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Proposed high speed freight service in France
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[quote]QUOTE: <i>Originally posted by oltmannd</i> <br /><br />[quote]QUOTE: <i>Originally posted by futuremodal</i> <br /><br />Found this blurb in Railway Age magazine. <br /> <br />"If high speed passenger trains are a hard sell in the U.S., how about high speed passenger/freight trains? FedEx has approached France#8217;s Ministry of Finance and Ministry of Transport about creating a freight component of the 200-mph TGV system. It would involve extending TGV track from a passenger terminal at Charles de Gaulle Airport to FedEx#8217;s European hub at the airport, which handles over one thousand tons of package freight a day, and designing specialty rolling stock." <br /> <br />In retrospect, it is suprising that it took time sensitive shippers this long to broach this concept. Could this be the key to making high speed rail profitable? <br /> <br />http://www.railwayage.com/B/xfromtheeditor.html <br />[/quote] <br /> <br />FM- <br /> <br />I think we may have found something to agree upon![:)] <br /> <br />It's all about market niches and to say that there is no niche for frt in high speed rail is silly. <br /> <br />If Amtrak were to work a bit harder to accomodate frt on the NEC, we'd all be better off! <br />[/quote] <br /> <br />What has always intrigued me is how the philosophical aspects of railroading, <b>the ability to carry bulk commodities at <i>speed</i>, </b>has not been exploited in the U.S. We do a great job of carrying 15,000 tons of low value/low margin products at an average of 23 miles an hour, but when it comes to carrying time sensitive cargo at a speed which the time sensitive shipper demands, we fail miserably despite the higher profit margins. Perhaps the two aspects are diametrically opposed, yet the evolution of the overseas rail systems are begining to approach the original theoretical framework. <br /> <br />It would be ironic (and a bit of a disgrace) if it was the French who discover how to me***he two into a profitable cohesive system. <br /> <br />There is no reason that time sensitive freight cannot be the primary focus of railroading here in the U.S., because you can always haul non-time sensitive freight at time sensitive freight speeds (which should correspond to high end passenger speeds), but you can't haul time sensitive cargo at an average of 23 miles an hour and expect to get the business. The U.S. railroads seemed to have been so focussed on increasing load factors that they lost sight of the growth sectors for freight transportation. <br /> <br />Build a rail system in which the cargo gets over the line in an expedient manner, and it is likely that passenger services on that system will attract enough patronage in some corridors to make it in the private sector.
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