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And the US has pretty damn good freight rail. You just don't notice it because all those containers get transferred to trucks or unloaded at distributions faci
by throwaway0a5e 5y ago
And the US has pretty damn good freight rail. You just don't notice it because all those containers get transferred to trucks or unloaded at distributions facilities outside the beltways in which most of HN tends to live and does the last ~20-100mi on truck.
- Kye 5y agoMore of HN needs the experience of waiting for a freight train to finish crossing the road. Count containers with a stopwatch and you can get an idea of how many trucks worth of containers a freight train can move vs the adjacent highway. It's still much more time and fuel efficient even slowed down for the crossing.
- superice 5y agoThat’s lovely. But it’s not going to be the 400 TEU that Rhine barges do. Trains in Europe are about 90 TEU, with them being capped by terminal handling capacity and legal maximums. Rail length at terminals in LA seem to be similar to Rotterdam and Antwerp: 600-900m. Let’s assume US freight trains can double their capacity by double stacking their trains. 180 TEU per train is still well under an average barge size. I couldn’t find modal split numbers for LA, but I’m willing to bet their trucking share is above the ~55% Rotterdam achieves (some 10-15% is rail, remaining share is inland barges) Trains are ofcourse still way more efficient than trucks.
- Kye 5y agoThat's a different level of the discussion tree. I was talking about rail appreciation in reply to someone talking about rail appreciation. HN's structure lets people talk about different aspects of the same main topic. It's neat.