Why are railroads important to the economy?

Freight railroads make modern-day America possible. They power economic activity, connect the supply chain, drive the economy, support high-paying jobs, help combat climate change and provide the literal foundation for passenger rail services like Amtrak.



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Connecting the Supply Chain By expanding network capacity, growing the workforce and fostering strong partnerships throughout the supply chain, railroads enable the efficient movement of goods across the country and worldwide.

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Just as it opened the markets of the west coast and Asia to the east, it brought products of eastern industry to the growing populace beyond the Mississippi. The railroad ensured a production boom, as industry mined the vast resources of the middle and western continent for use in production.

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The railroad opened the way for the settlement of the West, provided new economic opportunities, stimulated the development of town and communities, and generally tied the country together.

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They unified countries, created great fortunes, enabled the growth of new industries, and thoroughly revolutionized life in every place they ran. Yet the human tolls for some projects were ghastly, with deaths of native laborers running into the tens of thousands.

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Stimulated Commerce Not only did the railways provide greater opportunity through extending markets, but they also stimulated more people to start businesses and thereby enter the markets. An extended marketplace provided a greater number of individuals the opportunity to produce and sell goods.

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Today, locomotives are more fuel efficient than ever before. In fact, railroads can move one ton of freight more than 480 miles on a single gallon of fuel — up from 470 miles per gallon in the years prior. Locomotive fuel efficiency improvements have been made possible by a combination of technological advances.

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Railroads made it possible to move across long distances quickly and easily. They made the world shrink—not literally, of course! But they truly revolutionized people's habits and how they saw the world. For many people, it was their first experience with the big machines that characterized the Industrial Revolution.

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As a result, although rail transport has advantages such as high carrying capacity, economy, reliability and environmental impact, it also has some disadvantages such as limited flexibility, operating costs, necessity of intermodal connections and delivery time.

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The developing railroads rapidly became huge businesses, imperative to the success of American enterprise. The material needs of the railroads helped create several other big industries, such as iron, steel, copper, glass, machine tools, and oil.

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The steel highway improved the lives of millions of city dwellers. By the 1890s, the United States was becoming an urban nation, and railroads supplied cities and towns with food, fuel, building materials, and access to markets. The simple presence of railroads could bring a city economic prosperity.

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The transportation sector emits the highest amount of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of all the U.S. sectors, with the rail sector contributing 2% of those emissions. Rail plays an important role in reducing the transportation sector's emissions due to the efficiency of passenger and freight rail transportation.

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Fuel combustion, track abrasion and freight leakages cause the most soil and plant contamination, because their emissions are neither chemically, or biologically degraded.

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