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[quote]QUOTE: Originally posted by narig01 I'm a truck driver. I was looking at the comments on If shippers want an alternative to highways why not build a light rail line for produce and other freight going to port. Typically containers and trailers are in the 30-35 ton(english) range. For railroads these are fairly lite loads. Using say road-railer technology. It would be cheaper than building a heavy rail operation & would not be as major an irratation to the NIMBY's(yea right) It seems to me that light rail is very underutilised for freight. Could short trains of 10-20 boxes travel on light rail lines(say at nite or off peak)? I know this sounds crazy, but remember many of the rail operations from the interurban era that survive today generally survived because they had freight. One of the things I have noticed is that the heavy railroads are very good if you have huge amounts of cargo(Unit coal trains, grain,30-50 carloads of this or that). On the other end of the scale Truck Load & LTL are done very well by the truck load companies. what is needed is a niche of have 3-20 truck load cargos & a network to move this. Especially for the short haul market(50-700 miles). Why are major retailers moving large quantity of boxes(100 + a day in some cases) from rail yards to their Distribution Centres by road? I also saw the forum about moving produce from Eastern Washington state to pacific coast ports. If shippers want an alternative why not build a light rail line. [/quote] One question: Are you refering to a high speed rail concept (which I will define as capable of transit speeds faster than highways) or just a light rail at nominal speeds? I guess it is not necessary to have transit speeds as fast as highways for off highway delivery of truckloads, since I have seen a few container-on-highway-chassis being barged between Lewiston ID and Portland OR. It is my view (reiterated for this topic) that any rail system that allows for faster-than-highway delivery of trailers and containers will result in a substantial amount of truck traffic being taken off roads for even short and medium haul corridors. Time sensitive truckload is where the money's at.
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