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:1,868,3
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.
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.
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.
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.]
If I went to my bosses tomorrow and said, “Working with the federal and state governments to capture our externalized benefits of intermodal transportation is wrong and I don’t agree with it,” I am pretty sure they would fire me.
If I went to my bosses tomorrow and said, “We should let the federal and state governments dictate the structure of our intermodal transportation business and I agree with that,” I am pretty sure they would fire me.
The real world of railroading that I live in would not pass the ideological sniff tests of either Ayn Rand or Karl Marx. The market is clearly not now nor likely to ever capture and deliver to us our externalized public benefits of intermodal freight, without a mechanism placed upon it. The law is clearly not going to enable the government to create a command economy unless heavily rewritten. We seek to find a balance between the two extremes of ideology that enables a win for everyone.
I don’t disagree, strongly, with any of the positions advanced by either Mr. Anderson or Mr. Greyhounds. I would be very grateful, however, if they would provide help to me by providing ideas that might help me to work with the government to capture our externalized benefits, and ideas on how we might work with the government to make sure that the laws that are written serve to enable people to make rational business decisions, not trap them into someone’s backdoor method to get a good public outcome. My telling the governement to slag off, as I think many people think I ought to be telling them, is not going to be helpful.
So just what is it about the free market that is not working here? The first poster thinks the problem is that WE as a society are spending too much on fuel. So he wants to get many of the truck trailers onto rail where the fuel economy is higher. If his objective on this idea is that this traffic can be converted to rail with no sacrifice in service and speed, then he is on the same page with several other deep thinkers to which I have posted links to in several recent threads about the national sustainable transportation system vision for the U.S. The only problem is that this vision requires a completely new rail system with a new role for both trains and trucks. It requires new track, newly designed trains built for special purposes, new types of truck service, new terminal and sorting systems, electrified railroads, new types of traffic control, and new labor agreements.
No, I don’t assume anything functions perfectly. What I said, as opposed to what you selected for quotation, was that the market would produce a “far better” result than a government edict. And it will.
Nothing is going to produce a “perfect” solution. I studied and researched government regulation of railroads as a grad student and I worked in pricing/marketing for a railroad under both a strictly regulated system and under a “pretty much” free market system. The public is better served by the latter. Been there, done that, went to school on it. Have you?
How about you expaining why you insist that market forces will not produce “an efficient” outcome. They do that on a regular ongoing basis. What do you believe is so special about freight transportation that creates a situation where market forces won’t create efficiency?
Suppose you did something that transferred freight from truck to rail that decreased fuel consumption by trucks by 10%. That would subtract 527 trillion BTU. Converting that freight to rail would add back about 132 billion BTU (see note below). Net change, subtract 395 trillion BTU. Compared to 28,002, that’s a 1.41% improvement. I guess it doesn’t move the needle a lot, but if was an easy move that did not disrupt people’s lives and lifestyles and the general economic health of the nation, you would still not like it?
(Note: The relative efficiency of rail and truck is a subject of intense argument. I am in the thick of it professionally. The usual claim is that rail is 4x as fuel efficient as truck per ton-mile. This comparison is based on an all-in fuel use by rail, b
Markets are sensitive only to benefits or costs that can be translated into willingness to pay on the part of buyers, or into costs incurred by sellers. An economic choice or action by one economic actor that affects the welfare of others who are not involved in that choice or action is called an externality. In defining these we focus on effects that impinge on third parties through non-market channels. More specifically:
A negative externality (sometimes referred to as an “external cost”) exists when an economic actor produces an economic cost but does not fully pay that cost. A well-known example is the manufacturing firm that dumps pollutants in a river, decreasing water quality downstream.
A positive externality (sometimes referred to as an “external benefit”) exists when an economic actor produces an economic benefit but does not reap the full reward from that benefit. Positive externalities are less well-known, but can be vitally important to individual and societal well-being. Examples include parents who, out of love for their children, raise them to become decent people (rather than violent criminals). In so doing they also create benefits for society at large. Similarly, when one person gets vaccinated against a communicable disease, she not only protects herself, but also others around her, from the disease’s spread. In both cases there are social benefits from individual actions: Well-educated, productive citizens are an asset to the community as well as to their own families; and disease control reduces risks for everyone.
When a market transaction affects the welfare of third parties who are not involved in the transaction, the market behavior of the economic actors will not reflect all the preferences of, or all the costs to, everyone affected. This is because the cost
But I don’t see significant externalities affecting the rail freight market. The vast majority of truck freight movement is short haul and totally unsuited for rail movment. I mean you can’t deliver carpet to a carpet store or to a home by rail. Niether
Markets are sensitive only to benefits or costs that can be translated into willingness to pay on the part of buyers, or into costs incurred by sellers. An economic choice or action by one economic actor that affects the welfare of others who are not involved in that choice or action is called an externality. In defining these we focus on effects that impinge on third parties through non-market channels. More specifically:
A negative externality (sometimes referred to as an “external cost”) exists when an economic actor produces an economic cost but does not fully pay that cost. A well-known example is the manufacturing firm that dumps pollutants in a river, decreasing water quality downstream.
A positive externality (sometimes referred to as an “external benefit”) exists when an economic actor produces an economic benefit but does not reap the full reward from that benefit. Positive externalities are less well-known, but can be vitally important to individual and societal well-being. Examples include parents who, out of love for their children, raise them to become decent people (rather than violent criminals). In so doing they also create benefits for society at large. Similarly, when one person gets vaccinated against a communicable disease, she not only protects herself, but also others around her, from the disease’s spread. In both cases there are social benefits from individual actions: Well-educated, productive citizens are an asset to the community as well as to their own families; and disease control reduces risks for everyone.
When a market transaction affects the welfare of third parties who are not involved in the transaction, the market behavior of the economic actors will not reflect all the preferences of, or all the costs to, everyone affected. This is beca
I dunno…I’m neither in trucking nor in the rail business. I suppose a business in today’s climate might relish that advantage (climate meaning two things…). I know people, though, and I don’t think the benefit has enough salience, not even with the global warming card played. Whatever it turns to to actually be, taking your figure and the OP’s $4B, it isn’t chump change…nor is it especially grand in terms of the GDP.
All I thought that Intermodal would be able to do is to take SOME of the truck traffic off the road. That was probably only going to be some of the long distance ones.[%-)]
I’ve been interested in this solving dilemma for 35 years now - since the first energy crisis in the Fall of 1973 - Winter of 1974, along with a lot of industry professionals, consultants, equipment maunfacturers, academics, government officials, and railfans (if I left anyone out, it was unintentional - please add yourself in [;)] ). The challenge and market is so huge and complex that there’s no easy, quick, simple, or cheap answer or ‘fix’ - if there was, it would’ve been implemented by now. There was at least 1, and possibly several demonstration projects of this kind of thing in the 1970’s - my memory is hazy, but I’m thinking MILW, Rock Island, IC, etc. But a major challenge is getting such an operation to a ‘critical mass’ or ‘functional network’ level with frequent, fast, dependable schedules, close connections, quick and seamless terminal operations, etc.
Which is not at all to say that no one is trying today. Look at Norfolk Southern’s ‘Crescent Corridor’ initiative to take trucks off I-81, and the associated lobbying group, which was mentioned a few times in other threads here around a month ago. They’re having to jump through all kinds of hurdles to get the several states to agree on what to do, and then fund it. And Pacer Intermodal - among others - has several services that are designed to serve such a market, but with only moderate success so far. Look also at CP Rail’s Exxpressway/ Iron Highway service, or the NS RoadRailer operation, both of which are clearly targeted at the over-the-road truck market.
I submit that your statement is untrue, and that there is a great concern and R&D effort in the engine development and transportation industry seeking to find ways to get the highest fuel economy from trucks. Every thinker out there will be handsomely rewarded by the market receptivity to any viable way of increasing fuel economy, so there is enormous incentive. All of the best talent in the world is being applied to solving the problem. It is fallacious to assume that just because a problem has not been solved, nobody is trying to solve it.
Other than your repetitive use of the term, we, you have not been clear about exactly how the objectives you wish for should be accomplished. You speak of mandates, priorities, and requirements. I hear this line of thinking all the time insisting that the greater good can only be served by some central planning government bureaucracy directing the collective public effort.