Each American requires the movement of approximately 40 tons of freight per year across the freight network. This includes everything from your shirt to your lawn mower to your orange juice. Below are a few examples of how the goods we depend on every day utilize the freight rail network.
A new automobile leaves the factory on a railcar, not a truck.
A loaf of bread begins as grains shipped by rail to industrial bakeries and flour mills.
A light bulb calls on a power plant to supply energy from coal, biofuels, or wind energy components shipped by rail.
A television arrives on the west coast and speeds across the country by rail to an intermodal center where it travels by truck to its final destination.
As the U.S. population expands, the U.S. freight system will be called upon to meet the demands of a larger population. Between 2010 and 2035, the system will experience a 22 percent increase in the total amount of tonnage it moves. By 2050, with an estimated 420 million people in the U.S., the increase is projected to be 35 percent.