Evaluation of Transportation and Economic Impact of Short Line Railroads in Texas
This study examines transportation and economic impacts for Texas Class III (or short line) railroads. Many short line railroads provide service to communities that have only a few significant industries. If the rail industry fails, the entire community would suffer economically as a result. Moreover, diverted truck traffic would also increase roadway maintenance requirements and potentially reduce safety for other road users. This research seeks to identify direct and indirect customer bases of the railroads, conduct interviews with short line railroad officials and their customers, and follow up with interviews of local community leaders to determine detailed roles and plans for the short line network of Texas. In this research, online survey invitations were sent to 43 Texas short line companies and 20 responses were received. The software IMPLAN was used to estimate economic impacts of short lines at state level. Transportation impact analysis was also conducted to estimate the cost by rail and the cost by diverted trucks. The shipping cost, safety cost, maintenance cost, highway congestion cost, emission cost, and noise impacts were calculated in this research.
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Supplemental Notes:
- This paper was sponsored by TRB committee AR040 Standing Committee on Freight Rail Transportation.
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Corporate Authors:
500 Fifth Street, NW
Washington, DC United States 20001 -
Authors:
- Saldarriaga, Daisy
- You, Boya
- Gao, Lu
- Qiao, Fengxiang
- Li, Qing
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Conference:
- Transportation Research Board 96th Annual Meeting
- Location: Washington DC, United States
- Date: 2017-1-8 to 2017-1-12
- Date: 2017
Language
- English
Media Info
- Media Type: Digital/other
- Features: Figures; References; Tables;
- Pagination: 20p
- Monograph Title: TRB 96th Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers
Subject/Index Terms
- TRT Terms: Economic impacts; Short line railroads
- Identifier Terms: IMPLAN (Software)
- Geographic Terms: Texas
- Subject Areas: Economics; Railroads;
Filing Info
- Accession Number: 01631696
- Record Type: Publication
- Report/Paper Numbers: 17-03855
- Files: TRIS, TRB, ATRI
- Created Date: Apr 1 2017 10:45PM