Introducing Rail Grid Collaborative's Creative World
Welcome to the Rail Grid Collaborative! We are thrilled to have you here.
THE RAIL-GRID COLLABORATIVE (RGC) is a non-profit organization founded to promote and enable technical collaboration, joint action, research and mutual goal setting in pursuit of investment in (1) efficient, safe, and high-performing North America freight and passenger rail operations and related supply chains; and (2) an integrated, resilient, secure and economical electric transmission grid. Headqurtered in Washington DC, RGC's members do business and represent constituencies at the intersection of these two netowrk industries in states and provinces across the US and Canada.
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OUR THEORY OF CHANGE
WHERE COMMERCIAL OPPORTUNITIES EXIST
Let’s pursue direct (and private, where necessary) negotiations about individual, limited-term commercial arrangements or specific transactions, projects, or outcomes the parties can achieve. RGC accounts for investor and market demands, operational concerns, structural barriers and information deficits, resource and technology needs, and the opportunities and the historical position that rail holds in the marketplace
WHERE PUBLIC POLICY OPPORTUNTIES OR PROBLEMS EXIST
The electric and railroad industries can utilize RGC to pursue project or policy objectives, meet the demands of public policy and employ an understanding of FEDERAL, STATE, and LOCAL laws and processes as a tool of public advocacy. RGC is reaching out to energy regulators and planners, state rail planners, and funding programs, to identify and seize benefits for all classes of rail and grid participants.
JOINT PROBLEM-SOLVING
A classic example of JOINT PROBLEM-SOLVING involves co-location of electric transmission lines and cables within railroad and other transportation rights-of-way as a contribution to both strengthening the national electrical grid, decarbonizing railroad system components, and accelerating operational innovation through catenary, energy storage, and other applications.
BEST INDUSTRY INTELLIGENCE
Industry intelligence serves policy makers, and RGC participants and stakeholders require TIMELY POLICY INPUT. Because the services and benefits of electric grid and rail transport operations are economy-wide and impact states, markets, small communities in diverse regions of the country, RGC will develop capabilities to identify trends and developments among industrial strategies, regional transmission plans, state and national rail plans, and state integrated resource plans, where future projects are planned for funding and development.
ACCESS TO DATA
Where a paucity of commercial, industrial, or technological data or significant barriers to economic development exists, new research and data collection will assist decision making by industry and public interests. Grid and rail expansion require better information on railroad rights-of-way, system requirements, energy demand, system interconnection, and more coordinated state siting requirements, that can address the drag on new projects, such as the co-location of charging facilities, electric generation and transmission facilities, or data centers within transportation geospatial assets.
FRESH START
Major research projects, long absent from rail infrastructure planning, can stimulate new economic activity. The Federal Railroad Administration’s recent study “Cost and Benefit Framework for Modern Railway Electrification Options,” together with new industry experience co-locating rail and electric facilities, demonstrate the feasibility of deploying more efficient electric generation and transmission resources for locomotive power, ways to identify the cost and benefits of overcoming uneconomic barriers, methods of reducing costs, development timelines, and the operational risks of transmission colocation. Rail system electrification, starting with components (e.g., switchyards, substations, branch lines) is necessarily ‘incremental.’
Projects and Developments
PROPOSED PROJECTS / SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
MORE COMING SOON--US MIDWEST, MID-ATLANTIC AND SOUTH
PROPOSED PROJECTS / SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
The BNSF-owned corridor between San Bernardino and Barstow offers a power transmission path which connects the nation’s 2nd large metropolitan area with the tremendous solar and wind energy resources of the Mojave Desert.
NORTHEAST U.S. / OVERVIEW AND PROJECTS
MORE COMING SOON--US MIDWEST, MID-ATLANTIC AND SOUTH
PROPOSED PROJECTS / SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
The Northeast quadrant of the U.S. is where American rail started about 250 years ago, growing chaotically with competing lines offering dense, often duplicate coverage for both passenger and freight service. It is the home of the “Northeast Corridor” (NEC) connecting Boston to Washington, D.C., which hosts North America’s longest stretch of electrically powered railroad. In addition to the NEC’s owner Amtrak, there are regional passenger rail systems serving Atlantic coastal cities, mostly also electrically powered and sharing some Amtrak-owned track.
Private freight/ public passenger lines. Freight rail moves over three major (Class I) railroads - CSX, Canadian National, and Norfolk Southern - and dozens of smaller Class II and III railroads also known as ‘shortlines’, a mix of independents and subsidiaries of rail holding companies. Freight rail locomotives are (currently) - exclusively diesel-powered. Freight is a secondary consideration on the Northeast Corridor but in other areas of the Northeast faster electrified locomotives would help bridge the speed differential between freight and passenger trains, thus allowing for more traffic overall.
Existing Rights of Way as a grid addition. Shared use of linear railroad estate for communications and energy infrastructure is a practical approach to enhancing these critical networks. With the electric grid in major need of expansion, facilities siting and permitting is both a national policy and operational challenge and a business opportunity. Highways and pipeline networks offer other, perhaps less desirable, opportunities for electric transmission co-location. In the most demographically and industrially congested areas of the country, it is critically important to coordinate the safe and reliable delivery of electricity compatibly with heavy freight, and regional passenger forms of rail.
Example Project: Champlain Hudson Power Express. The use of railroad rights-of-way for hosting buried high voltage lines (500kV, HVDC) is being pioneered in the Northeast by the Champlain Hudson Power Express (CHPE). This line will soon deliver low-cost Quebec hydropower across the Canada-U.S. border to its southern terminus in New York City, in part (significantly) along 100 miles of CSX right-of-way presenting a practical demonstration that rail operations need not be impeded by such installation.