MARGIN NOTES
If Dwight D. Eisenhower had set his sights lower, we might have an interstate system of tunnels instead of highways. To reduce congestion on the nation's Nafta-fueled route, some researchers in Texas are now getting at that very idea.
The project: a subterranean freight pipeline, 6½ feet wide and 4 feet underground, crawling the 150 miles between Dallas and the border town of Laredo, Texas. Snaking around oil and natural gas pipelines, the tunnels would accommodate trains of refrigerator-sized cars that would whisk along electrified track at 60 miles per hour. A full day's haul would carry the equivalent of 2,000 truckloads, or 15 tons. That could bring considerable relief to Interstate 35, which is notoriously clogged with big rigs heading in and out of Mexico. Indeed, the Federal Highway Administration - which each year spends a staggering $150 million to maintain the 450-mile stretch of Texas blacktop - requested a briefing on the project.
So far, though, the pipeline is still a pipe dream. Stephen Roop, director of rail and pipeline research at Texas A&M, is now three years into a five-year, $1.4 million study investigating the project's practicality.
Highway officials predict that if Roop's pipeline proves economically feasible and funding can be found, other major freight corridors such as Boston-New York-DC-Atlanta or San Francisco-Los Angeles-San Diego could be candidates for their own belowground solution. But considering backroom bureaucracy, it could take about 15 years to make the pipeline fully functional - 5 years for public policy review and fundraising, 5 more for finalizing the engineering details, plus 3 to 5 for construction. And, not surprisingly, cost could exceed $1 billion.
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