In the US, containers have won out. The other schemes - roadrailers, Trailer On Flat Car/piggyback, and some other strange approaches - have pretty much become obsolete. Double-stack container trains have maybe 4x the capacity of hauling an entire truck.
Union Pacific's container trains are heavy, fast, and double-stacked. Once they get clear of the congested area around LA, they pick up speed.[1]
I never imagined for a second that these things were going slow for our benefit (maybe safety, noise etc). I just had in my mind that they were simply incapable (technical reasons such as track or economic reasons like fuel efficiency) of going any faster.
So they could be speeding through the rail crossing instead of crawling at what feels like five miles an hour?
I'd love to see a solution that actually works almost like them but for longer trips: there is zero fun driving 1000km by the road when you need to go somewhere. It could be fun if you have time, but otherwise it's boring and tiring, would much prefer driving at the destination than on the journey.
Such are the practical problems of a "rolling highway" Eurotunnel has had to solve.
And the railroads do not particularly care about optimizing their network, they are content to milk the bulk hauls for as much profit as they can. My friend worked at a startup that tried to pitch fully automated couplers to rail companies. They didn't care, even though it could have cut the dwell time significantly.
But if the improvements can be made on the _cargo_ side, then it's a different story.
I find that hard to believe, anything that could reduce time in transit and switching yard labor would be attractive. The process of assembling a train is far more automated today than it was in the past, so evidence does not support that they are content to just "milk" their current business.
History is littered with complacent businesses that failed to innovate.
Not really. If you take a railroad worker from the 1980-s, they would be able to work, with only minor training.
The dwell time actually _increased_. Rail companies are focusing on hauling bulk goods (coal, construction materials, oil, etc.) rather than trying to compete with trucks for fast delivery.
It's far easier to optimize for throughput than latency, after all. And rail companies are local monopolies, so they're doing whatever brings more money next quarter.
The same could be said about computer programmers.
Trains and trucks serve two different markets. Trains are better for long hauls of bulk goods or containerized cargo where you have a lot of stuff all going from one place (e.g. a port) to another (inland distribution hub).
Trucks are good for "last-mile" local delivery or small loads/single containers going from one place to another.
Not really. Programming has fundamentally changed since the 80-s: version control systems, connectivity, new and more efficient languages, etc. Train yards have not changed a bit. Dispatchers might have computers now, and individual train cars can be tracked in a central DB, but the physical work of coupling/decoupling cars and shuffling them around has not changed AT ALL.
> Trucks are good for "last-mile" local delivery or small loads/single containers going from one place to another.
The US is special, it's geographically HUGE, so trucks end up playing an outsized role in long-distance transport.
Trains are much cheaper and more efficient, so they can potentially help to reduce CO2 pollution _and_ the transportation cost. But train companies are just not interested in that.
Having self-driving trucks transported on the interchangeable flatbeds can potentially change that. Trucks can just drive onto the waiting traincars, ride to the destination location, and then just drive off the flatbeds.
In 2005. Train companies didn't care.
radars can be dual use - as radar and as communication device. 60ghz wifi has 10gbps speeds, line of sight only, so excellent for connecting columns of trucks.
Still, I love seeing the swap bodies rolling up the passes in Austria.
Not to mention more wear out of the highways.
https://ia601208.us.archive.org/32/items/calibre_library_178...
burnt-resistor•8mo ago
bombcar•8mo ago
If you can put a locomotive on a truck, you can put anything.
ProllyInfamous•8mo ago
bombcar•8mo ago