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Newswire: Positive Train Control a Waste

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[quote user="zugmann"] <blockquote> <div><img src="/TRCCS/Themes/trc/images/icon-quote.gif" /> edbenton:</div> <div>  It is not going to freaking happen.  I want to know what Looney Planet he lives on.  There is no way in Hell that class 8 rig is going to be able to get 18MPG at all times.  </div> <div style="clear:both;"></div>   </blockquote> And we'll never send a man to the moon, either. I know us americans like to take pride in our ignorance, but c'mon... I bet we could do it pretty darn easily if we wanted to.   <div style="clear:both;"></div> [/quote] It is not as if nobody has been trying to increase fuel economy until now.  There is only so much energy in the fuel, and it takes a certain amount to move a given weight at a given speed.  You can tinker at the margins, but for the most part, you either have to reduce the weight or increase the energy in the fuel.  You can reduce the weight by making the vehicle smaller or making it lighter, but the latter drives up the cost of the vehicle.  With passenger cars, there is room to reduce the weight by making them smaller.  It comes with the penalty of inconvenience, safety, and carrying capacity, so there is market resistance.  But the force of government can simply overcome that.  <o:p></o:p> With big trucks, the point is the load they carry, so fuel economy has already been maximized to make the largest transport profit possible when moving a given payload.  There is great reward to anybody who can come up with an economically viable way to use less fuel.  The best engineering minds in the world are constantly working on the problem.     <o:p></o:p> But if government steps in and forces them to meet a higher mileage, the payload must get smaller.  So it leads to two small trucks with better fuel mileage doing the work of one big truck with half the fuel mileage.  In the minds of government and its advocates, the solution to the limitations of fuel and energy economies lies simply in more research, preferably with the government doing the research.  To them, you just push the research button and you get what you want.
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