight rail stimulates the economy, creates jobs and benefits other infrastructure like roads and bridges – and does so in an environmentally friendly way.
Investing in freight rail capacity, while sustaining the capacity the railroads have already built up, means shippers save money and build efficiency, even during recessions. Freight trains deliver just about everything that keeps America working, from the chemicals that purify our drinking water, to the wheat in our bread, to computers, clothes, cars, and the energy used to generate more than half of the nation's electricity.
The wide-ranging interaction between farmers, miners, manufacturers and distributors means saved jobs in a variety of industries. It also means more companies are spending more money in more places. The U.S. Department of Commerce estimates that every $1 spent on rail investment yields $3 in economic output – a return that most industries would envy.
Additionally, rail lines pull cars and trucks off structurally taxed and heavily trafficked roads and bridges. Much of the $1 billion in federal funding released this week will go towards much needed road, bridge and tunnel repair or construction projects. A larger freight rail network would aid that infrastructure recovery by pulling even more trucks off our state’s roads and bridges.
Think of it this way: Highway congestion costs the nation an estimated $78 billion in wasted travel time (4.2 billion hours) and wasted fuel (2.9 billion gallons). But a single train can take 280 trucks off the highway – the equivalent of removing 1,100 cars from the road. That means less gridlock, faster commutes, safer roads and less strained bridges.
All that equates to a big dent in the environmental tread marks left by so many cars and trucks. A train can move a ton of freight an average of 436 miles per gallon of fuel -- more than three times as far as it could move on a truck. If 10 percent of long-haul freight currently moved on our highway was instead transferred by rail, fuel savings would exceed a billion gallons every year.
Here’s the point: No one approach is going to single-handedly lift the federal or state economy out of its stagnation. Congress should be working on a federal level to invest in opportunities to make a difference in any numbers of ways, while states look for smart, efficient ways to spend the federal dollars that are beginning to flow in.
That’s why hundreds of rail advocates traveled to Washington, D.C. in February to deliver a very significant message: freight rail is a modern, versatile way to give the country’s economic chugging again.
If we’re smart, we’ll hop aboard.
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Rep. Markosek represents the 25th Legislative District, which includes portions of Allegheny and Westmoreland counties. Rep. Geist represents the 79th Legislative District, which includes a portion of Blair County.