Fixing The Economy with Intermodal

[selector]

I am trying to place it all in perspective.  10K trucks daily consuming four times the mileage of a typical one-person-per-car commuter, of which there are millions (and climbing) is going to put how big a dent in the overall consumption of fuel, and it will have how much of a salutary effect on global warming?  As a guess, I'd say....maybe 1/10 of 1%. 

However, if you were to remove 10K single-person-per-car-commuters from each city over 1M, now yer talkin'!  We'd be all the way up to about 0.5%.

[I'm pulling these numbers out of my hat, but the order of magnitutude should be close.]

-Crandell

[schlimm]

greyhounds

Just let the market work.  Intermodal will assume its "proper" role in the world of freight.

You and Bucyrus assume the market is a perfectly functioning one, which is rather unlikely. In the situation referenced, the market does not account for negative externalities (external costs).  A blind faith in even a free market (which this situation is not) is neither rational nor likely to lead to an efficient outcome.

[edblysard]

If you would please, explain who the "we" you cite are?

Andy-UP

The existing Intermodal system is unable to handle the volume of traffic and the Terminals need major revisions to expidite the traffic. This will take a major overhaul and should be handled like the Interstate construction was. We analyzed this years ago and one railroad cannot just revise their system, It will have to be universal.

[greyhounds]

Any "forced" switch from truck to rail would drive up logistics costs.  This would hurt, not help, the economy.   The logistics people routing the frieght are picking the low cost configuration for their operation now.  Don't take that option away from them.  They know more about what needs to be done than you do.

The US Government spent the better part of the 20th Century forcing freight off the rail system through incredibly stupid regulatory decisions.  It's hard to beat "In the Mattter of Container Service" for stupidity.  This regulatory madness was handed down in 1931.  Along with other government imposed stupidity, it literally strangled intemodal development for the next 50 years.  (These things don't go away anytime soon.) 

A container based intermodal system, using trains for what they do best and trucks for what they do best, began to develop almost as soon as trucks that could carry a decent load of freight were developed; around 1923.  This container intermodal system greatly reduced the cost of moving freight.  (Which was good for the economy, unlike your idea.)   Government put a stop to it, and greatly hurt the people of the United States through its action.

Just let the market work.  Intermodal will assume its "proper" role in the world of freight.  The result will be far better than what would be achieved through any government edict.  The G could cut tax rates and get out of the way.  That's something they could do to help.  But it's not in their nature. 

[Anonymous]

So why doesn't the system just overhaul itself so it can make more profit and prosper?

[Andy-UP]

The existing Intermodal system is unable to handle the volume of traffic and the Terminals need major revisions to expidite the traffic. This will take a major overhaul and should be handled like the Interstate construction was. We analyzed this years ago and one railroad cannot just revise their system, It will have to be universal.

[Anonymous]

Mr. Anderson:

If there is an economic advantage in what you propose, why do you think it is not being exploited now?

[Andy-UP]

Fixing our Economy: 

This is an excellent time to fixing a major problem we have and at the same time solve the problem we have with unemployment. We are in the process of doing every thing we can to reduce fuel consumption by modifying the types of cars we use and encouraging people to buy these cars as in the cash for Clunkers program we just had. However we have done nothing to try and alter the amount of trucks on our interstates that are getting 5.8MPG hauling our merchandise.

      The FHWA has several presentations that show where interstates will be carrying over 10,000 trucks per day by year 2020. This should mandate that we immediately fix any problems we have with our intermodal system so these trailers can be moved to our intermodal rail system. With the trucks getting 5.8 MPG they will use 172.41 gallons of fuel going 1,000 miles.For 60 Trucks going 1,000 miles this would be 10,344.83 gallons of fuel.For a train pulling these 60 trailers 1,000 miles requires 6,000 gallons of fuel for a savings of 4,344.83 gallons of fuel.

     Utilizing the FHWA maps showing where this additional volume will occur, and figuring the mileage on these routes and converting it to gallons of fuel saved and dollars saved revealed the following:1,868,318,200 gallons of fuel saved per/year utilizing 50 percent of the projected trucks by 2020.$4,278,448,678 dollars saved on fuel purchase per/year. 

     It should be a number one priority to create transportation studies to determine what the requirements would be for modifications to the intermodal terminals and increasing track capacity to handle this anticipated traffic. Using 50% of this anticipated traffic of 10,000 trucks per/day could create and additional 80 trains or 40 each direction per/day.

As these additional facilities are required it will create thousands of jobs across the country.

 Merrill J. [e-mail]

    (edited to add some artificial paragrapgh indentions to make it easier to read.  -Norris)