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I would give another example: the US government subsidizes trucking (especially long distance trucking) to a much greater degree than freight railroads through
by someguydave 9y ago
I would give another example: the US government subsidizes trucking (especially long distance trucking) to a much greater degree than freight railroads through building and maintaining highways. All things being equal the marginal cost of shipping via freight rail should be lower given its higher fuel efficiency.
- ams6110 9y agoTrucks operators pay a lot of road taxes.
- someguydave 9y agohttp://www.gao.gov/new.items/d11134.pdf http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d11134.pdf See the table on page 22. When you add together extra road maintenance, accidents, particulate & NO emissions, congestion and subtract the taxes and fees you end up with a cost to society of $55 per million ton-mile for trucking and $9 for rail.
- patrickg_zill 9y agoOnly low value, commodity items are shipped via rail however.
- jessaustin 9y agoI live pretty close to some train tracks, so I observe trains on a regular basis. There are a fair number of coal cars, which I guess is a "low value commodity", but that portion is dwarfed by the overwhelming majority of rail cars that transport intermodal shipping containers. Is everything in a shipping container a low value commodity? Would it really be faster to transport containers by truck, so they would actually only travel 10 out of every 24 hours? You seem to really misunderstand freight shipping.
- patrickg_zill 9y agoIntermodal = ultimately delivered by truck.
- jessaustin 9y agoThat is typically true but in no way supports your initial [incorrect] statement that only low-value commodities are shipped by train.