New California Locomotive Emissions Rules

There's more than enough time to build a "Mexican Standoff" line from either Tucson or Yuma, AZ to the Baja or Pacific Coast. Problem solved.

Mr. Olesen, not completely sure to what your immediate relates, but if such is to consider accessing the LA basin through Mexico, then how say we just rebuild the San Diego and Arizona Eastern?

Nah, I'm suggesting to bypass California altogether. There's a lot of coastline south of Tijuana.

I'd suggest ports in Oregon and Washington State might benefit from this, but they tend to follow California requirements like sheep.

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Mr. Olesen, dig out a map of the SD&AE and you will see we are on the same page.

The SD&AE still runs mostly thru California. And that climb from Ocotillo to Jacumba is a monster.

I'm proposing to skip California entirely. Find a flatter route that goes south from Yuma and connects to Punto Colonet.

That was the talk about 15 years ago, and UP pulled out of the deal, presumably because of pressure from labor. Having a large Mexican deep water port would put way too much pressure on Long Beach and the ILWU. UPRR already has double track most of the way El Paso to Yuma, so this would be an easy connection into their network and would be a real competitor to Lazaro Cardenas.

https://www.presstelegram.com/2008/10/1 ... ing-gains/

Presumably the route would look like one of these. Not much flatter than the SDA Im afraid, still pushing 2% grades. Ironically, the routes converge on a town in the mountains called... Lazaro Cardenas. Weird.
https://www.google.com/maps/d/edit?mid= ... sp=sharing

Mr. Scalzi, Lazaro Cardenas, named for a former UMS President, is a sea level port located within the State of Michoacan and presently is served only by the CPKC-M.

There is also a town named Lazaro Cardenas in Baja.

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Then, Messrs. Olesen and Scalzi, at this time I have no alternative but to note "I stand corrected".

Apparently "Laz" was a guy like Gen. Francis Marion up here running about to get immortalized with one community or the other (even a university) named for him.

The Swamp Fox? Well-earned.

I grew up in a family which owned a motor carrier. Since then I’ve occasionally driven truck during slow times on the railroad. I’ve also thought of reentering the business as my railroad career is getting towards its end. Needless to say, I’ve been watching the trends in that aspect of the transportation industry.

California has had strict regulations on diesel emissions in trucks for quite some time. The emissions systems on new trucks have been somewhat unreliable. Large carriers have enough capital to have extra tractors to deal with those which experience emissions related failures. Smaller carriers have either avoided California, or have taken the risk of disabling emission equipment, with which they risk large fines. The chance of getting caught is weighed against not entering the market.

I think that the railroads have a much larger and more organized method of lobbying and making the point, as there are only two major railroads, vs. thousands of motor carriers. The railroads can make a big case against their need to buy hundreds of emissions legal locomotives for use in the state and for use on trains bound for CA points. Obviously the railroads have been reluctant to buy the new tier 4 units. Most notably CP, NS, and to an extent CN have been rebuilding older units, which are grandfathered to the old standards. Two of the three mentioned companies do have some tier 4 power, but have been more focused on rebuilding.

Actually with the KCS merger, CPKC now owns 25 locomotives that meet Tier 4 standards. Former KCS ET44ACs
5000 - 5024. Funnily enough their newest locomotives do not meet Tier 4 because they did not have to meet that standard. The newest locomotives on KCSdeM ES44ACs 4895 - 4919 only meet Tier 3 and are not Tier 4 Credit locomotives and can't return to the US.

It seems to me that eventually rebuilds will have to meet Tier 4 requirements as well (the maths in that regulation is complex I think to avoid Tier 4 being an "all or nothing" regulation). It should be noted that the Federal government often releases regulations knowing that no current technology can reliably meet those regulations, but with the expectation that producers will be able to meet those regulations in a timely fashion (i.e., before the regulation takes full effect). I expect that both Class I railroads and large trucking firms have the wherewithal to be limited early adopters of technology such that we'll see, in a few years time, those technologies mature to the point of wide adoptability.

Making regulations first and hoping the technology for those regulations comes afterwards is a pretty poor manner of going about things, IMO.

CA is banning new sales of ICE automobiles within the next decade, when they already have horrific reliability issues with their power grids, and seem very reluctant to utilize nuclear energy to help with grid issues. And these grid issues aren't getting any better.

Just an example of regulating first and hoping it works second in action, that has a high possibility of being a disaster when it takes effect.

JohnFromJersey wrote: ↑Tue May 30, 2023 1:01 am Making regulations first and hoping the technology for those regulations comes afterwards is a pretty poor manner of going about things, IMO.

You're right, we should all revert to using leaded gasoline and no catalytic converters. Regulations forcing the development of the reliable ways of knowing what can be done have been effective in the past (i.e., we knew we could make cleaner ICEs in the 1970s, we knew we couldn't then do it reliably, but we also knew that absent regulation, no one was going to try either). Put simply, when the Tier 4 pollution regulations were introduced, it was known that Diesel engines could be made that were that clean, but that they were maintenance intensive, and there would be costs involved in making them less maintenance intensive, but that these should be borne now, because otherwise.

In other words, regulation is often that last step in getting demonstrated technologies to mature technologies when those technologies do not have immediate and obvious benefit to shareholders (not stakeholders).

The air we breathe is our commons, and as situations such as Chernobyl or the Year without Summer demonstrate, there is no place on earth you can move to that avoids airborne contamination generated in other areas (that is while air pollution can be considered localized in effects due to concentrations, you ultimately can't avoid contaminants and toxins getting in your lungs by moving where you live.

(For the record, I work in industrial technology security, and often we find that regulations precede mass market adoption of proven security technologies, but that "proven" does not mean "ready for mass use" in the sense that we can prove a technology works to improve security, but that it remains too complex for anyone other than the vendor to maintain until after regulation pushes adoption of the new technology to the point where ease of use and price become market differentiators. )

JohnFromJersey wrote: ↑Tue May 30, 2023 1:01 am CA is banning new sales of ICE automobiles within the next decade, when they already have horrific reliability issues with their power grids, and seem very reluctant to utilize nuclear energy to help with grid issues. And these grid issues aren't getting any better.

The grid meltdowns in CA have historically been as much a result of existing power plants not operating as anything else (famously firms like Enron decided it was more profitable to idle power plants than to keep them running when demand for electricity peaked).