6 ms·

Long term thinking, but would more rail capacity help? It does seem like long haul trucking is overrepresented in our logistics chain.

by rch 5y ago

chrisseaton 5y ago
I think the US already has a better than average rail freight system.
- 01100011 5y ago
  It does, but that doesn't mean that the major west coast ports have adequate freight rail service. It seems to me the solution is to have a major rail artery which at least allows freight to be delivered to a distribution center farther inland(Ontario, Palm Springs, or somewhere east). That would free the truckers from dealing with LA freeway traffic. Another option would be a canal up to the Salton Sea. Obviously that's a much more major effort but it has nearly endless economic and ecological benefits.
  - donarb 5y ago
    LA/Long Beach ports already have a dedicated rail corridor specifically for quickly sending rail traffic out of the LA basin and on to the midwest. Part of the problem is that rail yards in Chicago are clogged with trains that can't be unloaded. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alameda_Corridor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alameda_Corridor
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - axiolite 5y ago
    > Another option would be a canal up to the Salton Sea. Obviously that's a much more major effort but it has nearly endless economic and ecological benefits. That would be an obscene undertaking... going a hundred miles THROUGH several mountain ranges. There would be no ecological benefit. Salton sea will still not have an outlet, so after a one-time dilution, the seas will continue to increase in salinity, endlessly. It needs a massive supply of FRESH water to try to dilute the salt down to acceptable levels. Sea water with salt will just worsen the problem, long-term. The economic benefits are marginal. You'll be limited to the number of vessels the canal can handle, the size of the port you can build in the desert, and you very quickly overwhelm the roads in the area. Any malfunction or damage to the canal would be devastating... the unstoppable flooding in the low desert and along the canal zone would be unprecedented.
    - jelliclesfarm 5y ago
      Salton Sea was a big mistake in the past. It has opportunities. I have heard several proposals for Salton Sea canals, but this is interesting. I would like to hear more if the original poster can elaborate.
    - 01100011 5y ago
      No, I'm saying go up from the Sea of Cortez. No mountain ranges that way. That region is an active rift zone and with that combined with sea level rise will likely cause sporadic flooding anyway. El Centro is a dozen or two feet below sea level already. The alternative is, what, a toxic dust bowl with little economic value besides a lithium farm and a geothermal plant?
      - axiolite 5y ago
        > go up from the Sea of Cortez. Okay, so now it's an international construction project, with all the political barriers that brings. And running close to the Colorado river. > The alternative is, what, a toxic dust bowl It's the Salton sea that caused the area to become "toxic". Bringing in more sea water with no solution to ever clean it up will provide just a short-term reprieve to the area, but exacerbate the problem long-term. Your plan is to create a much larger toxic dust bowl.
  - bobthepanda 5y ago
    You mean like this major rail artery from the Port of LA? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alameda_Corridor https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alameda_Corridor
  - otherotherchris 5y ago
    Down to the Salton Sea, it's surface sits 65m below the Gulf of California. You dig a 200m wide canal and massive network of locks, all you've done is build a half trillion dollar shortcut from the Colorado River to the Coachella valley, an area with no infrastructure. Or you could build a 20 mile tunnel from the Port of LA/Long Beach to offload the road network. I even know a local guy with a tunnel boring machine company.
nickff 5y ago
The truckers that work out of ports (drayage truckers) are distinct from long-haul truckers. They're different people with different tractors and different trailers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drayage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drayage
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
TylerE 5y ago
Not really. Rail works great where it exists but there is still a pretty huge last mile problem so it generally gets transhipped onto trucks at some point.
- WalterBright 5y ago
  Long haul trucking is grossly inefficient compared to rail. As for the last mile: 1. train rolls into freight yard 2. crane lifts container off of rail car 3. crane puts container onto last mile truck 4. truck drives last mile
  - WalterBright 5y ago
    It can be even simpler: 1. truck drives onto flat car 2. train goes long haul 3. truck drives off flat car 4. truck drives last mile
    - AnimalMuppet 5y ago
      That ties up the truck for several days while it's being shipped across the country, though. That's a very unproductive use of the truck. It's overall more efficient to do it the way you said the first time.
      - WalterBright 5y ago
        I know that. But it's a way to get started without needing expensive cranes and crane operators. It also works for intermediate low traffic dropoffs of freight. All you need is a platform level with the flatcar.
        PeterisP 5y ago
        > All you need is a platform level with the flatcar. Do you? You can't drive a truck sideways (from the side of a parked train); you can't drive a truck across multiple rail platforms (from the end of a parked train); and you can't efficiently split up the train in individual cars, bring them to a rail-end where they can be driven to/from and reconnect them, that would be much more expensive in terms of machinery (locomotive) and operator use than a crane; train cars can be reshuffled but it adds significant time and effort compared to just lifting a container from a truck onto a train, which is how it's usually done. You would also need specialty (longer) flatcars to fit not only the length of the container but the truck as well.
R0b0t1 5y ago
There was a substack/medium post from a trucker I read that said this is unlikely to get better. The ports get to charge priority and demurrage fees when they're backed up and consequently may not have any reason to clear blockages. The issue is generally with the ports. It would take either another port opening, or logistics companies suing the ports to force them to hire more workers.
- lightrail123 5y ago
  From what I understand, the bottleneck isn't the port, it's that there isn't enough capacity to remove goods from the port at the moment.
  - R0b0t1 5y ago
    There's trucks backed up at the ports, waiting their turn. Part of it is old design and part of it is a lack of need to actually speed things up to still make money as the port authority.

Long term thinking, but would more rail capacity help? It does seem like long haul trucking is overrepresented in our logistics chain.

by rch 5y ago

Long term thinking, but would more rail capacity help? It does seem like long haul trucking is overrepresented in our logistics chain.

chrisseaton 5y ago

I think the US already has a better than average rail freight system.

01100011 5y ago
It does, but that doesn't mean that the major west coast ports have adequate freight rail service. It seems to me the solution is to have a major rail artery which at least allows freight to be delivered to a distribution center farther inland(Ontario, Palm Springs, or somewhere east). That would free the truckers from dealing with LA freeway traffic. Another option would be a canal up to the Salton Sea. Obviously that's a much more major effort but it has nearly endless economic and ecological benefits.
- donarb 5y ago
  LA/Long Beach ports already have a dedicated rail corridor specifically for quickly sending rail traffic out of the LA basin and on to the midwest. Part of the problem is that rail yards in Chicago are clogged with trains that can't be unloaded. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alameda_Corridor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alameda_Corridor
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- axiolite 5y ago
  > Another option would be a canal up to the Salton Sea. Obviously that's a much more major effort but it has nearly endless economic and ecological benefits. That would be an obscene undertaking... going a hundred miles THROUGH several mountain ranges. There would be no ecological benefit. Salton sea will still not have an outlet, so after a one-time dilution, the seas will continue to increase in salinity, endlessly. It needs a massive supply of FRESH water to try to dilute the salt down to acceptable levels. Sea water with salt will just worsen the problem, long-term. The economic benefits are marginal. You'll be limited to the number of vessels the canal can handle, the size of the port you can build in the desert, and you very quickly overwhelm the roads in the area. Any malfunction or damage to the canal would be devastating... the unstoppable flooding in the low desert and along the canal zone would be unprecedented.
  - jelliclesfarm 5y ago
    Salton Sea was a big mistake in the past. It has opportunities. I have heard several proposals for Salton Sea canals, but this is interesting. I would like to hear more if the original poster can elaborate.
  - 01100011 5y ago
    No, I'm saying go up from the Sea of Cortez. No mountain ranges that way. That region is an active rift zone and with that combined with sea level rise will likely cause sporadic flooding anyway. El Centro is a dozen or two feet below sea level already. The alternative is, what, a toxic dust bowl with little economic value besides a lithium farm and a geothermal plant?
    - axiolite 5y ago
      > go up from the Sea of Cortez. Okay, so now it's an international construction project, with all the political barriers that brings. And running close to the Colorado river. > The alternative is, what, a toxic dust bowl It's the Salton sea that caused the area to become "toxic". Bringing in more sea water with no solution to ever clean it up will provide just a short-term reprieve to the area, but exacerbate the problem long-term. Your plan is to create a much larger toxic dust bowl.
- bobthepanda 5y ago
  You mean like this major rail artery from the Port of LA? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alameda_Corridor https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alameda_Corridor
- otherotherchris 5y ago
  Down to the Salton Sea, it's surface sits 65m below the Gulf of California. You dig a 200m wide canal and massive network of locks, all you've done is build a half trillion dollar shortcut from the Colorado River to the Coachella valley, an area with no infrastructure. Or you could build a 20 mile tunnel from the Port of LA/Long Beach to offload the road network. I even know a local guy with a tunnel boring machine company.

nickff 5y ago

The truckers that work out of ports (drayage truckers) are distinct from long-haul truckers. They're different people with different tractors and different trailers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drayage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drayage

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

TylerE 5y ago

Not really. Rail works great where it exists but there is still a pretty huge last mile problem so it generally gets transhipped onto trucks at some point.

WalterBright 5y ago
Long haul trucking is grossly inefficient compared to rail. As for the last mile: 1. train rolls into freight yard 2. crane lifts container off of rail car 3. crane puts container onto last mile truck 4. truck drives last mile
- WalterBright 5y ago
  It can be even simpler: 1. truck drives onto flat car 2. train goes long haul 3. truck drives off flat car 4. truck drives last mile
  - AnimalMuppet 5y ago
    That ties up the truck for several days while it's being shipped across the country, though. That's a very unproductive use of the truck. It's overall more efficient to do it the way you said the first time.
    - WalterBright 5y ago
      I know that. But it's a way to get started without needing expensive cranes and crane operators. It also works for intermediate low traffic dropoffs of freight. All you need is a platform level with the flatcar.
      - PeterisP 5y ago
        > All you need is a platform level with the flatcar. Do you? You can't drive a truck sideways (from the side of a parked train); you can't drive a truck across multiple rail platforms (from the end of a parked train); and you can't efficiently split up the train in individual cars, bring them to a rail-end where they can be driven to/from and reconnect them, that would be much more expensive in terms of machinery (locomotive) and operator use than a crane; train cars can be reshuffled but it adds significant time and effort compared to just lifting a container from a truck onto a train, which is how it's usually done. You would also need specialty (longer) flatcars to fit not only the length of the container but the truck as well.

R0b0t1 5y ago

There was a substack/medium post from a trucker I read that said this is unlikely to get better. The ports get to charge priority and demurrage fees when they're backed up and consequently may not have any reason to clear blockages. The issue is generally with the ports. It would take either another port opening, or logistics companies suing the ports to force them to hire more workers.

lightrail123 5y ago
From what I understand, the bottleneck isn't the port, it's that there isn't enough capacity to remove goods from the port at the moment.
- R0b0t1 5y ago
  There's trucks backed up at the ports, waiting their turn. Part of it is old design and part of it is a lack of need to actually speed things up to still make money as the port authority.