Maybe the next big thing is helping freight trains move faster.
Transportation is always a big concern in the economy, but to hear Jeff Immelt, chairman and CEO of General Electric, and Wick Moorman, chairman and CEO of Norfolk Southern railroad, tell it, they have the next-generation traffic-control system for trains to move goods more efficiently and effectively.
GE has developed the technology, called RailEdge Movement Planner, that can enable railroads to accommodate more freight faster, without installing any new track. The two executives talked about it in a column in the June 9, 2010, edition of The Atlanta-Journal Constitution.
How is this going to change things for us? With traffic already clogged, moving more freight by trains, instead of trucks, will reduce traffic on the roads and the fuel we consume. A train can move a ton of freight 480 miles on a gallon of diesel fuel, the executives say.
Also, the Planner can reduce the travel time for a train from Louisville, Ky., to Macon, Ga., from about 27 hours to 22.5 hours. That may not sound like a big difference, the executives say, but in freight rail, particularly on old tracks, that’s a big leap forward. One mph increase in train velocity can save approximately $200 million in capital and expense annually.
The executives also quote U.S. Commerce Department data that says ever $1 invested in freight rail yields $3 in economic output. Every $1 billion in rail investment creates 20,000 jobs.
WANTED TO BE A TRAIN ENGINEER AS A KID?
So, if you are out of work now, and have given up looking for a job, think of your childhood, when you idolized engineers and others who worked on trains. That could be your next career.
Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan used to monitor rail-car traffic as a telltale sign of how the economy was doing. Immelt and Moorman seem to believe it’s chugging ahead, and their new technology will help.
Taking a few hours off a freight-train trip isn’t noticeable for most people. But it may be a sign that America is ready to roar back after the 2008 recession.
Instead of getting frustrated sitting idly at a rail crossing as a 60-plus-car train passes by, think that getting stuck there more often will be a good thing for everyone. It may help bring the manufacturing and retail sectors in our economy out of the doldrums.
So if you have lost all hope that the economy will improve, and if you have given up looking for a job, there may be reason to get hope back on track. There is no substitute for American innovation, and the next big thing in freight trains may haul in the next big thing in something else. These next big things may be the next big thing in your outlook on life. It may be Hard to Stop a Trane HVAC system, so let’s hope this train technology will make a new booming economy hard to stop.
Peter
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