This all makes a lot of sense, but for a logistics question - what is the scale constraint?  

Today, there is a compelling reason to ship high-volume loads over rail, for precisely the reasons you note.  Less fuel per ton = less cost per ton, to an significant degree.  That's why we have coal trains instead of coal trucks.

I have no personal experience shipping coal, or anything else at that kind of volume.  I do, however, have experience shipping the kinds of things that tend to go on trucks (modular power plants, wood fuel, etc.)  In the occasional lucky instance where the source and destination are close to a rail hub, it may make sense to go rail - but even then, you've got logistics hassles associated with getting a single car out of the line, on-loading/off-loading material, etc.  (After all, a part of the reason that rail is more efficient is because all those cars are ganged together - if every car had it's own engine, we'd lose a lot of the gain!)

The upshot is that more often than not - at least in my limited experience - trucking is preferred because it saves all the intermodal complexity.  For all their flaws, trucks are innately good at transporting small batches from any point to any other point, while rails are good at transporting large batches from a finite number of defined points to another.   Clearly, more rail access would increase the number-of-points piece of the equation.  But how does Drake's proposal address the innate bias of rail towards large volumes (and therefore against truck-sized loads)?

I'm omitting a lot of details, which is why I urge people to read the whole thing, not just my few paragraphs. However part of the infrastructure upgrades Drake proposes is to make intermodal connections better. He also proposes a "mind upgrade" where rail becomes customer service oriented. Even today rail is cheaper per ton-mile than trucking, which is why it still dominates heavy low value cargo. But it is slow, unreliable, and has (as you say) intermodal complexity besides. The bottom line is that intermodal connections should be handled by the railways and shipping companies and be transparent to industry doing shipping. For many years UPS did ship packages by rail. But as rail infrastructure deteriorated, they found that the rail companies failed to meet even the minimal comittments they made increasingly often. And unfortunately losing UPS made sense for the railways as currently constituted. They can't compete with trucking in anything but low cost. Focusing on a customer service orient niche when they are competing on price and really cannot compete in service makes sense. But there was a time when not only UPS but most long distance U.S. mail traveled by rail. The intermodal problems can be handled if the core service is decent.   Note: while this post was in queue I learned of a Washington Monthly article on the same subject. I've updated the post to point to it.

Rail shipping yards in the middle of the city are limited in size at best. Many in smaller cities were reduced in the 50s and turned into shopping centers. So I'd consider adding new shipping yards in less dense areas where trucks could load and unload containers.
Ship containers are packaged to be unloaded whole  onto trucks for transport to the ultimate destination.
Energy can be reduced by unloading ships from Asia with containers sized to trains directly to trains and moving it across the country. This is also manpower efficient, compared to using a truck driver per container, a train can carry a lot with just a couple of guys.
Seems like the first place to start would be cross-country or up and down the coasts. But there has to be stations to load/unload from trains.

Yes, you are right PurpleOzone. More FreightYards are a key part of this. More switchyards too. Read the Washington Monthly article which starts with a great example of shovel ready infrastructure we could do upgrade rail freight even before we started the major upgrade. Lots of little bottlenecks we could fix.  

This concept is very graceful. Along similar lines, I'd wondered about placing solar panels along the tracks of sunny stretches of railway line - the number of trains passing over would have minimal effect upon energy created due to the minimal amount of time they take to pass through. Electricity generated could also feed into the grid, and railways contain large amounts of unused space which would be thus utilised....

I appreciate the focus on freight rail and thanks for the postings.

Even more efficient than rail are the tug and barge mode of transportation. Inland and coastwise towboats move a great amount of dry and liquid bulk products, of course being located on the coast or major rivers and canals. If there is a 6X factor for rail over trucks, it might be 16X for barges.

What has happened to our country's inland waterway system is nothing short of a travesty. The channels are silting up, canals are being closed because of lack of maintenance, and the Army Corps of Engineers has cut lock and channel maintenance by about half.

I have worked on proposals to ship municipal waste out of New York via barge instead of truck and have helped with a "container on board" barging system as well. A few things have worked! Let's be fair, barging need to be included along with rail. I agree with the customer service part too!  -sammie

Onward through the fog

If conventional rail is 6 to 8 times as efficient as trucks, electric rail is 16 to 20.

And I agree that waterway maintenance is a disgrace and that we might restore barge traffic back to close to what it was in the sixties. There are inherent limitation to barges. Obviously waterways don't go everywhere. Also much barge efficiency comes from moving stuff slowly. A barge by nature does not travel fast. So you will never move anything by barge you need in a hurry.  Also dredging can be harmful to water systems, so you may never be able to do all the dreging you need. Bottom line: we can maintain our waterways beter than we do and increase barge traffic, but it can never be the dominant way to transport freight.

I have been thinking about how much rail freight capacity would be freed up by phasing out coal.
Coal uses 24% of rail freight cars and something like 44% of tonnage capacity.

 The solar proposal for the southwest that was published last year in Scientific American included HVDC tranmission lines in the plan. The authors spoke of using existing rights of way, including highways, to run new lines, and avoid the problems of getting new rights of way.  I haven't heard anyone else mention this idea.

 Another difference between that plan and others is that they talked of subsidies to encourage investment in solar power plants, but thought that the new HVDC transmission lines would be built without subsidies, saying that the utilities would invest the money and get a return on it. Any thoughts?

Phasing out coal will phase out a lot of the slowing moving heavy high volume freight that makes managing the system more complicated. In the absence of a major freight rail upgrade it also phases out a lot of their revenue. And without an upgrade they won't be able replace it with other higher value freight that requires faster more reliable delivery.  So ironically losing a lot of their business is  a reason rail will need to upgrade capability.

In terms of utilities paying for HVDC lines on their own

1) I see no evidence they will do this

2)The cost of HVDC lines to create a national grid is given as 300 billion to 400 billion dollars. (Though Al Gore thinks we can include full smart grid capability in that higher figure.) The rail upgrade Drake proposes would cost 400 billion without including a national grid. The cost of a national grid and rail upgrade combined is 450 billion to 500 billion dollars. So you have huge synergy and huge cost savings by doing them together.

3) And believe me, getting long distance transmission available will be of tremendous benefit to renewable industries. That does not we should not do additional things. I do support carbon intensity regulations for utilities that would be benefit renewables (and also efficiecy means such as recycled power - truly technology neutral). But this is a move toward a low carbon economy with huge potential, and it ties in to so many other things we need to do.

Linking up a coal sullied I mean supplied grid is not what I had in mind for revamping the grid. I don't see how it helps to link up the four corners of the grid and share the coal produced power. I was thinking of more off grid alternative power with a revamped smart grid that could recoup and distribute the excess power. I know Obama was talking about the upgrading the grid infrastructure but smart grid to me does not mean a nuclear coal loop. Whatever alternative energy source that is predominate for each sector should be developed and a way of selling the excess to the national grid.

The eons of time and nature was good to us down here. It was not until we become civilized that destroying our habitat become fathomable or fashionable.

The same links will help link wind and solar. To get wind and solar you need a long distance grid. Getting a long distance grid almost for free helps remove one of the bottlenecks to wind and solar. Of course you need to decarbonize the grid at the same time. But "off-grid" usually uses a heck of a lot fossil fuel backup. Fossil fuel free beats off-grid. Long distance transmission is part of what we need to completely phase out fossil fuels.

I think that that will be a good way to look at it.

I realize there is a backup component related to alternative off grid power now but aside from the grid infrastructure investment alternative energy technology investment was being touted as part of Obama's recovery package. I believe there is room for increased efficiency in solar cell performance above current levels and room for new manufacturing technology and cost efficiency in the plan. With the wholesale cost of all materials decreasing during this economic slump and the temporary lower energy cost we are enjoying I believe a window of opportunity to improve not only the grid but off grid power production.

The problem being the off grid portion will not have corporate support because they have been accustomed to controlling the production and distribution of our energy. I believe the typical $60,000 cost for an off grid solar package for a medium sized home could and should be brought down to around &20,000 with the added tax incentives to make the installation appealing to most home owners.  Of course non carbon back up and alternatives to solar for regions where total solar is not feasible.

The off grid power sector is not practical at this time but should be at some point if a portion of the recovery money is directed toward this end. The off grid power generation for third world countries should have domestic applications here also. As the technology and efficiency improves and of course as they become not so cost prohibitive the off grid should combine seamlessly with a smart grid. If this is the thinking in the planning stage. Small scale alternative energy stations with the consumer bearing most of the cost will work better in some regions than large scale alternative energy production that depends on private sector and corporate funding.

If the government fronts the money large energy concerns will of course take the money and give the plan a half hearted try. If it does not compete with the energy source or model they are involved with. An industry set up around providing off grid power should have priority when doling out the funds. None of the carbon based energy suppliers should be involved in this because it stands in direct competition with this portion of an alternative based energy supply grid or off grid to be more exact.

New innovation requires new thinking and I don't believe any of the carbon based entities will pay it any more than lip service just to get at the government funding.

The eons of time and nature was good to us down here. It was not until we become civilized that destroying our habitat become fathomable or fashionable.

That's a lovely helping of doom & gloom you have shared with us, but you forgot the sense-of-humor part.  Additionally, you ignored the main topic.  I give it a C-.

The war between cable TV and Satellite TV is a good analogy of going off the grid for me. Early on Cable TV concerns fought tooth and nail Satellite TV distribution. Years ago I had to sign a waver that I could not get or did not have access to cable before I could get my Direct TV satellite dish. Of course I had a cable running right by my house but was not thrilled with the service. It is not even a question they ask anymore and if you are anywhere away from a large metropolitan area you can get your own off line dish and have some competition now in the market so you have a choice even in which satellite company you want to go with. You have a whole industry set up around manufacturing the equipment, installing and maintaining plus providing programming.

You can have the same set up for off grid alternative energy if you can keep the major carbon providers out of it until the market has legs. Of course the network that controls the grid at this time is going to be as warm to the idea as cable was to satellite in the early days. The infrastructure cost for running and maintaining energy transmission lines to non metropolitan area's is a large portion of the grid cost at present. Wireless communications has proven more cost efficient in 3rd world countries where no telephone lines existed.

If you have non carbon entities develop alternative energy off grid plants for individual homes the cost will far less than a large energy concern trying to build a large mega watt alternative energy generation plant and having to build and maintain the distribution system. You will have the added benefit of most the cost being on the home owner and a manufacturing , installing and maintaining industry being built around it. There is a large portion of your 3 million jobs Obama is looking for.

I can see upgrading the present grid for seamlessly transporting all types of  electricity be it carbon or alternative based. You will have to, to  take advantage of large corporate controlled windmill farms or solar banks. I suppose large geothermal and hydro sources will be part of the mix. You will get the added benefit of creating jobs in this economic downturn. In reality energy conservation is one of the most cost efficient programs  needed while we sort this all out. I still feel that it you consider all the area of the U.S. that lays outside the medium sized metropolitan areas and count the added cost advantages of taking them off grid plus the energy savings if you did it with alternate energy it would be a no brainer. Even if you just made it a voluntary choice and did away with some of the corporate and government restrictions in doing so this off grid energy sector would take off. Once you come up with just a few more advances in solar efficiency and cost especially in manufacturing the same conditions will appear as when satellite TV become a cost efficient alternative to cable TV.

Someone will jump on it and a whole economy will be developed around it independent of government funding.

The eons of time and nature was good to us down here. It was not until we become civilized that destroying our habitat become fathomable or fashionable.