Green Options

Now is the time for an increase in our national gas tax to fund improvements in our transportation infrastructure and save a dieing manufacturing base.

The Senate is poised to clear legislation to reauthorize Amtrak for the first time since 1997 and renew rail safety programs.

What If They Were Heavier, and Longer?

Had enough of the “big rigs” on the highway?  Well, Congress is looking at new weight and size limits, and Teamster President James Hoffa says “no” to bigger trucks.

In a House subcomittee hearing July 9, Hoffa is quoted as saying:

“Bigger trucks are more dangerous trucks.  Lifting truck weight and size limits would turn big rigs into time bombs.”

“Railroads are the most environmentally friendly and energy efficient way to move goods on land.”

Freight trains have evolved over the years, carrying freight in a variety of ways, including taking semi-trailer rigs off the highways and shipping them on flat-cars. If you’re anywhere near a railroad track, you’ll see what are called intermodal trains carrying shipping containers stacked on top of one another, along with trailers and the usual box cars and other forms of equipment.

However, the physical infrastructure in some areas of the country creates a barrier for some railroads who want to stack shipping containers in order to carry more freight.

“One train can carry the load of more than 280 trucks.”

If you live near a railroad, you see them every day, flat cars with semi-trailers secured to the deck, or shipping containers stacked two-high. They’re moving freight that isn’t clogging our highways and polluting the air with excess hydrocarbons, nitrogen oxide and particulates produced by over-the road trucks.

So says the CSX Railroad, a major carrier of goods in the mid-Atlantic shipping corridor, now positioning itself for $700 million in system improvements. The program is called National Gateway, a project the railroad says will create a more efficient flow of rail traffic between Mid-Atlantic ports and Midwestern markets.

What’s riding the rails in your hometown? A few hobos maybe, but also potentially deadly chemicals rumble through America’s communities daily. My hometown paper, The Galesburg Register-Mail, printed a series of articles on the dangers nearly every train brings to a community. And in Galesburg, IL, this is particularly important: approximately 1,000 cars travel through the city daily on two major railroads that cross town, the Burlington Northern and the

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