2 ms·

I know the comment was tongue in cheek, but the area in question (Los Angeles) doesn't have navigable rivers. In fact, the Los Angeles river is better paved (li

by 205guy 6y ago

I know the comment was tongue in cheek, but the area in question (Los Angeles) doesn't have navigable rivers. In fact, the Los Angeles river is better paved (lined with cement for various reasons) than some roads in the area. And as a sibling comment points out, where the US does have good rivers/lakes, notably the Mississippi-Missouri-Ohio network and the Great Lakes, they are used extensively for transport. The only one I can think of that is disused is the Hudson and canals that connect to the Great Lakes. But the same is true for Europe: larger rivers allow larger, more efficient ships and are still used for transport, and the canal system is too narrow and so mostly recreational now.

Someone 6y ago
You can always (sometimes at large cost) dig wider and deeper canals, or make existing ones wider and deeper. https://www.britannica.com/technology/canal-waterway/Major-inland-waterways-of-Europe https://www.britannica.com/technology/canal-waterway/Major-i... has plenty of examples of recently dug or now large canals supporting large ships.
oblio 6y ago
How solid is rail transportation in California?
- toast0 6y ago
  For freight? It's pretty solid. In calendar year 2019, the alameda corridor [1] processed about 4.8 million twenty foot equivilent units (TEU) [2] and the ports of los angeles and long beach processed about 9.3 million [3]. So around about half of the container trips to or from the port are by rail rather than truck. Some of the containers may just get put on trucks at the rail yards at the other end of the corridor to avoid trucking congestion in the port, but I don't think there's a lot of that. (I could be wrong) For passengers? It's pretty iffy outside of commuter rail, Amtrak operates on freight lines, and is deprioritized, and there's a lot of freight volume, so there's a lot of delays for passengers. I don't know the right keywords to find data for the ports of Oakland and Stockton. They probably have a decent rail volume too, but they have more challenging geography to get east than in southern california. [1] the rails between the port of la/long beach and major rail yards exiting los angeles [2] http://www.acta.org/pdf/Monthly_TEUREV_History.pdf http://www.acta.org/pdf/Monthly_TEUREV_History.pdf [3] https://kentico.portoflosangeles.org/getmedia/a43d3038-7713-4ebd-8c6a-dc72195a65f1/2019-facts-figures https://kentico.portoflosangeles.org/getmedia/a43d3038-7713-...

by 205guy 6y ago

Someone 6y ago

You can always (sometimes at large cost) dig wider and deeper canals, or make existing ones wider and deeper. https://www.britannica.com/technology/canal-waterway/Major-inland-waterways-of-Europe https://www.britannica.com/technology/canal-waterway/Major-i... has plenty of examples of recently dug or now large canals supporting large ships.

oblio 6y ago

How solid is rail transportation in California?

toast0 6y ago
For freight? It's pretty solid. In calendar year 2019, the alameda corridor [1] processed about 4.8 million twenty foot equivilent units (TEU) [2] and the ports of los angeles and long beach processed about 9.3 million [3]. So around about half of the container trips to or from the port are by rail rather than truck. Some of the containers may just get put on trucks at the rail yards at the other end of the corridor to avoid trucking congestion in the port, but I don't think there's a lot of that. (I could be wrong) For passengers? It's pretty iffy outside of commuter rail, Amtrak operates on freight lines, and is deprioritized, and there's a lot of freight volume, so there's a lot of delays for passengers. I don't know the right keywords to find data for the ports of Oakland and Stockton. They probably have a decent rail volume too, but they have more challenging geography to get east than in southern california. [1] the rails between the port of la/long beach and major rail yards exiting los angeles [2] http://www.acta.org/pdf/Monthly_TEUREV_History.pdf http://www.acta.org/pdf/Monthly_TEUREV_History.pdf [3] https://kentico.portoflosangeles.org/getmedia/a43d3038-7713-4ebd-8c6a-dc72195a65f1/2019-facts-figures https://kentico.portoflosangeles.org/getmedia/a43d3038-7713-...