7 ms·

Commercial long-haul freight belongs on railroads for both environmental and economic reasons because it is so much more efficient. It doesn't make sense that i

by guelo 10y ago

Commercial long-haul freight belongs on railroads for both environmental and economic reasons because it is so much more efficient. It doesn't make sense that in our glorious free market freight on highways is taxpayer subsidized while freight on rail is mostly private.

blocktuw 10y ago
I agree with you that long-haul freight is best served by rail. However, I would hardly call the railroads unsubsidized. They received free land, cheap loans and government guaranteed business to develop the rail system. The eventual beneficiary of cheap transportation is the consumer. I suppose this should considered a regressive tax.
- dnautics 10y ago
  >They received free land, cheap loans and government guaranteed business to develop the rail system. Amazingly, this is not categorically true: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Northern_Railway_(U.S.) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Northern_Railway_(U.S....
jdoliner 10y ago
I think this is true in a world without self driving cars but I'm not so sure about a world with them. The key thing that roads give you over railways is flexibility. Roads require comparatively less planning and allow goods to be shipped point to point without having to change vehicles. Until now they've come with the huge costs of requiring a person to sit at the wheel and a lot of liability because that person might crash the truck and kill someone. If both of those costs go away I think roads might be better infrastructure than railroads.
- donw 10y ago
  Oddly, this has been on my mind as well. On the one hand, rail is much cheaper per-mile than traditional roads, for both construction and maintenance. Rail is also more efficient in terms of goods hauled per unit of fuel spent, and controlling carbon emissions from rail is massively easier than doing so from individual trucks. However, rail itself is fundamentally... unegalitarian, maybe? Rail lines can only be used by those with the capital to run rolling stock between well-specified endpoints (typically large urban centers), and on specified timetables. The system as it exists in the US right now is less efficient, but opens up a lot of possibilities. For example, I live in Japan and don't own a car right now, which means that I basically can't go backpacking. But if I rent a car, then I can go out to more remote places that are less frequented by the non-hiking masses, and actually enjoy some of the sheer beauty of the Japanese countryside. Self-driving cars and trucks really do seem to bridge the gap between "cheap rail transport" and "private vehicles for everything", but I worry that they will continue just to be a convenience for the well-off (which is what Uber and Lyft currently are, frankly), rather than a means by which to make transportation available to everybody.
  - te_chris 10y ago
    That's why you have publicly owned railroads and operators.
martinshen 10y ago
This is a common misinterpretation of who pays for roads. Effectively roads are paid for by gas tax. Gas used to be a great proxy for how many miles you drive and where you drive those miles. Now, freight and commercial trucks are effectively the biggest contributor to this tax plus they have to pay for weight. Consumers are the ones getting freebies (especially electric, hybrid etc.)
- TulliusCicero 10y ago
  It's a myth that roads are just paid for by gas tax. Roads are also paid for by general funds at the federal, state, and local level.
- guelo 10y ago
  "highway “user fees” pay only about half the cost of building and maintaining the nation’s network of highways" http://www.frontiergroup.org/reports/fg/do-roads-pay-themselves#sthash.3OlYPNX5.dpuf http://www.frontiergroup.org/reports/fg/do-roads-pay-themsel... https://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/media/img/posts/2015/05/road_myth_fig3/846377220.jpg https://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/media/img/posts/2015/05/r... And of course that doesn't take the environmental externalities into account.
  - ch4s3 10y ago
    Closer to 40%
- TeMPOraL 10y ago
  > Now, freight and commercial trucks are effectively the biggest contributor to this tax plus they have to pay for weight. That makes sense, since the road wear increases superlinearly with the vehicle weight - so commercial trucks are also the one generating most road maintenance costs.
- msandford 10y ago
  > Now, freight and commercial trucks are effectively the biggest contributor to this tax plus they have to pay for weight. Consumers are the ones getting freebies (especially electric, hybrid etc.) I couldn't disagree more! Wear on roads is to the fourth power of pressure. And while trucks might have 10x the contact patch your car does, they might weigh 30x as much. So the pressure might be 3x and thus the wear 3 x 3 x 3 x 3 = 81 times as much. If you look at road costs as largely maintenance then cars are subsidizing trucks because one truck could do orders of magnitude more damage, but have to buy orders of magnitude more fuel. Why is that? Because past a certain point fuel consumption is dominated by drag, and thus, frontal area. 8-10 MPG for an 18-wheeler is reasonable. That's not 81 times worse fuel consumption, perhaps only 2x or 3x compared to modern cars. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AASHO_Road_Test https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AASHO_Road_Test
35bge57dtjku 10y ago
So the people who ship via trucks are all going to go out of business because they just can't see how much economically better trains are?
- jessaustin 10y ago
  Why would taxpayer subsidies cause them to go out of business?
  - xixixao 10y ago
    It's not about subsidies, that's just not true. You have to realize that the amount of cargo being hauled by trains is somewhere in low units of percent, say 3% of the total in a land-locked country. The capacity is not there, the costs/efficiency are not there. I would love to see all cargo on the rails, but it has so far not proven economically viable. All around the world.
    - jessaustin 10y ago
      Did you just make up the figure "3%"? It took me literally one google to get the true figures for USA: by ton-mile, 39.5% by rail vs. 28.6% by truck. [0] Of course, this somewhat undercuts thread parent's lament, but after driving a few miles on the interstates I drive most frequently, one might share that point of view. In many locations at many times, the majority of traffic is trucks, and they clearly are more dangerous to automobiles and more damaging to the road. [0] https://www.fra.dot.gov/Page/P0362 https://www.fra.dot.gov/Page/P0362
patrickaljord 10y ago
Just in case you're thinking of France as an example of how public rail should work, you should know that our public rail company SNCF is 50 billions euros in debt (that's 56 billions dollars as of today). We pay a very high price for it in taxes, if you think it's cheap. Think again. It may be cheap for tourists though because they don't see the taxes and bottomless debt behind it. Source: http://www.lefigaro.fr/conjoncture/2016/06/08/20002-20160608ARTFIG00292-dette-financement-comment-l-etat-va-mettre-la-main-a-la-poche-pour-sortir-la-sncf-de-la-crise.php http://www.lefigaro.fr/conjoncture/2016/06/08/20002-20160608...
- rtpg 10y ago
  Do you not think that French rail has generated at least 50 billion for the economy? After Japan, France is the highest user of rail (km per person per year). It's fine for public transportation to not make back the investment if the advantages to the public are high enough (though with the Franc that's easier to deal with than the Euro)
  - patrickaljord 10y ago
    > Do you not think that French rail has generated at least 50 billion for the economy? Sounds like the broken window fallacy argument to me.
    - gakada 10y ago
      You can't apply that to infrastructure spending. Passenger and freight rail improves the overall efficiency of an economy, it's absolutely reasonable to attempt to determine the net benefit from it.
      - patrickaljord 10y ago
        Given that the French economy has been stagnent for the last 15+ years and given that many countries seem to be doing well or even better without such a money wasting machine of a rail system, allow me to think that leaving those 50+ and growing billions euros in the pocket of tax payers would have been nicer and better spent. Besides, I never use trains for anything crucial because they are always on strike, happened to me once for an important meeting, never using it again. Also, because of our communist unions, they also close early at night so it's useless to go visit friends and come back at night, still need to get an Uber.
jordanthoms 10y ago
The US already has the best freight railways in the world [0] and one of the highest rates of rail utilization (44%), with the lowest costs on a PPP basis. The last thing that would help is the government getting involved in them again. 0 - http://www.economist.com/node/16636101 http://www.economist.com/node/16636101
- jessaustin 10y ago
  That's an interesting link, but parent comment clearly favors less government help for trucking, not more for railroads.

by guelo 10y ago

blocktuw 10y ago

I agree with you that long-haul freight is best served by rail. However, I would hardly call the railroads unsubsidized. They received free land, cheap loans and government guaranteed business to develop the rail system. The eventual beneficiary of cheap transportation is the consumer. I suppose this should considered a regressive tax.

dnautics 10y ago
>They received free land, cheap loans and government guaranteed business to develop the rail system. Amazingly, this is not categorically true: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Northern_Railway_(U.S.) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Northern_Railway_(U.S....

jdoliner 10y ago

I think this is true in a world without self driving cars but I'm not so sure about a world with them. The key thing that roads give you over railways is flexibility. Roads require comparatively less planning and allow goods to be shipped point to point without having to change vehicles. Until now they've come with the huge costs of requiring a person to sit at the wheel and a lot of liability because that person might crash the truck and kill someone. If both of those costs go away I think roads might be better infrastructure than railroads.

donw 10y ago
Oddly, this has been on my mind as well. On the one hand, rail is much cheaper per-mile than traditional roads, for both construction and maintenance. Rail is also more efficient in terms of goods hauled per unit of fuel spent, and controlling carbon emissions from rail is massively easier than doing so from individual trucks. However, rail itself is fundamentally... unegalitarian, maybe? Rail lines can only be used by those with the capital to run rolling stock between well-specified endpoints (typically large urban centers), and on specified timetables. The system as it exists in the US right now is less efficient, but opens up a lot of possibilities. For example, I live in Japan and don't own a car right now, which means that I basically can't go backpacking. But if I rent a car, then I can go out to more remote places that are less frequented by the non-hiking masses, and actually enjoy some of the sheer beauty of the Japanese countryside. Self-driving cars and trucks really do seem to bridge the gap between "cheap rail transport" and "private vehicles for everything", but I worry that they will continue just to be a convenience for the well-off (which is what Uber and Lyft currently are, frankly), rather than a means by which to make transportation available to everybody.
- te_chris 10y ago
  That's why you have publicly owned railroads and operators.

martinshen 10y ago

This is a common misinterpretation of who pays for roads. Effectively roads are paid for by gas tax. Gas used to be a great proxy for how many miles you drive and where you drive those miles. Now, freight and commercial trucks are effectively the biggest contributor to this tax plus they have to pay for weight. Consumers are the ones getting freebies (especially electric, hybrid etc.)

TulliusCicero 10y ago
It's a myth that roads are just paid for by gas tax. Roads are also paid for by general funds at the federal, state, and local level.
guelo 10y ago
"highway “user fees” pay only about half the cost of building and maintaining the nation’s network of highways" http://www.frontiergroup.org/reports/fg/do-roads-pay-themselves#sthash.3OlYPNX5.dpuf http://www.frontiergroup.org/reports/fg/do-roads-pay-themsel... https://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/media/img/posts/2015/05/road_myth_fig3/846377220.jpg https://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/media/img/posts/2015/05/r... And of course that doesn't take the environmental externalities into account.
- ch4s3 10y ago
  Closer to 40%
TeMPOraL 10y ago
> Now, freight and commercial trucks are effectively the biggest contributor to this tax plus they have to pay for weight. That makes sense, since the road wear increases superlinearly with the vehicle weight - so commercial trucks are also the one generating most road maintenance costs.
msandford 10y ago
> Now, freight and commercial trucks are effectively the biggest contributor to this tax plus they have to pay for weight. Consumers are the ones getting freebies (especially electric, hybrid etc.) I couldn't disagree more! Wear on roads is to the fourth power of pressure. And while trucks might have 10x the contact patch your car does, they might weigh 30x as much. So the pressure might be 3x and thus the wear 3 x 3 x 3 x 3 = 81 times as much. If you look at road costs as largely maintenance then cars are subsidizing trucks because one truck could do orders of magnitude more damage, but have to buy orders of magnitude more fuel. Why is that? Because past a certain point fuel consumption is dominated by drag, and thus, frontal area. 8-10 MPG for an 18-wheeler is reasonable. That's not 81 times worse fuel consumption, perhaps only 2x or 3x compared to modern cars. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AASHO_Road_Test https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AASHO_Road_Test

35bge57dtjku 10y ago

So the people who ship via trucks are all going to go out of business because they just can't see how much economically better trains are?

jessaustin 10y ago
Why would taxpayer subsidies cause them to go out of business?
- xixixao 10y ago
  It's not about subsidies, that's just not true. You have to realize that the amount of cargo being hauled by trains is somewhere in low units of percent, say 3% of the total in a land-locked country. The capacity is not there, the costs/efficiency are not there. I would love to see all cargo on the rails, but it has so far not proven economically viable. All around the world.
  - jessaustin 10y ago
    Did you just make up the figure "3%"? It took me literally one google to get the true figures for USA: by ton-mile, 39.5% by rail vs. 28.6% by truck. [0] Of course, this somewhat undercuts thread parent's lament, but after driving a few miles on the interstates I drive most frequently, one might share that point of view. In many locations at many times, the majority of traffic is trucks, and they clearly are more dangerous to automobiles and more damaging to the road. [0] https://www.fra.dot.gov/Page/P0362 https://www.fra.dot.gov/Page/P0362

patrickaljord 10y ago

Just in case you're thinking of France as an example of how public rail should work, you should know that our public rail company SNCF is 50 billions euros in debt (that's 56 billions dollars as of today). We pay a very high price for it in taxes, if you think it's cheap. Think again. It may be cheap for tourists though because they don't see the taxes and bottomless debt behind it. Source: http://www.lefigaro.fr/conjoncture/2016/06/08/20002-20160608ARTFIG00292-dette-financement-comment-l-etat-va-mettre-la-main-a-la-poche-pour-sortir-la-sncf-de-la-crise.php http://www.lefigaro.fr/conjoncture/2016/06/08/20002-20160608...

rtpg 10y ago
Do you not think that French rail has generated at least 50 billion for the economy? After Japan, France is the highest user of rail (km per person per year). It's fine for public transportation to not make back the investment if the advantages to the public are high enough (though with the Franc that's easier to deal with than the Euro)
- patrickaljord 10y ago
  > Do you not think that French rail has generated at least 50 billion for the economy? Sounds like the broken window fallacy argument to me.
  - gakada 10y ago
    You can't apply that to infrastructure spending. Passenger and freight rail improves the overall efficiency of an economy, it's absolutely reasonable to attempt to determine the net benefit from it.
    - patrickaljord 10y ago
      Given that the French economy has been stagnent for the last 15+ years and given that many countries seem to be doing well or even better without such a money wasting machine of a rail system, allow me to think that leaving those 50+ and growing billions euros in the pocket of tax payers would have been nicer and better spent. Besides, I never use trains for anything crucial because they are always on strike, happened to me once for an important meeting, never using it again. Also, because of our communist unions, they also close early at night so it's useless to go visit friends and come back at night, still need to get an Uber.

jordanthoms 10y ago

The US already has the best freight railways in the world [0] and one of the highest rates of rail utilization (44%), with the lowest costs on a PPP basis. The last thing that would help is the government getting involved in them again. 0 - http://www.economist.com/node/16636101 http://www.economist.com/node/16636101

jessaustin 10y ago
That's an interesting link, but parent comment clearly favors less government help for trucking, not more for railroads.