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What this country needs is more railroads.
Get more of these tractor trailers off the roads.
We have a crumbling highway infrastructure in part because of too many tractor trailers.
Few remember before the interstate highway system. Back then, most all goods traveled by rail.
We, the taxpayers, paid for the interstate highway system.
When that happened - the interstate highway system - many (not all) of the railroads died.
Yes, both cars, pickups, and tractor trailers do pay road taxes with every fuel purchase.
Having driven cross country multiple times an on just about every interstate going west/east there are just too many tractor trailers.
On a 3 mile slight incline highway. One tractor trailer going 55 MPH in right lane and one tractor trailer in left lane going 56 MPH is absurd. All traffic blocked because of some tractor trailer idiot.
Just this past February I viewed 13 tractor trailers jackknifed or tipped over between Dallas and Ft Worth. Modern day cowboys.
Drive on Route 94 between Chicago and Detroit and you will see tractor trailers just about bumper to bumper every day.
Railroads versus highways is a debate that will continue for a long time.
Yes, we should have nationalized the rail system right after WWII, the same way we nationalized the highway system. Most of our rail traffic still uses the outdated, single lane one-way track system that was built a century ago. The system has deteriorated badly, with many spur lines being closed and removed. There is no longer any such thing as express rail freight. In 1940 you could ice a box car full of sweet corn in Oregon and have it in Chicago 3 days later. Now it would be lucky to make the trip in two weeks. It's more likely to sit on a siding somewhere for a month.
Our rail system has been raided by vulture capitalists, who want to collect shipping fees while not investing in the rail system. Then they point to declining revenues as the reason rail has no future, while the country puts up with freight trucks using over half of the highway system.
Trucks suck. They are bullies. Their antics are on the news almost everyday, here. They shut 64 and 65 down for hours at a time. I asked one why they block the road for miles and they said it was because they want to let traffic clear out ahead. Who put these guys in charge?
Trucks suck. They are bullies. Their antics are on the news almost everyday, here. They shut 64 and 65 down for hours at a time. I asked one why they block the road for miles and they said it was because they want to let traffic clear out ahead. Who put these guys in charge?
That right I would not wnt to argue with a 80,000 pound truck if you want to be my guest. So many accidents caused by four whel cars trying to playing chicken with a semi and the semi wins all the time.
Yes, we should have nationalized the rail system right after WWII, the same way we nationalized the highway system. Most of our rail traffic still uses the outdated, single lane one-way track system that was built a century ago. The system has deteriorated badly, with many spur lines being closed and removed. There is no longer any such thing as express rail freight. In 1940 you could ice a box car full of sweet corn in Oregon and have it in Chicago 3 days later. Now it would be lucky to make the trip in two weeks. It's more likely to sit on a siding somewhere for a month.
Our rail system has been raided by vulture capitalists, who want to collect shipping fees while not investing in the rail system. Then they point to declining revenues as the reason rail has no future, while the country puts up with freight trucks using over half of the highway system.
Absolute socialistic, bureaucratic nonsense.
The development of all-weather highways was what drove time-sensitive, high-value freight off the rails; livestock, for example, was nearly gone by 1970, and nothing could have reversed that trend. The completion of the Interstate Highway System, combined with the Fifties' "baby boom" provided a fresh supply of potential drivers.
Small, infrequent, high-value shipments were handled by "express", but the practice never seemed to get back on track (no pun intended), once the basic highway network was essentially completed. The railroads tried to answer with a central consortium called the Railway Express Agency,
but it never seemed able to recover the lost business, eventually morphed into just another common-carrier trucker, and went bankrupt in the mid-Seventies. UPS and FedEx, unencumbered by labor inefficiencies and an overbuilt, but of necessity under-maintained infrastructure, quickly took up the slack. (And today, UPS is by far the largest user of domestic rail trailer- and container-on-flatcar services.)
The network was overbuilt, with branch lines handling 1-5 local freights weekly, just to serve a dwindling number of lumber yards, feed and grain dealers, and bulk oil plants. Labor agreements couldn't be moderated, so picking up or spotting a single car could cost several hundred dollars. And five-man crews were standard practice until everybody, including the Brotherhoods (unions) realized that desperation measures were needed in the early Eighties.
If "vulture capitalists" were so eager to scarf up rail property, please explain to us why 40 percent of rail mileage, with about half of that outside New England and the Northeast, was in bankruptcy, or threatened with it, by 1975.
A good deal of the railroads' renaissance after 1980 can be traced in part to the efforts of the man referenced below:
John Kneiling was an industrial engineer who, beginning in 1965, used the rail-hobbyist milieu as a sounding board for radical changes in the industry -- essentially advocating the replacement of loose single cars, which had to be reclassified at least one, and usually several times along the way, with "integral" or "true" trains shutting from one origin to one destination. His ideas were too far out-of-synch with the regulatory requirements of his time, and he passed from the scene in relative obscurity, but what eventually evolved in response to market demands bears an uncanny resemblance to what he originally proposed.
The present rail freight network handles about 60 percent more freight (when measured on a tonnage basis) than in the previous peak years of 1944 and 1966, and does so with only about 55 percent of the route mileage. There are any number of abandoned, or "mothballed" rights of way, and many other lines could be restored to their three- and four-track main lines from their current single- and double-track (but able to handle more traffic via centralized and remote-controlled dispatching) configuration.
Two factors are currently holding back a major expansion n the American rail industry: one is the unknown effect of the completion of the widened-and-deepened Panama Canal (PANAMAX), now scheduled for completion in 2016; this could divert a good deal of high-value import traffic from West Coast to East Coast ports, but the railroads would likely just solicit and regain the short-haul business that has to be "unsold" due to limited capacity.
The other deterrent is the constant threat of de facto nationalization via re-regulation which has long been held over the industry's head as a threat by populist politicians. Why would any entity within the private sector sink hard-earned money back into infrastructure when the hacks and grafters can steal it via legislation at any time?
Last edited by 2nd trick op; 06-30-2015 at 09:00 PM..
Don't get me started on truckers! I just drove from AZ to Ontario Canada a few months ago and I feel lucky to be alive after the way the truckers were driving. Especially on the Sunday of my trip - do they flood the roads because they think they'll be quiet?
The major freeway through Missouri was closed because of a truck accident, and then when I was going through Indianapolis, a truck had overturned completely on the freeway ramp in the city . It was pouring rain the whole day and because there were so many of them driving so crazy I chose to stay in the right lane going the speed limit (normally I would go faster but after seeing so many accidents and witnessing their driving I slowed down) and many pulled out to pass me and were in such a hurry that they still had a part of their truck taking up 1' of my lane.
A one or two MPH speed differential comes to what? Ten or twenty minutes at the destination over the course of a ten hour drive. If that. Most of the time, the driver will be waiting anyway and consequently makes little or no difference. But it does make a huge difference between a few thousand motorists hating on truckers that much more.
That is an inaccurate statement. Many truckers have appointment windows they have to make for delivery times and often compensation is tied to on time preformance. Many times it's a simple drop and hook or back in the dock and unload etc.
Don't get me started on truckers! I just drove from AZ to Ontario Canada a few months ago and I feel lucky to be alive after the way the truckers were driving. Especially on the Sunday of my trip - do they flood the roads because they think they'll be quiet?
The major freeway through Missouri was closed because of a truck accident, and then when I was going through Indianapolis, a truck had overturned completely on the freeway ramp in the city . It was pouring rain the whole day and because there were so many of them driving so crazy I chose to stay in the right lane going the speed limit (normally I would go faster but after seeing so many accidents and witnessing their driving I slowed down) and many pulled out to pass me and were in such a hurry that they still had a part of their truck taking up 1' of my lane.
I don't envy driving back!
It's a well known fact backed by many years of statistics that four wheeler's cause 90% of all trucking accidents. From reading the latter part of your post it seems to me that you may have been causing some if not all of the issues you experienced.
I don't understand the thinking that just because trucks deliver supplies that they can somehow be excused from driving like jerks. One doesn't excuse the other.
Truckers are paid to do a job. They aren't saving the world. They are transporting item X from place A to place B. If all the truckers suddenly quit, another solution would present itself. Stop acting like truckers are the only thing keeping the world from devolving into chaos.
And trucks are subject to different rules and regulations because they are different from passenger cars. One of those is, or should, an acknowledgment that it is not OK to block up lanes or do some of the things that passenger cars do. Something a passenger car can do with relative safety is something that may be extremely dangerous for a truck to do.
I don't understand the thinking that just because trucks deliver supplies that they can somehow be excused from driving like jerks. One doesn't excuse the other.
Truckers are paid to do a job. They aren't saving the world. They are transporting item X from place A to place B. If all the truckers suddenly quit, another solution would present itself. Stop acting like truckers are the only thing keeping the world from devolving into chaos.
And trucks are subject to different rules and regulations because they are different from passenger cars. One of those is, or should, an acknowledgment that it is not OK to block up lanes or do some of the things that passenger cars do. Something a passenger car can do with relative safety is something that may be extremely dangerous for a truck to do.
Don't diminish the role of truckers in the function of society.
I'd like to see what alternative would fix a stand still. FedEx? That's a delivery truck. They went on strike. Rail service? Ok, from the train how do we get the goods from train to store ? Trucks! Can't, the truckers are on strike.
As far as blocking the road. Interstate highways have a minimum speed. Around here it is 40 MPH. Passing on a hill is often shortsighted and not the best idea, isn't illegal. In most jurisdictions.
The regulations are stringent. Truck drivers are already held to a far higher standard than you'll ever be.
Honestly, the professional driver is not the issue. It is the ignorance of the average car and pickup driver that are the problem.
A car can stop from 60 MPH in 130 feet. A semi takes 400 feet to stop from the same speed. Then there are the blind spots on a semi. Out front, on each side and at the rear.
Is leapfrogging dangerous? Only if you're in a hurry or not paying attention to the road and traffic. Is it a dick move? Yes.
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. It was pouring rain the whole day and because there were so many of them driving so crazy I chose to stay in the right lane going the speed limit (normally I would go faster but after seeing so many accidents and witnessing their driving I slowed down) and many pulled out to pass me and were in such a hurry that they still had a part of their truck taking up 1' of my lane.
