Fossil Fuel-Free Mobility

Steel Interstate passengers & freight trains move on renewable electric energy instead of fossil fuel, enjoying order of magnitude design efficiency advantages over trucks and cars.

Why NOT Convert Trucks to Natural Gas?

Converting over-the-road trucking to Natural Gas would be astonishingly expensive for the return on investment, a proposed congressional bill includes a $65,000 subsidy per converted truck. Tens of thousands of lane-miles of new highway would be required to accommodate projected freight growth, and that's just the beginning...

Oil-Free, the Steel Interstate Reduces Oil-Dependence Risks

Peaking oil price spirals and supply interruptions hold our economy, our national defense, even transporting food to our people, hostage to oil. The Steel Interstate System moves people and essential goods, powered by domestically-generated electricity--virtually FOSSIL FUEL-FREE.

Multi-modal efficiencies

Rail freight fuel-efficiency excels. Intermodal freight uses the flexibility trucks offer to haul the shipment from the seller to a rail terminal, then the load is carried the safest and most fuel-efficiently way--on an oil-free electric train, finally off-loaded at another rail terminal a truck makes the final delivery.

Steel Wheels or Rubber Tires?

Trains are remarkably more fuel efficient than trucks or automobiles. Here's why...

Super-Efficient Electric Trains

Electrically-powered trains are nearly three times more efficient than diesel locomotives, which already win the fuel-efficiency advantage over trucks by four-to-one. Compounding these advantages with other modal efficiencies gives electric railroads a 20-to-1 energy-saving advantage over diesel trucks.[Drake, A., An American Citizen’s Guide to an Oil-Free Economy, unpublished manuscript, 2010, copied with author's permission.]