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Why do railroads run intermodal so fast?
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Biggest 6600 TEU ships cruise at 25 kts. <br /> <br />Evergreen needs 15 days to get from Hong Kong to LA. <br /> <br />I think that the biggest stretch - Hong Kong - NYC would take 20-22 days using maersk on average. The railroad by choosing 40 mph over 60 mph will add one day. <br /> <br />It would look like this: <br /> <br />1 day loading <br />11 days transit <br />1 day transloading <br />2 days on UP/BNSF <br />(optional 1 day for turmoil in bottlenecked Chicago :D) <br />1 day on CSX/NS <br />1 day final delivery <br /> <br />17 days and add the fact that the load might not originate at the same day as the ship leaves the port. that is 17 to 24 days. That is about 9000 miles or avg speed of 22 to 16 mph - which isnt all that impressive. <br /> <br />If railroads had chosen 40 mph (one extra day) the speeds would drop to 20 to 15 mph. Which is pretty pathetic ^^ and visible in the big picture (UP's avg speed dropped from 25 to 23 mph and everyone says that it is a catastrophic meltdown) <br /> <br />So the reason why railroads run intermodals fast - apart from what was already told (better equipment and crew utilisation, hot UPS shipments, competition against trucks) - these trains are relatively light (and very light for the value they carry), so running them fast is easy - and running fast pays more since more trains can be pushed through the same capacity since faster trains use less of it. <br /> <br />Alas, that is my guess.
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