Rail Improvements as a System

I've been a huge supporter of rail for environmental reasons and found this comment on the West Coast Corridor Coalition website:

1. To encourage freight systems approaches rather than a project-level focus in making infrastructure investments. http://www.westcoastcorridors.org/about_us.html

Now that sounds like a great plan. While we debate the merits or faults in the Cherry Point plan we should also be focusing on our regional rail and water connections.

For example, we have a great deal of eastern Washington hay coming to Whatcom County on trucks, why isn't that on a barge or rail car? Of course, there would need to be significant storage, probably in Lynden or thereabouts, but other than that what problems are there?

Or what about a completed rail line to Alaska for fish and freight shipments?