Amtrak's Cost for NEC Electricity vs Diesel Fuel

I felt curious as to how much truth there is to the idea that electric power saves substantially over the cost of fueling diesels in railway operations as far as Amtrak is concerned. It is common knowledge that electrics have the advantage of being able to pull longer trains from being more powerful than modern diesels.But Amtrak (to my vague degree of knowledge) has nationwide contracts in place which keep the cost of diesel well below $2 per gallon in most markets where its trains use diesel locomotives, which seems extraordinarily efficient from a relative perspective. Maybe I'm asking for something too specific, but is it realistic that Amtrak's use of catenary in the NEC delivers significant annual cost savings versus an alternate reality where the entire corridor had been dieselized?

There are many advantages - even absolute requirements, for a true high=speed railway - to catenary aside from potential fuel cost savings. Diesels have slower acceleration and a significantly lower top speed (only a few models able to achieve even 125 mph, such as the F-125 and LRC), and there is further the issue of operating non-electric powered trains through New York.

You do raise a valid point, especially when the cost of catenary maintenance and installation is considered, but a completely diesel powered high-speed corridor is not feasible.

Gulfwind2 said:

I felt curious as to how much truth there is to the idea that electric power saves substantially over the cost of fueling diesels in railway operations as far as Amtrak is concerned. It is common knowledge that electrics have the advantage of being able to pull longer trains from being more powerful than modern diesels.But Amtrak (to my vague degree of knowledge) has nationwide contracts in place which keep the cost of diesel well below $2 per gallon in most markets where its trains use diesel locomotives, which seems extraordinarily efficient from a relative perspective. Maybe I'm asking for something too specific, but is it realistic that Amtrak's use of catenary in the NEC delivers significant annual cost savings versus an alternate reality where the entire corridor had been dieselized?

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A Voice said:

There are many advantages - even absolute requirements, for a true high=speed railway - to catenary aside from potential fuel cost savings. Diesels have slower acceleration and a significantly lower top speed (only a few models able to achieve even 125 mph, such as the F-125 and LRC), and there is further the issue of operating non-electric powered trains through New York.

You do raise a valid point, especially when the cost of catenary maintenance and installation is considered, but a completely diesel powered high-speed corridor is not feasible.

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Well, considering Amtrak runs over 100 trains a day on the corridor at high speeds and the infrastructure on the lower corridor existed prior to Amtrak, I'm pretty sure they're ahead of the game. After all, you'd still need electric infrastructure to pass through Penn Station with passenger trains.

From a 2013 discussion of Metra costs - you can swap in your own figures here for the cost of diesel fuel and the cost of electricity. I'm sure the cost of electricity is a bit more nuanced for Amtrak, being that some of it is produced by Amtrak.

"Fuel is self-explanatory and costs $27,250,000. Metrolink averages 2.7 gallons per train-mile with their heavier new Rotem cars and long consists and budgets $3.75 per gallon, which represents $10.125 per mile. By way of comparison, an electric train which consumes 30 kWh per train-mile at 12¢ per kWh would have a fuel cost of only $3.60 per train-mile and many trains average less."

http://reasonrail.blogspot.com/2013/03/how-much-does-it-cost-to-run-train.html

snvboy said:

From a 2013 discussion of Metra costs - you can swap in your own figures here for the cost of diesel fuel and the cost of electricity. I'm sure the cost of electricity is a bit more nuanced for Amtrak, being that some of it is produced by Amtrak.

"Fuel is self-explanatory and costs $27,250,000. Metrolink averages 2.7 gallons per train-mile with their heavier new Rotem cars and long consists and budgets $3.75 per gallon, which represents $10.125 per mile. By way of comparison, an electric train which consumes 30 kWh per train-mile at 12¢ per kWh would have a fuel cost of only $3.60 per train-mile and many trains average less."

http://reasonrail.blogspot.com/2013/03/how-much-does-it-cost-to-run-train.html

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Like power to your home meter, the pure energy cost is only a portion of the cost of providing power to pantograph. The cost of maintaining the electric traction system - the 138kV transmission lines, the substations, the catenary, and all the ancillary equipment that supports, operates and protects the system - is substantial. That is why electric traction is only practical on lines with heavy traffic density. You need to spread all those largely fixed costs over a lot of trains before electric can become an economically viable option.

It is also the case that while most of the supply chain infrastructure is accounted for in the cost at the consumption point for electricity, (at least for electricity generated from sources other than petroleum products) substantial parts of the source safety cost for imported petroleum fuels is not. The portion of the defense budget needed to protect oil sources abroad is not paid for out of fuel costs at consumer but out of general tax funds. Fortunately the proportion of such is dwindling but the continuing cost of past misadventures to support our consumption habits is not.

PRR 60 said:

snvboy said:

From a 2013 discussion of Metra costs - you can swap in your own figures here for the cost of diesel fuel and the cost of electricity. I'm sure the cost of electricity is a bit more nuanced for Amtrak, being that some of it is produced by Amtrak.

"Fuel is self-explanatory and costs $27,250,000. Metrolink averages 2.7 gallons per train-mile with their heavier new Rotem cars and long consists and budgets $3.75 per gallon, which represents $10.125 per mile. By way of comparison, an electric train which consumes 30 kWh per train-mile at 12¢ per kWh would have a fuel cost of only $3.60 per train-mile and many trains average less."

http://reasonrail.blogspot.com/2013/03/how-much-does-it-cost-to-run-train.html

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Like power to your home meter, the pure energy cost is only a portion of the cost of providing power to pantograph. The cost of maintaining the electric traction system - the 138kV transmission lines, the substations, the catenary, and all the ancillary equipment that supports, operates and protects the system - is substantial. That is why electric traction is only practical on lines with heavy traffic density. You need to spread all those largely fixed costs over a lot of trains before electric can become an economically viable option.

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This is correct. The cost of electricity is *far far lower* than the cost of diesel; it's always cheaper to run on electricity. (Unless someone is doing some sort of unreasonable profiteering markup -- MARC should keep running on electricity on the NEC, but apparently Amtrak is doing unreasonable profiteering markups on the electricity.)

However, the fixed capital cost of installation of electric lines and the fixed maintenance costs are quite substantial. You need a lot of demand to spread that overhead over -- lots of trains per day.

How many trains per day depends on your assumptions. Many sources say that for passenger trains, six each way, a total of twelve per day, is enough (some say four each way). For freight trains, which generally have fewer acceleration/deceleration cycles and as a result better fuel efficiency, the number estimated is usually higher. In fact all the major freight corridors (BNSF Northern & Southern Transcons, Water Level Route, etc.) have enough traffic to justify electrification on a standalone basis, financially speaking. The class Is have avoided electrification because either they need to switch locomotives to move freight onto the branch lines (which delays trains and adds expense), or they need to electrify the branch lines (which don't have enough traffic to justify electrification) and after considering that the electrification stops being financially justifiable. Just so you know. (It's possible that future electric locomotives with large batteries will change the picture here by allowing them to run the trains on battery power on branch lines.)

Or, if you're looking at electrification outside the railroad business, to cover those fixed costs you need lots of houses! Rural electricity to spread-out ranch houses is a huge money-loser. It's subsidized by urban electricity ratepayers. The arrival of cheap solar panels and cheap batteries will make it very attractive for rural areas to go off the grid -- attractive for both the homeowners *and* for the utility companies, who want to get rid of these expensive, heavily-subsidized people at the end of long power lines which only serve a few houses. It'll be interesting.

Absolutely. A prime example was the Rural Electrification Administration coops without which many areas of the country would not have received affordable power. An investor owned utility could never be profitable enough to "build out" those areas.Similar things took place in telephony.

PVD said:

Absolutely. A prime example was the Rural Electrification Administration coops without which many areas of the country would not have received affordable power. An investor owned utility could never be profitable enough to "build out" those areas.Similar things took place in telephony.

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And roads. And railroads. And sewage systems. You name it. Almost any core infrastructure has this same issue. You need a threshold of density before a shared infrastructure becomes viable without suibsidy of some sort.

Of course. But with telephones and electricity, those have in many cases been private, while things like roads and sewers have traditionally been government.

PVD said:

Of course. But with telephones and electricity, those have in many cases been private, while things like roads and sewers have traditionally been government.

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Historically, originally, at least in NJ, many of the original intercity roads were private toll roads, and especially so where a river crossing was involved. The government thing came along a bit later when the private thing proved to be too contentious, cumbersome and unworkable. Of course, whether it was private toll roads or railroads, they had to generally get a charter approved by the government.

Another one is garbage collection and disposal. There is quite a mix of municipal/departmental and contracted out to private entities lime Waste Management.

Some larger cities (like NYC) that have city provided residential collection, commercial and construction collection is private.

Rural electricity is expensive - running power to a cabin put the kibosh on buying it for my parents, even from a rural electricity co-op it was too much (at least for a cabin). My mother grew up in the Tennessee Valley when the TVA started running electricity to the towns and hamlets. One place they lived had no electricity but phone, while the next valley was the opposite. OK, threadjacking in progress.

Chicago also has residential trash collection (up to 4 units, though often cheated on) via taxes, which is a sore spot for bigger residential buildings who at least used to get a refund on the refuse rate.

Where else except Denver has there been any recent electrification of rail in the US lately?

Most of what Denver is doing is constructing a new electric railways system.

The electrification of an existing system is about to happen in California for Caltrain.

Beyond that electrification is not quite in fashion in the US yet, except for LRTs and Metros apparently.

Meanwhile Russia, China, India and the Stans and even Israel continue electrification at a furious pace for whatever reason they see as the driving force. They are not the same everywhere.

Duh, I forgot about Caltrain.... There was another thread today where I could have sworn, before re-reading, that they were electrifying something in Virginia with third rail!!!

The Milwaukee Road Olympic Hiawatha was an electric passenger route through the Bitterroot mountains that went from Chicago to Seattle. The energy savings was not enough to save the road and when the MR went belly up, no class 1 stepped in to purchased the line. An electric line was just not attractive to the freight railroads. Instead everything was scrapped and sadly only one frequently clogged CHI-SEA EB route remains.

If I recall it was also freight, because of tunnels and grades, wasn't it? I also remember reading (wasn't there an article recently posted on another thread) that had it held on with electric, it might still be so, due to the fuel crises of '73.

jis said:

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Meanwhile Russia, China, India and the Stans and even Israel continue electrification at a furious pace for whatever reason they see as the driving force. They are not the same everywhere.

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It's the trend in Europe too. Even the traditional laggards like Britain and Denmark have extensive electrification plans, and a country like Sweden, where the mainlines have been electrified since the 1930's, is continuing electrifying side lines on a steady pace.

I seem to remember that Amtrak has its own diesel powered generators, from which, power their NEC electric locomotives. In NYC itself, aren't there turbine "jet engine" electric generators to support the power grid?

Given that, aren't then all their locomotives diesel (fossil fuel) powered, though some indirectly?

Can we wonder if Amtrak's charge for electricity to MARC may be a product of their accounting practices ? Those practices seem to put too much allocation of fixed costs for operation. Maybe the high expense of maintaining the obsolete PRR CAT and supporting infrastructure needs another look ? may a charge just for the KwHour used ?

Other posters have noted that if the Amtrak fixed costs were in a separate line item that operationally most trains are "profitable" As well additional trains would be operationally profitable ?

Gulfwind2 said:

I felt curious as to how much truth there is to the idea that electric power saves substantially over the cost of fueling diesels in railway operations as far as Amtrak is concerned. It is common knowledge that electrics have the advantage of being able to pull longer trains from being more powerful than modern diesels.But Amtrak (to my vague degree of knowledge) has nationwide contracts in place which keep the cost of diesel well below $2 per gallon in most markets where its trains use diesel locomotives, which seems extraordinarily efficient from a relative perspective. Maybe I'm asking for something too specific, but is it realistic that Amtrak's use of catenary in the NEC delivers significant annual cost savings versus an alternate reality where the entire corridor had been dieselized?

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They might not be using "diesel" per se. Possibly No 2 fuel oil, which isn't taxed, but isn't allowed for use on highway vehicles. My kid loves a miniature steam train operation in a local park, and the head of operations says they use No 2 fuel oil. He claimed it's essentially diesel, but dyed red and sold untaxed.

There are also various grades of "off-road diesel" that are dyed red.

Government agencies are usually sales tax exempt, and there are provisions for non highway use of diesel since the highway use tax provisions normally don't apply.

Cho Cho Charlie said:

I seem to remember that Amtrak has its own diesel powered generators, from which, power their NEC electric locomotives. In NYC itself, aren't there turbine "jet engine" electric generators to support the power grid?

Given that, aren't then all their locomotives diesel (fossil fuel) powered, though some indirectly?

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Oil-fired electric power generation today is minimal. Many of the old oil jet turbine peaking units have been retired or converted to natural gas.

Amtrak's NEC is powered from commercial utility sources with the usual mix - predominantly natural gas (largely from new high-efficiency, combined cycle plants) and nuclear. The southern (NYP-WAS) section also gets some of it's power from hydro. Safe Harbor Dam, south of Harrisburg, provides NEC power through dedicated, 25hz units, and single-phase, 138kV transmission lines.

Cho Cho -- PRR is absolutely correct. One additional item on the 138Kv transmission lines.

they are similar to your power feed to your home. They are 69Kv to ground each and 138KV across the two main lines

Doesn't Safe Harbor also have some power that is generated at 60Hz and then converted to 25Hz?