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As some of the regulars here know, I'm a railroad man at heart (though I spent a much larger portion of my career in trucking and warehousing). But my degree in Business Logistics touched on all phases of transportation, freight as well as passenger, and during my undergraduate years, a lot of quantum changes were just getting under way. And the professional journals of that era tended to focus on individual modes and industries, rather than the "bigger picture" of supply, demand, and a global economy still in its infancy.
So the point here is; Just as the emergence and development if the Interstate Highway System beginning in the mid-Fifties set up a decline and re-invention of both the railroads and common-carrier truckers, basic changes in how (and where) we live, work and travel are likely to force another round of changes in our automotive habits (and I'm speaking here of a lot more than "self-driving cars"). I'd welcome some input on a subject upon which railroaders and railroad buffs seldom find common ground with the auto industry.
I absolutely support a move like this but I will note, this is simply a small opinion piece that leaves out much. (Again, not meant to be policy, just a quick opinion so it's not going to all inclusive).
I support getting semi's off the road and moving much of what they do on trains. It can be done. The elephant in the room is there is an elimination of tens if not hundreds of thousands of jobs which leaves no one to purchase any of the stuff being moved. Trucks from GM or imported cars from wherever.
No one wants to touch that because we have NO leaders.
Hope we can get some more responses like this one; the subject is nebulous, but the point(s) I hope to see raised are out there.
There is an extremely large and comprehensive web site called trainweb.com Officially. It's geared and linked to the entire rail network, but a disproportionate share of it has been devoted to the huge amount of commerce that flowed through New York Harbor until the business began to dry up post-1945, NOTE: New Jerseyans outraged by their own high property taxes should take note of the virtual disappearance of taxable private property.
But the point I want to make is; The railroads (though much bigger and fewer in number) recovered, as did the truckers. Much of the maritime industry either did not, or was de facto nationalized (or at least, incorporated into the public z9non-tax-paying) sector.
Last edited by 2nd trick op; 12-08-2018 at 05:15 PM..
I grew in railroad country. I miss trains and train trips - as routine transportation.
That said, that country had NETWORK of railroads, built for centuries. Hence, it can move lots and lots of cargo, at very low cost, because infrastructure is already there.
For the US, you looking at immense investment to create such infrastructure.
No one will do this. Bosses decided to go electric and autonomous. What WILL kill hundreds of thousands of jobs. There is no plans to go train wise. read Ron Kurzveil, Man in the Know. Or, even look at this marketing clown Musk. What he preaches to.
Back during my undergraduate days (early 70's) a professor of economics named Ann Friedlander tried to calculate a trade-off distance (how far the shipment had to go) between rail and truck transport, The figure derived, (all other things being equal) was less than 150 miles.
But all other things are seldom equal; the study tended to downplay the size of the shipment, varying labor costs, a diminishing number of lightly-used rail lines in rural areas, and many other factors.
In the late Fifties, all the major Eastern trunk line railroads set up dedicated solid-trainload Trailer on Flat Car (TOFC) services between the Eastern Seaboard and a Chicago (and in some cases, a St. Louis or Kansas City) "gateway"; in many cases, the service replaced cumbersome Less-than-Carload (LCL) operations revolving around sorting warehouses in Pittsburgh or Buffalo. It was marketed to the strongly-regulated "common carrier" truckers of the day, but it did not do well.
Some carriers, particularly the New York Central, based their services on removable containers on flat cars. others took the wheels, hubs and axles along for an energy-inefficient ride, To complicate things, the two-trailer, 88-foot standard "piggyback" flatcar (and not all equipment was standardized) had several inches of vertical play, which fractured a lot of freight. And much of that equipment became obsolete when truck size-and weight-limits were liberalized in the late Seventies
And, beginning with the Penn Central bankruptcy of 1970, and culminating in extensive flooding (Hurricane Agnes of 1972), the reliability (usually more important than transit time) of Eastern trunk line shipments disintegrated. Crews (operating under expensive work rules) would be scheduled to unload a shipment that was "still out there, somewhere". A perishable-hauler I worked with in the late Seventies simply stopped using TOFC service east of Chicago.
After a lot of study, TrailerTrain (a rail industry consortium which provided equipment) settled on a generally-standardized set of equipment which has predominated since the early 1980's and, combined with work-rules reform, was a whopping-big success. A handful of truckers, most notably J B Hunt, haul shipments a relatively short distance to an intermodal terminal, and the iron horse takes over from there.
But "short-haul intermodal" remains a challenge; back during those undergraduate years previously mentioned, the Penn Central closed down an intermodal terminal in its hub city of Altoona, PA, Business was solicited traveling only to or beyond the anchor cities of Chicago and St. Louis -- and that was trucked to a terminal in Pittsburgh.
Quote:
Originally Posted by pknopp
I support getting semi's off the road and moving much of what they do on trains. It can be done. The elephant in the room is there is an elimination of tens if not hundreds of thousands of jobs which leaves no one to purchase any of the stuff being moved. Trucks from GM or imported cars from wherever.
So, as evidenced in the thread linked below, I wouldn't look for the presence of "18-wheelers" on our highways to diminish anytime soon -- and what relief there is will be out in flyover country, rather than on the fringes of the major cities.
In all efforts in all fields of endeavor-- solutions require the optimum compromise among the conflicting factors.
Trains have the advantage of lowest cost per mile, but have limited routes compared to trucks. Even if a siding leads right to the manufacturers' docks for loading, a truck is still needed on the far end to distribute the goods to the retailers, for example.
In regards human travel- does it make sense to spend three hours getting to O'Hare Airport & thru security for a 40 minute flight to Indianapolis? With the demise of RR routes connecting small towns, rural folks are forced to rely in personal transportation for anything less than transcontinental travel. Our loss. I would welcome the re-establishment of the shorter RR routes, but it seems they've all been turned into bike paths & hiking trails by now.
It's not a matter of "either- or" but a convenient compromise.
I grew in railroad country. I miss trains and train trips - as routine transportation.
That said, that country had NETWORK of railroads, built for centuries. Hence, it can move lots and lots of cargo, at very low cost, because infrastructure is already there.
For the US, you looking at immense investment to create such infrastructure.
No one will do this. Bosses decided to go electric and autonomous. What WILL kill hundreds of thousands of jobs. There is no plans to go train wise. read Ron Kurzveil, Man in the Know. Or, even look at this marketing clown Musk. What he preaches to.
I completely agree. The thing I can't wrap my head around though is how did this get agreed upon globally at the political level ? Spain, France (failing as I type this), Norway, India, Germany... all want to go all electric. It isn't like the citizens are demanding this.
I completely agree. The thing I can't wrap my head around though is how did this get agreed upon globally at the political level ? Spain, France (failing as I type this), Norway, India, Germany... all want to go all electric. It isn't like the citizens are demanding this.
I'm generalizing here. Leaders are leaders because they lead where we need to go, not always because it's what people want at the moment.
Many did not want those noisy horseless carriages running amok through the streets either.
I'm generalizing here. Leaders are leaders because they lead where we need to go, not always because it's what people want at the moment.
Many did not want those noisy horseless carriages running amok through the streets either.
Not in a democracy they don’t. Don’t don’t do what the people want and your party gets voted out.
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