Rail vs. Trucking

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Before we pave all our farm land, let's consider what could be done to replace all those 18-wheelers on the Interstate/Transcanada Highways with a viable rail system.

How can this be done economically with green energy sources?

[hym 358]

Originally posted by: N_O_Body

Before we pave all our farm land, let's consider what could be done to replace all those 18-wheelers on the Interstate/Transcanada Highways with a viable rail system.

How can this be done economically with green energy sources?quote>

Short answer: It can't.

Long Answer: Interstate highway costs roughly $1 million per mile for 2 lanes and 2 shoulders.  Most of the cost is tied up in the ground prep; the cost of the materials and actually paving the highway is fairly inexpensive.  Rail lines are significantly more expensive to build because of their more stringent building requirements.  If you want it done with green energy sources, it gets significantly more expensive than normal rail building techniques (which I will mention again are significantly more expensive than laying highway).  The costs of building rail lines is so expensive that almost no one can justify it; doing it "ecofriendly" is simply impossible to do economically.

[Easy Bakes 253]

Originally posted by: N_O_Body

Before we pave all our farm land, let's consider what could be done to replace all those 18-wheelers on the Interstate/Transcanada Highways with a viable rail system.

How can this be done economically with green energy sources?quote>

trucks acess( loading and Unloading  have less  facilitys required for loading and unloading then  trains require.

And you still end up loading goods onto trucks from the train depot except for places that handle bulk goods.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

All that has shown so far is that it can't be done by the private sector. Now we have a large pool of unemployed in America (especially) which will get bigger as the automotive industry becomes rationalized. So why not have a New Deal (Obama style). The Democrats have done it before.

How about really blowing it all on electric rails powered by wind generators and/or nukes? Blacktop is a petroleum product, and needs to be restricted, and the steel industry needs a boost. If we can't get enough rail road navvies there are all those Mexican workers looking for green cards. Local freight depots can insist that only green powered vehicles can be loaded and unloaded there. If necessary, piggy backing can be used either with whole trailers or containers.

This is radical, but think about the effect on global warming, the environment in general, and the economy during the building phase. Every town of any significance can be on the new rail road, and the existing road beds converted for the new very high speed rail links.

This is cerainly one way to put Americans and American know-how to work. It might even work in such a thinly populated country as Canada.

[hamsterTK 93]

Short answer: It can't.quote>

Really, do you have any information on why this is? Any sources?

Anyways, to me I believe a thing that would benefit rail transportation is to remove the red tape that it is burdened with. There is one fact-highways are built using public money. Railroads on the other hand, have to pay taxes. And they have to deal with unions, retirement boards, outrageous NIMBY issues, etc.

[hym 358]

Originally posted by: N_O_Body

All that has shown so far is that it can't be done by the private sector.quote>

The private sector has the means to build an effective rail network, plus something that the government will never have: the drive to do it cheaply.

The problem isn't who has the means and who doesn't.  The problem is when it comes to the costs of building the rail network versus the benefits of building said network, or more specifically, the cost to build them versus the wealth they generate.  Rail networks are expensive to build (even moreso when the government is the one paying for it), expensive to operate, and offer little compelling reason to use them.  This all adds up to mean that they really aren't a wise investment, except for corporations that work with substances that may only be transported by rail.  (Lest anyone think that expanding the national rail networks would mean they'd use it more, those company's rail needs are already satistified by the small network we have today.)

Now we have a large pool of unemployed in America (especially) which will get bigger as the automotive industry becomes rationalizedquote>

Many of those people are neither capable nor qualified to perform this kind of work, and of the ones that are, even fewer would even seriously consider such a job, and even fewer of those would actually take it.

So why not have a New Deal (Obama style). The Democrats have done it before.quote>

Obama's support is waning, and key Congressional Democrats are locked in re-election bids that they may very well lose.  It is unlikely that Republicans will gain controlling majorities in both houses of Congress, but if they manage to gain the clout to prevent the Democrats from passing legislation without the support of the Republicans, Obama could find himself in the condition Clinton found himself in during the 90's--rendered a lame duck President before his time.

As for the idea of an Obama-style New Deal, my elected representatives will get a note saying that if they vote in favor of the bill, I'll be using my vote against them in the next election.

How about really blowing it all on electric rails powered by wind generators and/or nukes?quote>

Wind power has reliability problems that would likely render it ineligible for such a task.  Nukes might be a viable method for such an idea, but considering that Obama opposes nuclear technology (for which I am tempted to call him a bigger fool than Bush), nukes are unlikely.

Blacktop is a petroleum product, and needs to be restricted, and the steel industry needs a boost.quote>

Considering the ineptitude of the federal government, I don't want it restricting access to building materials with viable engineering applications.  As for the steel industry, it doesn't need a boost from the federal government; it needs to learn to compete in a globalized market.  (The federal government could be helpful here by killing the USW.)

If we can't get enough rail road navvies there are all those Mexican workers looking for green cards. quote>

You could do that, but then the unions would likely scream that they are being stabbed in the back.

Local freight depots can insist that only green powered vehicles can be loaded and unloaded there.quote>

Why in the world would a freight depot make such a restriction?  It costs them money through lost business, and is a massively stupid business decision.

This is radical, but think about the effect on global warming, the environment in general, and the economy during the building phase.quote>

It will not have a significant effect on global warming.

Every town of any significance can be on the new rail road, and the existing road beds converted for the new very high speed rail links.quote>

Converting the existing interstate highway system into a high speed rail system is not a wise idea.  No mass transit system can match the flexibility of road networks and that flexibility is vitality important.

EDIT:

Really, do you have any information on why this is? Any sources? quote>

I base my conclusion on the benefit of talking with engineers who work with rail systems or with companies that rely on them, various civil engineers I have spoken with (at least one of whom possesses a Masters degree), vice president of a construction company that specializes in state highway and interstate highway construction, and a general contractor.

Now consider the following figures.  It costs roughly $1 million to build a mile of standard interstate highway; this means two 12-foot wide lanes and two 8-foot wide shoulders.  Generally, about $800,000 of that is for ground preparations.  This translates to about $3.88 per square foot to get the ground ready for actually laying the highway.   This is fairly cheap, but there is an important thing to note: roads need to be relatively flat, but they don't need to be perfectly flat like railroads require.  Now consider the costs of the ground preparation for the residence hall I live in; a building project that required perfectly flat ground.  According to the general contractor that made the building, it cost $8 million to prepare approximately 23,000 square feet of dirt for building.  That translates into $347.83 per square foot, and that is after using a shortcut that allowed them to prepare the ground for about $2 million less than it would have cost if they prepared the ground using the same dirt management techniques used for highway construction.  In other words, the demand for a perfectly flat building space made the ground preparations nearly 90 times more expensive.

Now it isn't quite as bad for rail lines as it was for the residence hall because they use different techniques for achieving a flat building plane, but the point remains that rail lines need a flat building plane and flat building planes are very expensive to achieve.  These are costs that weigh heavily against railroads as an economical means of transportation and render them attractive mainly only to those companies that work with substances that simply have to be shipped by rail.

[Barbarossa 51]

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  Edited September 8, 2012 by Barbarossa  

[Duke87 1,070]

Getting trucks off the highway up and down the east coast, where you see lots of congestion, would be helpful. It was proposed to do this a few years ago by building back the ports in smaller cities along the coast and having more local shipping. But the proposal died when the trucker's unions complained. Any other proposals to do such a thing would meet similar resistance.

But when you start talking transcontinental... there really are no congestion problems on, say, I-80 in Wyoming, so there's no compelling reason to want to take those trucks off the road aside from a few commonly exaggerated environmental concerns. Besides, transcontinental railroads run on diesel anyway, just like trucks. Electrifying vast stretches of railroad across vast expanses of no-man's land is simply impractical. It also makes the tracks that much more difficult to keep passable in the winter. The energy required to de-ice all those miles of third rail or catenaries alone would be massive.

Now, if you really want to start talking about being "green".. well, you know, there is also the option of engineering trucks to run on alternative energy sources. Would be far more practical than trying to run electic railroads all over the place, considering those trucks can make plentiful use of existing infrastructure, where as a massive expansion to the national rail network would require a massive capital investment.

As for the idea of building the rail over existing roadway... that's silly. One aspect of America's interstates is that they're generally built with wide medians. If you want to build rail along the route, there's no need to rip up any pavement, just put the tracks in the median (durrr). Of course, this won't work everywhere. Railroads have stricter requirements with regards to geometric design than highways, particularly in terms of grades. The ROW for the interstates in most mountainous areas would not be acceptable for train tracks.

Besides, in an awful lot of places, interstate highways are already running parallell to existing railroads (if not exactly, nearly), which makes the idea even more inane.

Also, one more aspect of why rail is more expensive than roads which hym didn't touch on: the loading requirements. Trains are heavy. A typical locomotive weighs as much as ten tractor-trailors, but is smaller than one. And it's towing plenty of heavy train cars behind it. This means that railroads have to be designed to handle an awful lot more weight than highways - particularly noticable when it comes to bridges. This makes their construction require more labor and materials. 

[Barbarossa 51]

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  Edited September 8, 2012 by Barbarossa  

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

So far, no one has discussed the fossil fuel peak. Wise opinion says that it happened in 2007 and from now on its all down hill. I don't think we have to worry about the truckers unions when there won't be any employment for truckers because there is no fuel.

What do you suppose we are going to do with all those miles and miles of highways when there can be no traffic. Hydrogen is not an answer because it takes more energy to isolate elemental hydrogen than you get back. Biodiesel can never fill the current demand for petroleum fuels, nor can consuming food stocks to make alcohol for fuel. Girls, it's all pie in the sky. The world will very soon be out of gas.

So renewable-source energy (solar, wind, waves), nukes and hydro will soon be the only really affordable energy sources. North America is going to have to lower its expectations, abandon suburbia, and in general clean up its act. Canada only supplies 15% of U.S. natural gas consumption, and there isn't any more, folks. The oil sands are a myth, and the books of OPEC probably make Enron's look like Euclidean Geometry. Remember, all those Arabs are smoking dope.

If the world doesn't wake up soon we'll all freeze to death in the dark.

[Easy Bakes 253]

Originally posted by: N_O_Body

So far, no one has discussed the fossil fuel peak. Wise opinion says that it happened in 2007 and from now on its all down hill. I don't think we have to worry about the truckers unions when there won't be any employment for truckers because there is no fuel.

What do you suppose we are going to do with all those miles and miles of highways when there can be no traffic. Hydrogen is not an answer because it takes more energy to isolate elemental hydrogen than you get back. Biodiesel can never fill the current demand for petroleum fuels, nor can consuming food stocks to make alcohol for fuel. Girls, it's all pie in the sky. The world will very soon be out of gas.

So renewable-source energy (solar, wind, waves), nukes and hydro will soon be the only really affordable energy sources. North America is going to have to lower its expectations, abandon suburbia, and in general clean up its act. Canada only supplies 15% of U.S. natural gas consumption, and there isn't any more, folks. The oil sands are a myth, and the books of OPEC probably make Enron's look like Euclidean Geometry. Remember, all those Arabs are smoking dope.

If the world doesn't wake up soon we'll all freeze to death in the dark.quote>

Well the use of food/feed stock to make biodiesel was a huge mistake. fast growing Alge's and other things could have been used rather then corn. And just becasue the energy required to remove the hydrogen is more then you get back burning it dosen't mean thier not going to use it as a fuel source. Its  a faster solution then finding an alternative  to the combustion engine.

[Duke87 1,070]

Originally posted by: N_O_Body

What do you suppose we are going to do with all those miles and miles of highways when there can be no traffic. quote>

That is not going to happen. Oil is finite, sure, but it is not the only possible fuel source for cars and trucks (or buses... mass transit and all that). Hydrogen is not an energy source, but it a means of storing it, just like batteries. That energy would in turn come from the same electicity that powers trains, which would of course then have to come from non-fossil fuel sources... eventually. Oil may have peaked, but most fossil fuel electicity comes from coal - which there is a lot more of, especially domestically.

Point being, the end of the oil era will not be the end of cars.

So renewable-source energy (solar, wind, waves), nukes and hydro will soon be the only really affordable energy sources.quote>

Technically those would be perpetual energy sources, not renewable (except nuclear: that is neither. It is also a finite energy source, like fossil fuels). Renewable resources in terms of generating energy would be things like ethanol or other biomass - not doable on a large scale, but things that not only will but already do reasonably contribute in this sense: garbage. Yes, landfills are unsightly permanent blights on the local environment that everyone loves to hate. But an awful lot of garbage is flammable - some places do actually already burn trash to make electicity (remember those waste to energy incinerators in SC3K? Yeah. They actually exist). All told, all the flammable trash in America could generate only about 5% of our current electicity demand... but it's something.

The other side to the coin, of course, is cutting energy consumption. Also something we can still take more reasonable steps toward. And will be able to do even more for in the future as technologies on the matter improve.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Originally posted by: Easy Bakes

Well the use of food/feed stock to make biodiesel was a huge mistake. fast growing

[Barbarossa 51]

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  Edited September 8, 2012 by Barbarossa  

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Biodiesel may work for the few who can make their own, but for the mass market this gets pretty impractical. Whatever you make it from on a mass basis will soon be in short supply. Biomass that can produce these fuels is not unlimited. While a diesel engine will fire just about anything volatile enough to flash at top dead center, where do you suppose you would get the supply for the American consumer market? It would have to become a commercially viable product with the appropriate infrastructure.

We all know how dangerous it is to generalize from the particular.

[Duke87 1,070]

Originally posted by: N_O_Body

Your fast-growing algae still have the problem of carbon footprint, although as a fuel source for either method is probably better than other things.quote>

Well, first of all, that assumes that you're actually concerned about the idea of a "carbon footprint" (which I'm increasingly starting to think is BS). But even notwithstanding that... hey, algae. They consume take carbon out of the air in growing (photosynthesis and all that). If we can make the argument that corn-based ethanol is carbon-neutral, then so is algae-based ethanol.

That's the whole point. To cut energy consumption the suburbs as we know them will die. The idea of a large city surrounded by bedroom communities is sustainable only as long as we have cheap energy. There is going to be a serious dislocation as the price of energy increases. New technologies are generally expensive, so in your lifetime, probably not in mine (I am 72 after all), you can expect to pay more for energy than shelter unless your accommodation becoomes more reasonable. Be prepared to be living either in a city or a village close to resources that can be reached by shank's mare.quote>

Maybe, maybe not. There is a chance that alternative energies will prove capable of sustaining suburbia. Don't treat it as such an absolute.

Besides, when it comes to trucking and highways, a lot of that, especially when you start talking about Interstates, is not local traffic commuting or going to the store, but long distance traffic between cities - which will continue to exist, suburbs or no suburbs.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Originally posted by: Duke87

Besides, when it comes to trucking and highways, a lot of that, especially when you start talking about Interstates, is not local traffic commuting or going to the store, but long distance traffic between cities - which will continue to exist, suburbs or no suburbs.

quote>

I wouldn't bet on it. If fuel costs become prohibitive, the trucking companies themselves will find alternate means. If it is surface, it pretty much has to be rail. Just hope they use the standard rail gage (Roman chariot track width, by the way).

[sneakeypete 16]

I'd be interested to see a comparison of the economics of truck hauling vs rail hauling. While you might need to do more loading/offloading with rail, you need less people to do the actual driving (2 people for 100 trucks worth of goods), so i'd be interested to see how that stacks up in comparison to driving it along a road.

[Sufkop 1]

Just keep the 'Feet of road in your city'- value low, but the 'Feet of railroad tracks in your city' high.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Originally posted by: Sufkop

Just keep the 'Feet of road in your city'- value low, but the 'Feet of railroad tracks in your city' high.quote>

Perhaps you could expand on this theme?

[Easy Bakes 253]

Originally posted by: N_O_Body

Originally posted by: Sufkop

Just keep the 'Feet of road in your city'- value low, but the 'Feet of railroad tracks in your city' high.quote>

Perhaps you could expand on this theme?quote>

Sounds like he meant More train tracks, less hiways.

Still dont think it will help much, I think they are shiping by train a lot, its just the expansion of the burbs requires roads.

how much would  comercial development ( shops, grociers stores ect ) be hampered by having to have rail connections to every store? This is assuming ALL truck were gone i guess.

[sneakeypete 16]

haha, why does everyone revert to the "oh but you'd need to have tracks to every single store!" debate. of course there's going to have to be freight yards and distribution networks, trucks will never be able to be eliminated. But that doesn't mean it can't be more effecient to rail it 2000km's and truck it the last 100.

Besides, apart from big chain stores, most wouldn't get a truck coming to them direct from halfway across the country, most of the time goods would be shipped into local distribution centers and loaded into smaller trucks.

[Duke87 1,070]

Lots of freight already is delivered to cities by rail. Usually at night, so it doesn't interfere with commuter rail service.

Of course, that can only take it so far. The major destination within the city of New York would be Hunt's Point... huge market for all sorts of foodstuffs there, which is then locally trucked to retailers all over town. Of course, the huge ports and warehouses are over in Jersey.

The issue of rail and cities, though, is not freight rail, but passenger rail: particularly, a subway system. Every decent sized city ought to have a good one. Many in America do not. Some (LA, Orlando) are very freeway-oriented, others (Philadelphia, Cleveland) just don't have a system that's built out enough to be as useful as it could and should be. 

Of course, service is also an issue. Baltimore only bothers to run trains every 20 minutes or so on the weekend, and shuts down after midnight. Not exactly convenient. More cities really ought to do what New York always has done: run the subway 24/7. Then people can stay out as late as they want and not have to worry about how to get home. Also should cut down on drunk driving if people leaving the bar at 3 AM have that option.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

There is no question that local trucking will always be with us, but long haul trucking should go the way of the Dodo. It is fuelling the drug culture and causing lots of trouble on the highways. The highways are expanding in a positive feedback loop which will eventually shake the system to pieces.

The argument that there is not enough rail is fixed when you use the highway building and maintenance money for rail instead. Piggybacking trailers or containerization is the answer for the need in large urban areas for truckload quantities. Of course a freight car holds much more than a truck trailer, even with a pup.

The JIT manufacturers will simply have to adjust to the revised length of the pipeline. A slight dislocation that can be handled during any transition.

The best way to ship commodities and raw materials remains by ship to train to truck. I live near a very big grain/salt port, and it is very busy loading both lakers and salties. Goderich is the busiest port on Lake Huron.

[hamsterTK 93]

I felt like posting because I can hear a train horn at this moment.

I know that rail's competitiveness comes from distance and economies of scale. Cross-country intermodal service and bulk commodities like gravel, chemicals, etc are king. Coal is unsurprisingly large part of the rail industry's business. Following this there are building materials, autos, paper, building materials, etc. Boxcars are still occasionally used for auto parts, beer, and paper. Also backhauling is another thing railroads can do-semi trailers on delivery have a tight schedule and go by road, but back to the warehouse they get piggybacked on flatcars.

Regardless of the economics of whole new lines(Hym may be right but this misses the point), the US has thousands of miles of existing trackage. There have been some major projects. One recent is BNSF's upgrade to its Abo Canyon line. Serious freight terminals and new port and industrial facilities with rail links have been built in the last few years. Another is KCS's reconstruction of a previously abandoned line in south Texas .

As far as cities, many have intermodal or trailer train facilities, and often auto distribution points which are served by rail. In addition many places have suburban industrial parks with spur trackage for things like building supply,aggregates, and food processing plants.

Even in Austin which is practically the least industrial major city in the US with zero major rail facilities, there exists invisible to the average person some train service. One is the large amount of crushed stone and aggregates and occasionally big hunks of granite from the hill country. Out in the 'burbs Abbot Labs gets a tanker car delivered to its plant off Howard Lane and Mopacs. In East Austin a Budweiser distributor gets beer delivered in boxcars and I think steel goes that way too. Out in the industrial areas by Braker Lane a few of the decrepit old spurs still get cargo now and again. It's all enough to make a pretty long local train, never mind the dozens of trains going between other cities on the Union Pacific mainline track

Living in the Killeen,TX area growing up I saw a bunch of tanks and military vehicles on trains everyday, because their loading facility was on a hill next to our local Wal-Mart.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

So with just a little refurbishment and a little expansion ...