Not content to just threaten any airlines that might oppose heavy subsidies to high-speed rail aimed at putting their unsubsidized operations out of business, Secretary of Immobility Ray LaHood is now threatening railroads that are supposedly dragging their wheels in response to federal plans to run moderate-speed (up to 110 mph) trains on their freight lines. As previously noted here, three of the nation’s four largest railroads have stated that they do not believe that passenger trains can be safely run faster than 90 mph (79 mph in the case of one of the railroads) on the same tracks as freight trains.
Apparently, LaHood has been making “thinly veiled threats” to apply “punitive measures” to railroads that aren’t getting on board the 110 mph trains. Obama’s expectation was that the railroads would eagerly accept money to improve their tracks because the improvements would benefit the freight trains as well as passenger service. But the reality is that the typical freight car spends far more time standing still than in motion, so speeding a freight train from, say, 50 mph to 60 mph has almost no effect on the amount of time required to deliver payloads.
