4 ms·

Can't do rail for last mile, and installing rail to every small town is mind boggingly expensive and impractical.

ashtonkem 5y ago
We are a very, very long way away from the point where shipping by rail gets hard due to last mile problems. Currently we're shipping tons of stuff cross country in trucks.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- wonderwonder 5y ago
  Think its the opposite, appears its the first mile problem. Its cheaper to just load it onto a truck at the source and drive it across country rather than loading on a truck, drive it to the rail and reload it and then unload it back onto a truck and drive it the last mile.
  - HPsquared 5y ago
    That inconvenience seems like it could be resolved with containerization, only at a smaller scale than the current 40-foot containers. Small standardized containers could be rapidly transferred between truck and train.
    - toast0 5y ago
      20 foot (nominal) containers are standardized and common. On rail, they usually put two on one car; I'm not sure if that's done with the same type car that takes a aingle 40 ft, or if they're different cars.
      - ashtonkem 5y ago
        That unfortunately is under loading the car by quite a bit. Semi truck trailers are limited to 80,000lbs, including the trailer itself. Rail cars are usually rated for much more, the Union Pacific will accept up to 268,000 lbs including the car itself. Loading two tractor containers on a rail car is leaving ~100,000 lbs of cargo capacity on the table, so to speak.
        toast0 5y ago
        You can also double stack on the well cars (subject to height limits of the route); if you really want to hit the car weight limit, four 20foot containers at road limit should be close to the rail limit, depending on how much trailers and well cars weigh.
toast0 5y ago
Retail last mile by rail is impractical, but you can have industrial last mile by rail. If you're in the Bay Area, and ride CalTrain, you can see all sorts of junctions where they used to do last mile by rail to some facilities. Of course, those rails are hard to use now, what with the fences over them, but it's possible to make this work for industry (generally by locating industrial facilities where rail access is easier).
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- HPsquared 5y ago
  Last mile rail would require a massive increase in land usage though, wouldn't it? Especially as rails need to be quite straight.
  - ashtonkem 5y ago
    Not really, in many places we actually still have the (disused and unmaintained) rail for last mile industrial delivery, which used to be the norm. Maybe at one point it would have required land use expansion, but we already paid that cost in the previous century. Overall rail is generally going to be much, much more land efficient than roads. Yes, rail has a limited turning radius that must be accounted for[0], but rail can also deliver a lot more cargo than a road can for less maintenance. The Union Pacific indicates that the maximum weight for a shipment is 268,000 lbs per car. Meanwhile a semi-truck cannot exceed 80,000 lbs pretty much anywhere. A single freight train can pretty easily deliver a couple thousand tons of cargo, something that would take a hundred semi-trucks to deliver. This will almost certainly result in extra lanes and parking facilities for semi-trucks, increasing land use. And then there's the fact that semi-trucks are really, really hard on roads. They do the overwhelming majority of the damage to them, due to their weight. From an infrastructure cost perspective, the best thing you could do is try and shift as much industrial shipments off of roads and onto railways. Obviously last mile will always be an issue, chances are your local target will be stocked via truck, but we could at least connect factories and ports via rail. 0 - Then again, so do highways.

We are a very, very long way away from the point where shipping by rail gets hard due to last mile problems. Currently we're shipping tons of stuff cross country in trucks.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
wonderwonder 5y ago
Think its the opposite, appears its the first mile problem. Its cheaper to just load it onto a truck at the source and drive it across country rather than loading on a truck, drive it to the rail and reload it and then unload it back onto a truck and drive it the last mile.
- HPsquared 5y ago
  That inconvenience seems like it could be resolved with containerization, only at a smaller scale than the current 40-foot containers. Small standardized containers could be rapidly transferred between truck and train.
  - toast0 5y ago
    20 foot (nominal) containers are standardized and common. On rail, they usually put two on one car; I'm not sure if that's done with the same type car that takes a aingle 40 ft, or if they're different cars.
    - ashtonkem 5y ago
      That unfortunately is under loading the car by quite a bit. Semi truck trailers are limited to 80,000lbs, including the trailer itself. Rail cars are usually rated for much more, the Union Pacific will accept up to 268,000 lbs including the car itself. Loading two tractor containers on a rail car is leaving ~100,000 lbs of cargo capacity on the table, so to speak.
      - toast0 5y ago
        You can also double stack on the well cars (subject to height limits of the route); if you really want to hit the car weight limit, four 20foot containers at road limit should be close to the rail limit, depending on how much trailers and well cars weigh.

toast0 5y ago

Retail last mile by rail is impractical, but you can have industrial last mile by rail. If you're in the Bay Area, and ride CalTrain, you can see all sorts of junctions where they used to do last mile by rail to some facilities. Of course, those rails are hard to use now, what with the fences over them, but it's possible to make this work for industry (generally by locating industrial facilities where rail access is easier).

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
HPsquared 5y ago
Last mile rail would require a massive increase in land usage though, wouldn't it? Especially as rails need to be quite straight.
- ashtonkem 5y ago
  Not really, in many places we actually still have the (disused and unmaintained) rail for last mile industrial delivery, which used to be the norm. Maybe at one point it would have required land use expansion, but we already paid that cost in the previous century. Overall rail is generally going to be much, much more land efficient than roads. Yes, rail has a limited turning radius that must be accounted for[0], but rail can also deliver a lot more cargo than a road can for less maintenance. The Union Pacific indicates that the maximum weight for a shipment is 268,000 lbs per car. Meanwhile a semi-truck cannot exceed 80,000 lbs pretty much anywhere. A single freight train can pretty easily deliver a couple thousand tons of cargo, something that would take a hundred semi-trucks to deliver. This will almost certainly result in extra lanes and parking facilities for semi-trucks, increasing land use. And then there's the fact that semi-trucks are really, really hard on roads. They do the overwhelming majority of the damage to them, due to their weight. From an infrastructure cost perspective, the best thing you could do is try and shift as much industrial shipments off of roads and onto railways. Obviously last mile will always be an issue, chances are your local target will be stocked via truck, but we could at least connect factories and ports via rail. 0 - Then again, so do highways.