HighLight Heading
June 2007
Special Research Conference Issue: Concurrent Sessions
Roads and rails: impacts of the biofuels revolution
Minnesota’s agricultural areas are facing sweeping changes due to the boom in biofuels. What are the possible impacts on transportation infrastructure if this growth continues?
In a concurrent session titled “Food, Fuels, and Farms,” David Christianson of SRF Consulting Group offered some early ideas based on Mn/DOT’s District 7 Freight study. Now in its final stages, the study examined 13 southwestern Minnesota counties to gauge biofuel trends and their effects on roads and rail.
This year about one-third of District 7’s entire corn crop will go to ethanol plants. In the past, farmers used two- and three-axle trucks to transport their grain from the fields to the elevators. Now, Christianson said, they are directly transferring product in the fields to their own five-axle, 80,000-pound trucks. “That means you’re putting these heavy loads on local roads that didn’t have to handle it before,” he said.
About one-third of the corn used in ethanol production ends up as a grain byproduct. “Twenty-five percent of that is moving into international markets already,” he said. Hauling the corn, as well as the ethanol byproduct, will lead to a potential 200 percent increase in heavy commercial truck trips by 2030, Christianson said.
Rail is also hugely important to District 7’s agricultural economy. “We have to preserve the rail capacity we have because it’s going to be absolutely necessary...not only to move corn, but to move ethanol,” he said. Rails are the safest way to move ethanol (a hazardous material), but increasing weights of rail cars will stress short lines, bridges, and railroad lines, he said.
“We need an integrated freight network and can’t let any piece fall apart,” Christianson concluded. “Everything is at capacity.”
Also in the session, Jerry Fruin, an associate professor in applied economics at the University of Minnesota, discussed the economic geography of ethanol production and markets. Though most corn ethanol plants are located in the Midwest, demand for the product is highest on the coasts, where some states are not in compliance with clean air requirements, Fruin said. This mismatch in supply and demand, he added, has a number of implications for transportation: for example, ethanol shipments by tank truck or rail could replace gas and petroleum shipments by rail, or corn may be shipped by rail to ethanol plants outside of the Corn Belt.