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[quote user="beaulieu"][quote user="futuremodal"][quote user="owlsroost"] [quote]Why can't all rail consists move at the same speed?  More to the point, why not make all rail traffic move at the same speed, to avoid unidirectional congestion?  I know part of it is to optimize fuel economy on tonnage moves, but even with lower fuel economy by having to increase the hp to t ratio, it's still preferable to not moving the tonnage by rail at all, e.g. back on the mode of last resort aka trucks nee lorries.[/quote] In Europe, this would basically mean having freight trains with the performance of passenger trains - it's possible, but the extra equipment and energy costs would push up rail freight rates to the point where the truckers would be laughing all the way to the bank. A few shippers might be willing to pay the extra for few hours off the transit time, but most wouldn't (over the short distances - up to a few hundred miles - that most freight moves in Europe, trucking is already faster and cheaper door-to-door in many cases).[/quote] That's an interesting take.  In most cases, the ability of a railroad to increase it's average train speed is the key in drawing freight off the roads.  The only real advantage trucks have over rail is the ability to go dock to dock, whilst railroads need to transload between rail cars and trucks at terminals, or add/remove trailers or containers at the terminal, e.g. an inherent time cost.[/quote] It's also a monetary cost. Cranes are very expensive and they have a finite lifespan. [quote]   Thus, the usual approach is to focus on trip length, because the longer the haul, the greater ability of the railroads to overcome the inherent terminal delay as the impact of the time differential is diminished.  By increasing train speed, preferably to a significant degree over corresponding road trip times, the terminal time cost is overcome at some distance threshold, a break-even point if you will where the trip length turns from the trucker's favor to the railroad's.  The faster the rail trip, the shorter the distance threshold. [/quote] Yes, that is one determinant, there are many others. Another is that as distances dock to dock get shorter the dray distance from dock to rail terminal, and from the other rail terminal to the receiving dock can become longer than the dock to dock distance. I think you would agree that the railroad is done at that point. Let me cite others, lets take the case of the UK. First off, the locomotive costs more than the tractor portion of the truck, second train paths have a basic cost, to which is added additional fees depending on factors such as weight and how hard they are on the track. Next you add for each freight car, now in the case of freight cars, the charge is based on the weight and number of axles, but you can get discounts for using trucks that lower the force on the track. Next your Train Driver (UK terminology) costs more than a truck driver. Enough for now. Now you have to balance these factors out. [quote]   Therefore, it is possible for mostly short haul country like Great Britain to move certain types of freight by rail within the nation's borders, if that inherent terminal delay can be overcome by raw speed to a point where it is faster yet still more economical to ship a container or trailer by rail than by over the road.  The economies of scale germaine to railroad technology should still be enough to outweigh a surmised increase in costs associated with freight moving at passenger speeds and overcome over the road shipper.[/quote] Let's take a hypothetical UK case, we'll use a maritime container and say that both the trucker and the railroad start out at the same point. The trucker has to go 100 miles with his container the train also has to go 100 miles, but the container then has to be trucked a further 10 miles to the customer. Further we will say that the train will load thirty containers and the trucker will get the 16th container unloaded, about as fair as you can get. So lets say that the train now has 15 on board and the trucker gets his container. Trucker departs, train takes 30 minutes to load its remaining containers and then it departs. Let's say the trucker averages 30 mph, It will take him 3 hours and 20 minutes to deliver his container. The train departs 30 minutes after the trucker. Let's say the train can average 45 mph. (It will hit 75mph). The train runs 2 hours 20 minutes. Let's say the right container is the 15th unloaded, 30 minutes after the train arrives, the trucker just arrived at the customer. The Railways container is still 10 miles away. My average train speed is probably a bit too high, to raise the average speed on such a short journey may require raising top speed to 90 mph. And there is another kicker not yet mentioned, the train was fully loaded at 2:00pm, the trains pathed departure time is at 2:20pm. So it can't leave for a further 20 minutes. [quote]It should be noted that in the US and Canada there is a healthy TOFC and domestic COFC trade over the long haul, but because of the North American railroads's embarrassing average velocity numbers (even for intermodal) our railroads are way behind the curve in drawing freight off the roads for the medium and short haul corridors as well as those time sensitive long hauls.[/quote][/quote] I would expect that the train in this example is a night freight or midday freight to avoid the morning and evening commuter rush.  But let's also say we're using single stack bi-modal technology like RailRunner, and the port is using direct ship to rail container transloading.  Now we have two time mitigating factors in favor of rail - (1)usually a container is unloaded onto a chassis which is then parked where the trucker can then hook on, or the container is lifted to a dockside stack and then later is lifted onto the over the road chassis or railcar.  With direct ship to rail, the railway is able to bypass certain interport drayage activities, and although it is concievable to do the same for the over the road trucker, most ports don't want the over the road trucker driving around dockside, so his load is first handled by the longshore employee to the transfer area.  Perhaps we've just saved 30 minutes over the over the road trucker by utilizing direct ship to rail container transfer.  (2) With the RailRunner technology, when the train arrives at the destination terminal, there is no need to remove the containers one by one, they can all be modally transfered to road at almost the same time assuming the assigned over the road driver is ready and waiting.  Now we've just taken 30 minutes off the transit time to final customer.  Add it up, we've now beaten the usual trucker's transit time by (1) reducing terminal time in a way that the trucker cannot emulate, and (2) engaging a faster point to point in-transit time by utilizing rail's theoretical speed advantage over road travel.  And we did it in a short haul corridor of minimal length, something most would assume would be impossible. Question:  Is Europe experiencing a similar truck driver shortage as the US?  That could also play into rail's favor.  Utilizing bi-modal/intermodal logistics aids in optimizing available truck driver productivity.
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