A cost to benefit analysis of railroad electrification

The FRA recently released a technical report entitled Cost Benefit Analysis of Rail Electrification for Next Generation Freight and Passenger Rail Transportation, created as part of the recent, and terrible, Keystone West corridor study. Aside from generally being a whitewash of a preordained outcome, it contains an error so blatantly egregious that I have to question how it ever made it past any form of peer review.

4.2.2 Energy Costs
In order to determine the energy cost differences, the team estimated fuel costs per mile for both the build and no-build options. In the build option, trains would consume electricity; in the no- build option, trains would continue to consume diesel fuel. For both options, the team estimated the costs of 10 trains traveling a 75-mile round trip every day. For diesel-powered locomotives, it was assumed that the rate of consumption was 1 gallon of diesel per 3 miles traveled. For electricity-powered trains, the assumed rate of electricity consumption was 0.03 miles per kWh.

Three miles per gallon is an inversion of reality and likely stems from confusion of switching units back and forth given that they give an electrical consumption in odd form of miles per kWh. In reality, Amtrak quotes 2.3 gallons per train-mile, Metrolink gets 2.6 gallons per mile, and the Class 222 Meridian gets about 2 gallons per mile. So rather than $1.27 per train-mile, at their assumed cost of $3.80 per gallon, it would be a cost of $7.60-9.88 per mile, far above the cost of electric propulsion.

For that matter, the electricity consumption figures are on the higher end. The British Class 390 Pendolino and IC225 consume about 22 kWh per mile, though it must be admitted that the double length Class 373 consumes 66 kWh per mile and that 31-33 kWh is a good approximation for a 200m high speed train. This analysis was for a high speed alignment, which would make the high speed train's figures appropriate, but I'm not overly fond of apples to oranges comparisons.

An interesting peculiarity of this paper is that at least two of its citations, footnotes 18 and 19 from page 20 where this section is found, do not at all state what this report claims to use them for. Indeed, it's actually impossible to derive the energy consumption figures that they claim to as Amtrak's reported figures are total train-miles, total diesel consumption, and total electricity consumption: There is no distinction of diesel train-miles from electric train-miles.

So let's try our hand at creating a cost to benefit analysis of railroad electrification, specifically of existing corridors without any new high speed alignments. The costs, as provided by this analysis, are fairly reasonable and I don't have any quibble with them. These amount to $12,100 per route-mile in annual maintenance costs and $4.3 million in construction costs per route-mile or $176,515 annually over 30 years with a 1.4% discount rate for a total annual cost of $188,615.

Per the EPA, Tier IV locomotives have the following emission factors in terms of grams per brake horsepower per hour:

PM10	0.015
HC	0.04
NOx	1.00
CO	1.28

With a conversion factor of 20.8 to grams per gallon for large line-haul and passenger trains we have the following emissions per gallon:

PM10	0.312
HC	0.832
NOx	20.80
CO	26.624

Per route-mile, each bidirectional frequency (one train in each direction) has this consumption:

Class 222	1,460
Amtrak	1,679
Metrolink	1,898

Using the median 2014 South Coast Emission Reduction Offset transaction costs as a proxy for the social costs of diesel emissions, and therefore the social benefit of eliminating them with electrification (assuming 100% clean energy), gives us this:

	Class 222	Amtrak	Metrolink	Value per ton (Median 2014 South Coast)	Value per gram
PM10	455.520	523.848	592.176	$520,548	$0.574
HC	1,214.720	1,396.928	1,579.136	$24,658	$0.027
NOx	30,368	34,923.2	39,478.4	$63,014	$0.069
CO	38,871.040	44,701.696	50,532.352	$5,479	$0.006
Cost per frequency	$2,638.51	$3,034.29	$3,430.06

Considering just the social benefits, maintenance is paid for with 3.5-4.5 daily frequencies. This alone does not justify electrification in most corridors, however, as it would require 55 frequencies, five times the current level of the Pacific Surfliner, to justify solely on environmental grounds. As we established earlier, however, electric propulsion is quite a bit cheaper than diesel propulsion; for a corridor intercity or commuter train with consumption of 22 kWh per train-mile, we can expect a cost of $2.42 per train-mile, $5.18-7.46 cheaper than diesel.

Again, maintenance is very quickly paid for: 2-3 frequencies will pay for the maintenance, but construction costs require rather more: 32-47 frequencies. Combined, we see that it takes 21-29 bidirectional frequencies for benefits to match the costs of railroad electrification.

	Frequencies to break even	Social benefit per frequency	Cost savings per frequency
Class 222	29	$2,638.51	$3,781.40
Amtrak	25	$3,034.29	$4,613.60
Metrolink	21	$3,430.06	$5,445.80

In California, this would indicate that it would be justified to electrify Caltrain between San Jose and San Francisco. With increased service, electrification would also be justified on Metrolink's San Bernardino Line as well as LOSSAN between Burbank and Irvine (Metrolink and Pacific Surfliner) and Oceanside and San Diego (Coaster and Pacific Surfliner).

For freight trains, the decreased fuel costs play a much larger role, and more importantly, the only one that the board of directors actually care about, resulting in break even at fewer frequencies. From the 2014 STB R-1 reports, we see that, for the Class I railroads, there is an average consumption of 6.92 gallons per train-mile; a comparable figure for electric traction would be 86.5 kWh per train-mile. Because of the significantly greater fuel consumption, the pay off is much quicker: Only 9 trains per day are needed in each direction with social benefits included or 15.4 when only considering fuel costs.

Of course, private companies aren't going to be using Federal discount rates and will likely be seeking money on the open market. While this will be more expensive, it won't be enormously so. Union Pacific recently sold 40 year bonds at 3.875%; if I've done the math correctly, this would come out to $212,374 per mile of track, pushing the break even points to 10 and 17.3 frequencies. In Southern California, this would justify the electrification of the Alameda Corridor, Sunset Corridor, and Southern Transcon (slide 9).

I've ignored a few costs so far. One is that of locomotive maintenance, which is, unsurprisingly given the rather shoddy nature of the study, completely unmentioned in the original study. According to EMD, maintenance costs for electric locomotives are 30% cheaper than those for diesel-electric locomotives.

Siemens, meanwhile, quotes a range of 30-70% less maintenance cost for electrics compared to diesels.

Referring once again to the R-1 reports, we see that there are 2.63 locomotive unit miles for every train-mile, or to put it another way, the average train has 2.63 locomotives, and that it costs $1.65 per locomotive unit mile, which comes out to $4.34 per train-mile. At the low end, electrification saves $1.30 per train-mile for every freight train that passes through and that's without any consideration of the potential need for fewer locomotives with electric trains. For commuter and intercity trains, assuming that they have similar maintenance costs to freight trains, the savings would amount to $1-2 per frequency depending on whether they have a single locomotive or are double ended, such as the British IC125 or All Aboard Florida's new trains will be. This reduced maintenance cost doesn't amount to overly much, only $730-1,898 per frequency per year for every electrified mile, but on busy corridors it can quickly add up. Just over six freight trains per day in each direction will offset the maintenance costs of the electrification for instance and sixteen would account for the maintenance costs on commuter and intercity lines.

But what of the price of the locomotives? The original study quotes a price of $7 million for Amtrak's new ACS-64, a price of $2.6 million for diesel locomotives and proclaims itself happy: The comedy of errors continues. In reality, Amtrak is paying $6.66 million per locomotive and $2.6 million for a diesel passenger locomotive is simply laughable. Amtrak may have paid $2.4 million for the P-42s back in 1996, but inflation's been a touch more than $200,000 over the last 20 years and Metrolink is currently purchasing EMD's F125 for $6.84 million each, including 20 bought at an option price of $6.295 million.  For intercity trains, Siemen's Charger, purchased by several states and All Aboard Florida, is coming in at $7 million each, the same price the analysis was quoting for an electric locomotive. If anything, based on actual prices paid, it would be cheaper to choose electric locomotives. It must be admitted, however, that SEPTA is paying significantly more, $8.6 million per locomotive, for their ACS-64s. This may be the result of only a single bidder (thanks to Buy American requirements) and purchasing of spare parts that were not purchased by Amtrak as part of their ACS-64 contract.

For Tier 4 freight locomotives, I have yet to come across anything giving an actual number. California's Air Resource Board estimates $3 million per locomotive, which is a fairly significant increase over the $2.3 million per unit that Florida East Coast spent acquiring its ES44C4s. While $3 million per unit is cheaper than $4.3 million for Bombardier TRAXX or $5.125 million for Siemens Vectron, it must be kept in mind that the electrics also have significantly more power: 7,500 horsepower for the TRAXX and 8,600 horsepower for the Vectron against the 4,400 horsepower of the ES44C4 or EF44AC (the Tier 4 replacement). Additionally, these are significantly faster locomotives: American diesel-electric locomotives are typically limited to about 75mph while the TRAXX is rated for 87mph and the Vectron, in its standard configuration, is built for 100mph; if the speed is not considered worthwhile, it's likely that they could be built for a lesser price. Be that as it may, it's worth considering that, for horsepower limited trains, a Vectron can replace diesels on a 2:1 basis and a TRAXX can replace them on a 3:2 basis. In such case, the electrics are cheaper to purchase than the corresponding number of Tier 4 diesels, by about $500,000-1,000,000 dollars and will save more than a hundred thousand dollars a year in reduced maintenance costs simply from requiring fewer locomotives, before even consideration of the lowered maintenance costs of the electrics.

There are three final issues which negatively impact the costs and benefits of electrification. The first is that of clearing sufficient overhead to install railroad electrification: Not every place is the wide open plains and tunnels, overhead passes, or other environmental issues may result in substantially higher costs for particular stretches of track. This must be evaluated, however, on a case by case basis, rather than simply trying to throw in a blank figure for every bit of electrification that may be done.

Second is the fact that oil prices, and with them the cost of diesel, have plummeted since the original study was created. While I have used the original numbers, and I fully expect the price of oil to return to its highs within a decade, the financial benefit from lowered fuel costs is currently significantly lower than what I've gone through above using the original numbers.

Lastly, there is the issue of operational flexibility, to which I cannot attach a number. Electric locomotives must stay on electrified track and cannot be detached for duty elsewhere unless, as some versions have, they possess an auxiliary diesel engine, at the cost of reduced range and speed. The increasing use of distributed power by freight trains means that switching between diesel and electric power can be a costly and time consuming affair. Again, this is not something I can quantify financially and would need to be evaluated, by professionals, on a line by line basis.

 On the other hand, this does not also evaluate the increased speed, acceleration, and frequencies which electrification may make possible and which would make train service more attractive than other modes. Frequently these are the overriding benefits which decide the case for commuter and intercity rail electrification but, at the risk of growing repetitious, these would need evaluation on an individual basis.

Some comments on Conrail's PIttsburgh electrification study

The October 2013 issue of Trains magazine carried an article on a 1979 study by Conrail to expand their electrification system, adding an additional 342 route-miles of overhead catenary from Harrisburg to Conway Yard, 19 miles west of Pittsburgh as well as create an electric freight alternative to the Northeast Corridor between Philadelphia and Newark, New Jersey. I'm certainly not going to quote the  entire article, but rather simply comment on particular items of it.

The first and most obvious issue is that the decision was made not to electrify, despite the benefits cited in the report (according to the article, a 9.9 year payback period and savings of $84 million per year in operating costs in the first 8 years alone). This was due to a lack of available financing and this was absolutely the right thing to do. Had it gone forward, it likely would have been seen as a debacle and potentially set back Amtrak's already delayed plans to extend electrification north from New Haven to Boston.

The proposed operating savings are, presumably, based upon reduced locomotive maintenance costs and reduced fuel costs thanks to using electricity rather than oil. The reduction in locomotive maintenance costs is probably somewhat overstated, especially compared to using best practices for diesel locomotives. In 1977, Conrail was paying $257,637 (in inflation adjusted 2010 dollars) per diesel locomotive per year; Norfolk Southern, who split Conrail between CSX and themselves, paid $124,720 in 2010 and the highest listed peer $203,840 in 2010 (Slide 3). I do admit that this may be due to improvements in the locomotives themselves. With the crash in the price of oil starting in 1986, I also strongly suspect that the savings in fuel costs would have been greatly diminished, though not dropping to the point of electric traction being more expensive.

The real killer, however, is the cost of installing the electrification itself. While the article refers to a net investment of $767 million ($657 million after accounting for expenses present with diesel traction), much of this is due to various credits and the remaining value of the locomotives. This is a radically different number from the actual investment dollars required. The fixed plant investment, for the catenary, substations, etc. amounted to $432 million; at then-present interest rates, with a thirty year loan, this would have resulted in financial costs of $53.3 million. The additional locomotives amounted to $1.26 billion over the period of 1980-2010, including a $550 million credit. While, to be fair, a diesel only case required $3.72 billion over the same period, including a $2.143 billion credit, the costs would have rapidly eliminated the operational savings that electrification presents. This resulted in sufficient skepticism from the private markets that the funds could not be raised for electrification and so the project was shelved.

Electrification can never justify itself, in the private sector, simply on cost savings. Those savings simply are not there once accounted for. The only way electrification ends up justifying itself is through superior operational characteristics and the resulting increased revenue.

FRA weight penalties: Electric boogaloo

A significant part of the reason why I've used foreign rolling stock accelerations in some of my previous posts is that, with the exception of Colorado Railcar and typical diesel push-pull from one MBTA document, I simply haven't had any data on American FRA-compliant rolling stock to work with. Luckily, that's changed a bit as I've finally tracked down a document which has simulated data for  Metro North's M3a and M7 EMUs (page 16). Unfortunately it's hosted on what looks to be the Chinese equivalent of Scribd, so actually getting the PDF isn't terribly feasible, though it can be read online.

Looking at the chart, without ampere limits, an M7 takes about 65-70 seconds to reach 60mph, 110-115 to reach 80mph, and reaches 90mph at some time after 160 seconds. An older M3a takes ~78 and 130-135 seconds for 60 and 80 miles per hour. Interestingly, that is actually worse than a Bombardier Talent DMU. In fact, if you watch the cab ride video of the Class 222 accelerating linked in the comment on that video, that vehicle achieves 60mph faster as well, looking to achieve that speed around the 58 second mark on the video, but only starting to move around 13-14 seconds in to the video, for a 0-60mph time of about 44 seconds.

Now, that said, it could very well be the case that the M7 is simply a poor performer even by American standards. Videos at this blog post comparing the M8 and Silverliner V show the latter achieving  60mph in 35 seconds, a very respectable figure in line with rest of the world equipment, though, of course, this is done at a significantly higher weight and consequently energy consumption.

How FRA regs cost American passenger rail millions every year

As has been mentioned by many rail bloggers, FRA regulations needlessly add extra weight to American trains. As basic physics would tell us, unless the power to weight ratio is maintained, the heavier train will accelerate far slower. A slower acceleration means a longer period of high power demand and so it is unsurprising that fuel and energy consumption will be rather higher for American trains compared to European or Japanese trains. The degree to which it is higher, however, means that hundreds of millions of dollars are wasted every year by Amtrak and the various commuter rail agencies on additional and unneeded fuel expenses.

Amtrak's 2011 Annual Report shows the following consumption figures on page 36.
Seat-miles per gallon of diesel fuel: 143.7
Seat-miles per kWh of electric traction: 6.85 (.09 kWh per seat-km)

The diesel figure isn't terribly useful for purposes of international comparison; nearly half of all diesel miles are from long distance trains which, with the exception of the all-coach Palmetto, have a rather poor seating density due to sleepers, diners, crew dorms, and baggage cars, although the Palmetto doesn't have a terribly large passenger capacity itself.

Amtrak's monthly reports (such as this April 2012 one) indicate that on a train-mile basis, they average 2.3 gallons of diesel per mile. Combined with the seat-miles figure, our average Amtrak train should have about 338 seats. Studies in Minnesota have shown similar figures, at 2.42 gallons per train-mile, but others have greatly differing figures. A study on restoring passenger rail service between Los Angeles and Las Vegas showed approximately 1.66 gallons per train-mile using two locomotives and four Surfliner cars (Appendix 6A) while the MBTA reports their average fuel consumption is 2.8 gallons with 6 cars and on some lines, that can rise as high as 3.29 gallons per train mile (with their lowest consumption at 2.23 gallons).

It's a rather stark contrast with the fuel and energy efficiency that we see from lighter British train sets, data on which can be found in these two reports.

With diesel trains, Amtrak might well be contrasted to the IC125, a 125mph capable diesel train set with an engine on either end and seven to eight cars in between. Where Amtrak has a figure of 2.3 gallons per mile (and the Vegas Surfliner 1.66), the IC125 with eight cars and 617 seats has a measured fuel consumption equal to 1.78 gallons per mile (346 seat-miles per gallon). While that's a touch higher than the Vegas Surfliner study, it's with nearly twice as many seats and at significantly higher speeds. A 9-car Class 222 Meridian diesel multiple unit, which can reach 110mph in under 3 minutes, burns 2 gallons per mile for about 239 seat-miles per gallon (by contrast, the notional Vegas Surfliner is ~216 seat miles per gallon).

MBTA's Fitchburg Line, which holds the dubious record of being their single most fuel inefficient line, presents a special case. With 17 stations in 50 miles, it really is more suitable for light rail operations than diesel push-pull commuter trains and I can't find a British DMU with similar station spacings (although there are several EMUs with similar stopping patterns). Capital MetroRail and Westside Express, however, both have similar stopping patterns using DMUs; SMART quotes them as having fuel consumption of 0.57 and 0.65 gallons per mile respectively (page 15). With the Capital MetroRail's fuel consumption and $3.25 per gallon, MBTA could save $4 million annual (with 2010 schedule; with longer station spacings, some British DMUs have even lower fuel consumption however, the Class 150 is 0.517 with 3 power cars and 16 km station spacing as an example). In all honesty, such a line needs to be electrified and equipped with EMUs with even greater fuel efficiency.

An interesting detail emerges looking at British and international electric trains and multiple units and that's that there's a fairly consistent trend of using 0.03 kWh per seat-kilometer for trains under 125mph. With electric trains dominated by corridors and Acela rather than long distance trains, it's rather hard to understand why Amtrak uses three times the electricity of any comparable train and indeed averages 33% higher energy use than European high speed trains (Japanese high speed trains have energy consumption figures comparable to sub-125mph European trains on a seat-km basis). Since single level coaches do not suffer terribly much, if at all, in terms of weight penalty due to FRA regulations, my suspicion is that the Acela, a horribly overweight train set, is also extremely energy inefficient. With its low number of seats, the lowest number of any high speed train in the world, this will have an outsized effect upon Amtrak's efficiency. Somewhat astonishingly, Amtrak's average energy intensity is worse than that of the old Metroliners which, at 7.81 kWh per car-mile, averaged out at 0.07 kWh per seat-kilometer. Fortunately, electricity is cheap, unlike diesel fuel, so Amtrak's energy expenses are not ruinous, but this still represents tens of millions of wasted dollars.

I should note that Amtrak's electricity consumption numbers are sufficiently bizarre that it is entirely plausible that they are completely wrong (they do, for instance, proudly state a rate of 50 kWh/seat-mile in another document). One possible answer is that they decided to account for inefficiencies in generation and transmission of the electricity. Alternatively, 50 kWh per seat-mile was a typo and the number meant was actually a train-mile figure. Combing the two sets of figures would give us 342 seats, a small figure for the Northeast to my knowledge. An old study indicates that an Amfleet of such length (about 6 cars assuming one business class and one cafe) would only use 25.8 kWh/train-mile at 120mph top speed (page 25) which does put us in the unfortunate position of assuming absolutely hellacious energy use by the Acela.

Electrification, power plants, and railroad cost savings

Going to haul this up out of my comment on the last post:

Just using electric locomotives, you're looking at cutting fuel costs to about a third of their previous (methodology: NTD says ~10.5 million vehicle revenue [miles] per year, 2.3 gallons per mile (Amtrak's average) and $3.25 per gallon is ~$78.5 million. A BR Class 90 hauling 500t [six Guardian cars is 450 short tons] gets 22.62 kWh/mile, LA Metro pays 12 cents per kWh, comes out to about $28.5 million).

 Now that may be somewhat optimistic, that figure is for hauling freight rather than commuter travel. An IC225, which is an electric Class 91 locomotive hauling a cab car and coaches with a total of 554 seats (and more room to them than Metrolink's commuter coaches have), runs .038 kWh per seat-kilometer in a simulated run (pages 22-23). That would bump things up to 33.8 kWh per train-mile, though with a longer and faster consist than Metrolink uses, and raise energy costs to the realm of ~42.5 million dollars, still a significant decrease. The use of smaller consists or multiple units, especially on routes that are not terribly well patronized, would drop it back down again however.

A 45-66% decrease in fuel costs is nothing to sneeze at of course, especially since Metrolink is raising fares to cover a $13 million funding gap, four million of which is due to rising fuel costs. However, it could actually be reduced down even further, potentially even to no effective energy costs at all.

Electrifying all 388 route-miles of Metrolink would be a fairly expensive endeavor, costing about two to three billion dollars or more if there needs to be significant engineering work in order to build it such as widening the I-10 median and tunneling through San Clemente and San Juan Capistrano. It would also need tremendous political capital, not simply to build it, but also to swing it past BNSF and Union Pacific, who own much of the track in question. Solar, despite its general political acceptability, is unfortunately far too expensive. On a net metering basis, even with low end electricity consumption figures, the cost of installing sufficient solar capacity runs to about $900 million dollars, representing a major increase in the budget.

Nuclear, on the other hand, is rather more affordable, the reason lying in the far greater capacity factor of nuclear compared to solar. Given the timeline of an electrification project, a small modular nuclear reactor should be available and a 30MWe capability would suffice to power the system at current levels of usage, again on a net metered basis. The costs are also rather more reasonable, perhaps $200 million for a 40MWe plant capable of dealing with future growth and generating excess energy in the meanwhile to offset its operational costs (which would amount to just under $4.8 million per year at a 90% capacity with non-fuel O&M; with fuel it would be $7 million). Even without additional energy sales to off-set O&M costs, it would pay for itself in only a few short years and over a reactor's life would result in a substantial cost-savings to the program, to the tune of $445 million with a thirty year life-span or rather more with a longer life.

Unfortunately, despite what is actually a rather good safety record, many environmentalist groups have set themselves firmly against the use of nuclear power; though one might imagine that having sufficient political capital to electrify in the first place would allow them to use a small, safe nuclear reactor, odds are that it would lead to an enormous backlash. In its place, natural gas is most likely (though geothermal can't be ruled out depending on local suitability).

Without carbon sequestration, an advanced natural gas combined cycle plant would cost a thousand dollars per nameplate capacity kilowatt. If operated at an 85% capacity factor and built for the same handling of 33% more future power demand, a 42MWe plant would be required, adding 42 million dollars to the budget, truly a pittance (note, however, that in California, such plants operate at only 50% capacity factor; it might be better therefore to build with the intention of providing sufficient capacity for peak power and run the entire system off such a plant rather than run it with a net metering contract). The EIA quotes a price of $2.185 per million Btu (MMBtu) for the week ended June 13th on NYMEX, and the previous link about Californian plants quotes a heat rate of 7,176 Btu per kWh. Should such a 42MWe plant be operated at 85% capacity factor over the course of a year, fuel costs would amount to $4.9 million dollars plus an additional amount for maintenance (the first link in this paragraph would suggest $1.5 million annually; similarly, if we use its numbers for nuclear, a 40MWe plant would cost $213.4 million to build and cost $4.2 million per year to operate). However, natural gas prices are currently rather low due to a glut, and should climb quite appreciably in the future (as this page shows, it's dropped tremendously from a high of $15.4 per MMBtu in December of 2005).

So, what does all this amount to? Well, at the end of the day, electrification, in and of itself, does do a good job of reducing the fuel costs which are currently squeezing commuter agencies. The main benefit, of course, is increased acceleration and reduced trip times, but over a thirty year period of time, it does look as though it could pay for itself, if one factors in additional revenue and a higher rate of increase in the price of oil than the rate of increase in the price of electricity. Without such factorings, it still recovers much, if not all of the cost. However, if a rail agency is permitted to construct, own, and operate their own power plant to defray the costs of power, especially if they are allowed to sell excess power at market rates, electrification should pay for for itself without any additional factors taken into account.

Update: Much of this is based on a mistaken assumption. The vehicle miles actually appear to refer to car miles rather than train-miles as indicated by the train-miles in the 2012-2013 Metrolink budget.

Pantograph Interstates

Siemens working on overhead electrification system for trucks on the 710

Los Angeles may be one of the first global cities to adopt a new electric freight trucking system, unveiled by electrical engineering giant Siemens Corp. last week at the 26th Electric Vehicle Symposium, or EVS26.
The new technology, called eHighway, is a highway electrification system that uses overhead electrical wires to transmit energy to freight trucks in select vehicle lanes, similar to modern-day streetcars.
“Most people think about cars when they think of vehicle emissions, but the reality is it’s freight trucks,” said Daryl Dulaney, chief executive of North American infrastructure and cities sector for Siemens.
...
Siemens’ eHighway is one several technologies the AQMD is investigating. It’s currently running pilots of zero-emission electric and fuel cell trucks at the Port of L.A. and envisions marrying the eHighway to near-zero-emissions technologies to help meet federal clean air standards.
The eHighway’s so-called catenary system uses diesel hybrid trucks outfitted with software that senses when an overhead electrical line is available and automatically connects or disconnects as needed. When the trucks’ rooftop connectors are attached to the electrical lines, the trucks run entirely on electricity. When the connectors are lowered, they run on a hybrid electric propulsion system similar to the Toyota Prius. In hybrid mode, the trucks save 30% on diesel fuel.
In addition to reducing emissions, the trucks also reduce noise pollution. But there is a downside: Siemens estimates the system will cost between $5 million and $7 million per mile to build.

I've joked about doing such things in the past, but I'm pleasantly amused at the idea that someone is doing this seriously.