5 ms·

I would love to see an in depth study of Switzerland's freight rail system. Apparently it works well for quick movements of small amounts of freight (single con

I would love to see an in depth study of Switzerland's freight rail system. Apparently it works well for quick movements of small amounts of freight (single container). From what I can tell, the much lauded US freight rail system only works for slow (30 mph or less average speed over distance) high latency shipments in massive quantities (coal, and raw minerals). There are frequently delays, which makes US freight rail noncompetitive with trucking. Open to suggestions if anyone knows where I can read a good explanation of the Swiss practices that enable their system to be low latency.

p_l 3y ago
Important pay off it is that us railroads AFAIK have optimized for the high latency and humongous trains whereas in many other places there are constraints that prevent such strategies.
- panick21_ 3y ago
  US rail roads just exploit old ifrastructure and contunually break it down further while cutting everything out that isnt perfect. They also externalize lots of cost on society with constant derailing and constant blocking of passenger rail. Their insistance on only high margin delivery, directly leads to simply more trucks on the road. They cut out things that are profitble but not profitable enougth. Their profit could literally pay for a full scale electrification program. Given how perfect the US is for railroading and how there is barley any passenger rail, the US stats in context are not impressive. Just looking at tye Soviet Union in comparison.
bobthepanda 3y ago
Part of it is large, methodical investment. Switzerland explicitly pays for rail improvements using taxes on heavy goods vehicles, and a referendum committed a reduction in Alps heavy goods traffic into the Swiss constitution. https://www.euki.de/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/20180827_CH_Modal-shift_Study.pdf https://www.euki.de/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/20180827_CH_M...
cpgxiii 3y ago
The Swiss reap the benefits of consistent investment in their rail infrastructure. - Switzerland is very small, yet with massive elevation changes. Conventional trains can only handle gentle inclines (while the Swiss have lots of unconventional mountain railways, those aren't carry a significant volume of freight) compared to roads. Railroads also predate cars and trucks. Together, that means that railroads got better routes first, using very expensive tunnels out of necessity. That means shorter routes that allow higher speeds (no twisty mountain roads). - Swiss railways rely on their impressive timeliness and efficiency to achieve very high utilization of limited resources (e.g. limited parallel tracks in tunnels and other constrained areas). That effectively means freight trains must travel at higher speeds and be much shorter than trains in the US. - More recent investments in infrastructure have gone into longer, deeper, more direct "base" tunnels that replace earlier tunnels with more direct routes. Given the choice between auto tunnels and railroad tunnels, it is much cheaper and easier to build rail tunnels (e.g. handling electric trains require much less ventilation than diesel trucks), and the utilization can be higher (e.g. trains are centrally maintained, controlled by trained operators with good automatic safety systems, where traffic can end up depending on the worst driver on the road). Together, that means rail journeys have continued to get shorter (sometimes by hours) while the roads stay much the same.
- panick21_ 3y ago
  The US has smartly standardized on nuckle coupler while Europe stupidly continually used manual coupling. Thankfully this might be finally changeing. Because its now 100 years later we can jump ahead in technology. Having cargo cars that automatically couple, but not just physical, also hydrolog, electric and data, plus the ability to digitally decouple. Swiss Cargo already does this in production. Making it a Europea wide standard is in progress. https://www.dac4.eu/ https://www.dac4.eu/ This is something we really need to interduce to continue to push electric rail transport.
  - cpgxiii 3y ago
    The difference in couplers between the US and Europe is a fascinating bit of history. The US mandated automatic couplers in 1893, taking effect in 1900, since the existing manual couplers were a major cause of industrial accidents. Even today, most European freight rail depends on absolutely ancient manual couplers. A major secondary benefit of the AAR-style automatic coupler is a much higher strength, allowing for much longer and heavier trains than are possible with the manual connectors. Historically, the few European trains using automatic couplers were exceptionally large/heavy, like Swedish iron ore trains between Kiruna and Narvik.

p_l 3y ago

Important pay off it is that us railroads AFAIK have optimized for the high latency and humongous trains whereas in many other places there are constraints that prevent such strategies.

panick21_ 3y ago
US rail roads just exploit old ifrastructure and contunually break it down further while cutting everything out that isnt perfect. They also externalize lots of cost on society with constant derailing and constant blocking of passenger rail. Their insistance on only high margin delivery, directly leads to simply more trucks on the road. They cut out things that are profitble but not profitable enougth. Their profit could literally pay for a full scale electrification program. Given how perfect the US is for railroading and how there is barley any passenger rail, the US stats in context are not impressive. Just looking at tye Soviet Union in comparison.

bobthepanda 3y ago

Part of it is large, methodical investment. Switzerland explicitly pays for rail improvements using taxes on heavy goods vehicles, and a referendum committed a reduction in Alps heavy goods traffic into the Swiss constitution. https://www.euki.de/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/20180827_CH_Modal-shift_Study.pdf https://www.euki.de/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/20180827_CH_M...

cpgxiii 3y ago

The Swiss reap the benefits of consistent investment in their rail infrastructure. - Switzerland is very small, yet with massive elevation changes. Conventional trains can only handle gentle inclines (while the Swiss have lots of unconventional mountain railways, those aren't carry a significant volume of freight) compared to roads. Railroads also predate cars and trucks. Together, that means that railroads got better routes first, using very expensive tunnels out of necessity. That means shorter routes that allow higher speeds (no twisty mountain roads). - Swiss railways rely on their impressive timeliness and efficiency to achieve very high utilization of limited resources (e.g. limited parallel tracks in tunnels and other constrained areas). That effectively means freight trains must travel at higher speeds and be much shorter than trains in the US. - More recent investments in infrastructure have gone into longer, deeper, more direct "base" tunnels that replace earlier tunnels with more direct routes. Given the choice between auto tunnels and railroad tunnels, it is much cheaper and easier to build rail tunnels (e.g. handling electric trains require much less ventilation than diesel trucks), and the utilization can be higher (e.g. trains are centrally maintained, controlled by trained operators with good automatic safety systems, where traffic can end up depending on the worst driver on the road). Together, that means rail journeys have continued to get shorter (sometimes by hours) while the roads stay much the same.

panick21_ 3y ago
The US has smartly standardized on nuckle coupler while Europe stupidly continually used manual coupling. Thankfully this might be finally changeing. Because its now 100 years later we can jump ahead in technology. Having cargo cars that automatically couple, but not just physical, also hydrolog, electric and data, plus the ability to digitally decouple. Swiss Cargo already does this in production. Making it a Europea wide standard is in progress. https://www.dac4.eu/ https://www.dac4.eu/ This is something we really need to interduce to continue to push electric rail transport.
- cpgxiii 3y ago
  The difference in couplers between the US and Europe is a fascinating bit of history. The US mandated automatic couplers in 1893, taking effect in 1900, since the existing manual couplers were a major cause of industrial accidents. Even today, most European freight rail depends on absolutely ancient manual couplers. A major secondary benefit of the AAR-style automatic coupler is a much higher strength, allowing for much longer and heavier trains than are possible with the manual connectors. Historically, the few European trains using automatic couplers were exceptionally large/heavy, like Swedish iron ore trains between Kiruna and Narvik.