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How is it economically efficient to move non-time-sensitive cargo at high speeds? If the goal is to avoid the pollution associated with sea shipping, the natura

How is it economically efficient to move non-time-sensitive cargo at high speeds? If the goal is to avoid the pollution associated with sea shipping, the natural competitor is the existing land-based freight network: trucks and diesel trains. If you want to sanity-check your numbers, that's the number to compare it to. Here's a back-of-the-envelope calculation for moving a 40-foot shipping container over rail from NYC to LA: 3 cents per ton-mile * 30 tons * 2800 miles = ~$2500. I couldn't find a quote for that route by sea, but from NYC to London I got a $1750 quote, and I imagine the costs are comparable. I believe you that container ships are huge polluters. It sounds, though, that it'd be easier to fix this by taxing those externalities, rather than making two arguments simultaneously: that container ships are bad and that we should build a giant high-speed domestic freight rail network. Take the numbers above with a huge grain of salt, but here are my sources for them: 3 cents per ton-mile: http://www.kehoe.org/owen/portfolio/truck_vs_rail.pdf http://www.kehoe.org/owen/portfolio/truck_vs_rail.pdf a 40' container weighs 29kg loaded: http://hamburg-sud.com/hsdg/en/hsdg/servicesproducts/container_1/container_detail_1024.jsp http://hamburg-sud.com/hsdg/en/hsdg/servicesproducts/contain...

robomartin 14y ago
I invite you to play with the numbers yourself. Drop me a line. One Panamax size ship moves 4,400 TEU (container units). Larger ships can do up to 15,000 TEU. If you even tried to move that many containers using conventional trucks or diesel trains you'd probably create more pollution than the ships, not to mention the overloading of the roads and rail. One of the reasons for AHSCS having to be a high-speed system is that you need to bring speed into the equation in order to deal with the sheer magnitude of the cargo moving about. The other reason is that you need to be able to offer something competitive in order for shipping companies to choose to go over land with AHSCS versus through the Canal. The third reason is both economic and geopolitical in nature. By traversing the American continent quickly (~3,000 miles in a day) the system would become competitive for cargo that goes from, say, Shanghai to London/Europe through the Suez Canal. If, again, my numbers are correct, it would be cheaper and less risky to send Europe-bound cargo from Shanghai to the US West Coast for transportation across the continent using AHSCS and then by ship to Europe. You'd be able to get the cargo there in about the same time or faster, at a lower cost and with far less pollution because you'd eliminate days of bunker-C burning transportation from the process. In the process you'd also significantly modify the economics of the petroleum economy in the Arab world and isolate the rest of the world from the perils and political issues surrounding the Suez Canal. As I said in my note. If something like this makes sense from an ecological and business perspective there ramifications go far, far deeper than the simple idea of moving containers by land on an electric high-speed train. It could be a game changer for the next couple of hundred years.

robomartin 14y ago

I invite you to play with the numbers yourself. Drop me a line. One Panamax size ship moves 4,400 TEU (container units). Larger ships can do up to 15,000 TEU. If you even tried to move that many containers using conventional trucks or diesel trains you'd probably create more pollution than the ships, not to mention the overloading of the roads and rail. One of the reasons for AHSCS having to be a high-speed system is that you need to bring speed into the equation in order to deal with the sheer magnitude of the cargo moving about. The other reason is that you need to be able to offer something competitive in order for shipping companies to choose to go over land with AHSCS versus through the Canal. The third reason is both economic and geopolitical in nature. By traversing the American continent quickly (~3,000 miles in a day) the system would become competitive for cargo that goes from, say, Shanghai to London/Europe through the Suez Canal. If, again, my numbers are correct, it would be cheaper and less risky to send Europe-bound cargo from Shanghai to the US West Coast for transportation across the continent using AHSCS and then by ship to Europe. You'd be able to get the cargo there in about the same time or faster, at a lower cost and with far less pollution because you'd eliminate days of bunker-C burning transportation from the process. In the process you'd also significantly modify the economics of the petroleum economy in the Arab world and isolate the rest of the world from the perils and political issues surrounding the Suez Canal. As I said in my note. If something like this makes sense from an ecological and business perspective there ramifications go far, far deeper than the simple idea of moving containers by land on an electric high-speed train. It could be a game changer for the next couple of hundred years.