Abstract
Creosote-treated wooden railroad crossties have been used for more than a century to support steel rails and to transfer load from the rails to the underlying ballast while keeping the rails at the correct gauge. As transportation engineers look for improved service life and environmental performance in railway systems, alternatives to the creosote-treated wooden crosstie are being considered. This paper compares the cradle-to-grave environmental life cycle assessment (LCA) results of creosote-treated wooden railroad crossties with the primary alternative products: concrete and plastic composite (P/C) crossties. This LCA includes a life cycle inventory (LCI) to catalogue the input and output data from crosstie manufacture, service life, and disposition, and a life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) to evaluate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, fossil fuel and water use, and emissions with the potential to cause acidification, smog, ecotoxicity, and eutrophication. Comparisons of the products are made at a functional unit of 1.61 kilometers (1.0 mile) of rail-road track per year. This LCA finds that the manufacture, use, and disposition of creosote-treated wooden railroad crossties offers lower fossil fuel and water use and lesser environmental impacts than competing products manufactured of concrete and P/C.
Highlights
Railroads are a critical transportation element of the US economy, distributing large quantities of material goods and oftentimes in a more efficient manner than roadbased transportation [1]
Comparisons of the products are made at a functional unit of 1.61 kilometers (1.0 mile) of railroad track per year. This life cycle assessment (LCA) finds that the manufacture, use, and disposition of creosote-treated wooden railroad crossties offers lower fossil fuel and water use and lesser environmental impacts than competing products manufactured of concrete and plastic composite (P/C)
Impact indicator values are normalized to the product having the highest cradle-to-grave value, allowing relative comparison of indicators between products on Figure 2
Summary
Railroads are a critical transportation element of the US economy, distributing large quantities of material goods and oftentimes in a more efficient manner than roadbased transportation [1]. This transportation efficiency is often measured by the equipment moving goods [2,3,4], but to understand the burdens associated with various modes of transportation, one must consider the system as a whole, including the equipment moving the goods, but the surface the equipment moves upon. The structural components that make up the railway line include the rail, rail tie-plate, crossties, supportive ballast, and subgrade [5]. Wooden crossties have been the backbone of this system for more than 150 years, a system that, in the US, has an estimated 273,700 track kilometers (170,000 miles) [6]
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