Railroad Environmental Conference

11.02.2010 | HMMH |

by Lance Meister

I attended the Railroad Environmental Conferenceat the University of Illinois last week.  The conference is a good one, but quite focused on the freight rail industry.  Chris Barkan and Kim Hagemann do an excellent job of planning the conference every year.  The presentations are more technical than at many conferences, and there’s a good mix of people from across the industry.  In addition to the University of Illinois Railroad Engineering program, the conference is also sponsored by the Association of American Railroads (AAR) and the American Railway Engineering & Maintenance of Way Association (AREMA).

The conference attendance is comprised of freight railroad environmental staff, consultants in the field and academics.  The focus of the conference has shifted somewhat over the years, from one focused on hazardous waste and remediation to air quality, greenhouse gases and sustainability.

Freight railroads (along with transit) have been promoting their “green” side, focusing on removing cars and trucks from the roads, and the inherent advantages in rail transportation of bulk commodities.  If you have time, here’s an interesting report discussing freight vs. trucks in significant detail.  The railroads are also being required to introduce locomotives that reduce diesel emissions.

While noise and vibration are not central issues to the freight railroads, HMMH has participated in this conference for a number of years, presenting papers, chairing sessions, or participating on the planning committee.  Last year I took over for Carl Hanson of HMMH on the planning committee and chaired the noise and vibration session.  This year I presented a paper on noise and vibration considerations in shared use corridors. The presentation deals with the noise and vibration issues that arise on corridors where freight and transit either share the tracks or the right-of-way.  Planners are looking at freight corridors more and more as potential locations for transit projects, so this topic is becoming more of an issue.  HMMH has worked on a number of these projects around the country and experienced many of the challenging problems that can arise on these types of projects.

The conference will be held again next fall in Champaign.  If you are interested in participating, keep watching the site.  The call for papers usually goes out in March/April, and the hotels always fill up fast!  The conference organizers are hoping to get more involvement from passenger railroads and consultants in that field, so if you think you have something of interest (not just in noise, but any environmental topic) you should consider submitting a paper.