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[quote. We could list industry after industry where the beloved freight rail industry has lost out market share to trucks. Why? Trucks are a lot faster. Plus most shippers don't want the extraordinary longer transit times provided by freight rail. [/quote] Aye, there's the rub. Railroads are needlessly slower than trucks terminal to terminal. I'll restate the theoretical dual aspect advantage of rail as I've posted elsewhere - Railroads are capable of moving bulk commodities (aspect #1) at speed (aspect #2). The railroads in North America have done a great job at exploiting aspect #1, but have been less than stellar at exploiting aspect #2. Remember, there is a natural speed limit for highway vehicles which share a ROW of around 70 - 80 mph max, due to the fact that there is no self steering mechanism, thus we are subject to potential human error in keeping the highway vehicle on the road, and an average driver can only go so fast before the ability to control the vehicle is compromised. The flanged wheel on steel rail, on the other hand, is of course self steering, thus the only theoretical speed limits for rail travel are grade, curvature, and the laws of physics as they relate to suface travel. Thus the natural speed limit of 100 to 125 mph for a self steering mode should be easily attainable today, considering the French run at 200 mph for their passenger trains. Thus, if a normal sustained speed of 100 mph was the norm for rail travel, it is possible that railroads could counteract the inherent terminal and switching delays by the force of sheer speed over the medium to long haul, and by doing so railroads could own the freight business in all but the shorter corridors. Consider this example: On an 800 mile haul, a truck would have to average 72 mph to get there in 11 hours i.e. he'd have to speed. To compete timewise, the railroad has to average a speed that compensates for the train make up in the one locale and the consist break up in the other locale. Say we're using bi-modal technology like RoadRailer or RailRunner. If it takes one and a half hour for the bi-modal trailer to travel from dock to railyard and the consist to be sufficient for the train to take off (and one and a half hour at the destination), thats three hours the railroad has to make up, leaving the railroad 8 hours to travel 800 miles, so the railroad has to average 100 mph. To do this, they'd probably need to have sustained speeds of 125 mph for considerable stretches to reach a 100 mph average. To average 100 mph may seem extreme, even for bi-modal high priority freight. Yet consider that the Hiawathas and Zephyrs averaged 75+mph using 1930's technology over jointed rail. And the likelyhood is that the fast freight railroads would only have to have sustained speeds of 100 mph or less, maybe much less, to win over the business from the truckers. And, of course, at the higher speeds you could win over more of the passenger market. It has been suggested elsewhere that the railroads may have made a mistake in throwing all their money into increasing load factor (at the cost of reduced train speeds) for low value/low margin commodities, while taking a less enthusiastic approach to garnering the high value/high margin commodities, ostensibly because the extra investment in high speed railroading may not be offset by capturing the high value goods which pay a premium for speed. Remember though, one can always carry low value goods at high speed, but you can't carry time sensitive goods at low speeds. Why settle for cargo that tends to be lower margin at the cost of not getting the high end business, when it is possible to capture it all?
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