Seems daft to me. If you're going to electrify motorways, then why not just switch to trains (seeing how pretty much all mainlines are electrified in Germany) in the first place and profit from the greater efficiency of trains? Then you'd only need trucks for last-mile deliveries for which the system is not useful at all. Admittedly, I am biased as a train enthusiast, but it seems to me like you'd just end up with trains when thinking this solution through completely. May be a bit of a different case for the UK where little rail infrastructure is sufficiently electrified.
The railways would jam up with all the freight traffic that’s currently moved by all the HGV’s also railways are a bit more weather dependant with regards to land slips and overhead wires coming down in a storm etc. If the overhead lines on a motorway come down the HGV just carries on using its diesel / gas powered engine on another road where as the train would be stuck until they got a diesel to it or repaired the overhead power lines. Simple fact is more freight should be carried on railways where possible but as a sole means of freight transport? Nah too many problems. I think electrifying motorways for HGV’s and buses is a great idea if they can make it work and financially viable with regards to getting it up and running.
Freight moved more than about 50 miles should move by rail. Capacity is easily handled by building more lines on trunk routes, rural routes have more than enough capacity anyway. Electrifying roads just keeps the road hauliers in business when really they should be getting fined for using over polluting vehicles to undertake unnecessary journeys when much more economical and environmentally less damaging methods are available Why use a truck to take non-perishable goods 1000 miles across Europe? I have no idea
So what happens if there is a railway line blockage due to land slips, power lines coming down, or a train crash? Royal Mail used to use passenger trains to convey mail back in the day before they became more of a parcel carrier the reason they stopped using the trains and put it on the road ( Rail to road ) was because too many trains failed to arrive on time due to various rail related problems where as putting it all on trucks proved much more reliable.
There are a lot more route diversion options. Once your stuck on a stretch of railway line your stuck. Nearly all the train services that were going north on the WCML were cancelled on Sunday just gone because of the bad weather. Not a lot of good for time sensitive freight.
The same can be said mostly of road, but the bigger issues in litigious places like the UK will be when diesel trucks are banned from city limits (as they are going to be in London soon enough) or when journeys have to be curtailed. Better to put a system in place that works (even with diverts in place) than to rely on a technology which is just not needed, as in very long distance lorry journeys for non-perishables. I can see the point if it's going to go off... And it still doesn't answer the question of why a 1000 mile journey is necessary when there are other options
I’m not against putting more long distance freight on the railway where possible but as a sole means of freight transport? Never gonna happen for the reasons I’ve given. Road haulage is quite simply more reliable and controllable even though it too can have its own problems. Don’t forget a truck can roll on and roll off it’s cargo literally door to door from and to anywhere in the country no matter how remote. I have a lot of time for railway freight if it relieves pressure on the roads but the simple fact is it will never replace road haulage.
This is a last-mile solution rather than all-encompassing. We won't be seeing catenary on the M6 any time soon, and not will battery-powered trucks be viable for a long time. Rail and shipping still rule for cargo.
Gas powered and sustainable bio fuel trucks are already with us and they are currently well down the road with nitrogen powered trucks. This electrification of motorways for trucks is just one of many solutions. Either way trucks ain’t going away in favour of railways anytime soon.
This is where the "last few miles" principle comes in. Tesco are already doing this with lots of their goods so no reason the same principle can't be done with loads of other things Gas and Bio fuel are NOT environmentally friendly. Both involve burning something local to the machine... Great you can grow trees or crops to replenish the bio mass, but burning shouldn't be an option at all really
Rail is great if you have large quantity of cargo moving from point A -> B (i.e. between big logistic center, or transports hubs like harbors) so you can build a significant portion of a train from this stuff. So the goes directly from A->B. The moment you have just a few containers going for A->B, then few A->C, then few A->D.. and then some permutations of these destinations, all efficiency of trains flies out of the window, because you need to do expensive yard switching with these vagons. Also the delivery times start to drastically increase. This is why heavy freight trains work so well in US. You have huge sparesly populated areas through which you just want to move stuff. You bring all the stuff you want to transfer to point A, at the edge of densly populated, then move it the 1000miles to point B, to an edge of another densly populated area... ideal train scenario. In Europe it is different. So when a container ships docks at i.e. Hamburg, you are able to build a full train to a logistic center in Vienna. But once in Vienna, you might have few containers going to Slovakia, few for Hungary, few for other parts of Austria... Then it is more efficient to put it on trucks that will deliver it directly to the destination, than trying to either schedule series of trains that will move it closer to containers destination, or waiting week or two, unitl you got enough freight for a train.
Efficiency meaning speed of handling, rather than energy efficiency. Energy efficiency would be to have the consists managed so that bulk movements can be undertaken rather than a few going to one port and a few going to another etc etc At the moment there's no management of containers to facilitate this, mainly because shipping companies write those rules
Also energy efficiency, shunting is anything, but energy efficient. Not helping it is the fact that shunter locos are usually the oldest locos in the fleet. Also their maintenance bar is quite low, as they are slow speed, and their operation is usually limited to yard, or few yards in a small area. It is not the shipping companies that dictate the movement of goods. It is the customers. From which port, where, what goods are moved is dictated by what people want to transfer from where to where. Shipping "just" ship the stuff people want moved. It gets even more coplicated when you start to think about that the companies involved. The company responsible for shipping from A->B is not the company operating the boat, or operating the train. Then you start to think about rail infractructure (safety systems, powerline specifications..etc).. So if you would like to ship a train from Spain to Slovakia, you cannot do it with one operator, and you cannot do it with one loco (once again, problem that doesn't exists in US). You need to order services from these companies, and schedule them so there isn't much detail.... And you need to plan for it all in advance.. you need to have pretty good picture about the amount of cargo and when you need it moved.
Not really. Customers may say what they want sent from where to where, but I've never seen a shipping contract that states "My shipment must go via Hamburg" And the rest of your email is the sort of "joined up thinking" that needs to be done to make all this environmental issue start to be resolved. We do need to think about end to end, how to do it effectively and without burning dinosaurs for 80% of the route.
But the problem isn't between major ports, you already have manifest trains going between major ports and other logistic centers, all the time. The problem is trickling down from logistic center to destinations, where the amount of cargo to be moved is no longer sufficient to build significant portion of a train. This is the part the shipping companies cannot control, because they do not control how many goods, at a single time, are destined to one common area. Similary, for small inter-continental transport. Shipping companies do not dictate where the goods are moving. If you have a large good producer, i.e. a car factory, trains get used all the time. Because you know the amount of goods and the destination (distribution centers) in advance so you can book the rail capacity in advance. But if your customer wants to deliver a container from one odd place in europe, to another odd place, on demand, then trains are not well suited for this situation. Yes, you can still use trains... but the customer will in that case most likely go for another company, becsause train delivery could easily take a week or two more and will be more expensive...
This is the major part of the argument... "on demand". On demand, and most efficient when it comes to carbon neutrality (or even better just no carbon) doesn't mix
But it's the customers that expects everything 'on demand' not the shipping companies. Shipping companies would be more than happy to move away from it, as it brings no benefits to them.
I’m not quite old enough to remember trolley buses but these used to be a thing up to the fifties or early sixties. Like these lorries, they were buses with rubber tyres that run on normal roads but used overhead electric power. Maybe the time is right to bring them back.
I think it's a catch 22, if people offer next day customers will want next day. If it's not offered (or made extortionately expensive as a carbon offset measure) then people will think again Same as if Amazon actually paid corporation tax on where they trade they wouldn't offer free delivery etc etc. Billions are lost through convenience and tax loopholes and the only people who really win are those who are currently running passenger flights to the edge of space
People didn't like the wires... Of course the trolley busses had the advantage over trams or railed vehicles in that they could overtake.
That's true, but IMO this has a place as an in-between trains and trucks, long distance trucking is here to stay for a while still, not every route has enough demand to support a rail yard, and even then there are cases when it's more economical to ship using trucks. A lot of railways in europe are at (or near) capacity, and building some wires and sub stations is a lot simpler, cheaper and faster than a big infrastructure project, just see how the new Turin-Lyon high capacity rail link is going... No doubt a more efficient country with less corruption and bureaucracy than Italy can manage those big projects a bit more easily, but still much harder than electrifying motorways.
Manufacturing of land intensive rail yards. Time consuming shunting of rolling stock about to make up a suitable length and viable to run goods train. Time and labour intensive off loading said goods train and re loading to local HGVs to deliver to the final none railway accessible miles. V Roll on and roll off an HGV which runs up a motorway straight to its goods destination. No contest HGV wins every time.
35 diesel HGV engines, 35 HGV drivers, 35 lots of HGV environmental impact 1 train, one driver, 1 lot of environmental impact Does it win though?
It does when it comes to overall financial costs and efficiency which affects a country’s economy. Like it or not the world has moved on from the hey day of the railways, people today expect their goods to be delivered as efficiently and quickly as possible. No way can a train compete with an HGV on those scores. Like I said earlier I do believe rail freight still has a role to play in some cases but only as a support for HGV’s as in taking the pressure of the road system where it allows but If anyone thinks railways are overall more efficient than road haulage they are living in cloud cuckoo land. Also how much railway staff are you going to need to run all these extra freight trains and to load them and off load them onto local HGV’s? Also your still gonna need all those HGV drivers and trucks to deliver and load / unload the goods on and off trucks to their final none railway accessible final mile.
I believe most ports and railheads have their own offloading systems, and many cotnainer lorries have their own LOLER equipment as well... manpower isn't the issue If, as you say, it comes down to individual carriers to individual locations then yes individual vehicles will always be the winners, over the planet's environment and of course filling Amazons' tax free pockets.
People are going to have to start caring about more than speed and convenience if we want to avoid serious issues. Nobody is saying that trains are more 'efficient' in terms of speed than a truck, but that metric is not the only one that matters.
Northeastern United States Boston & Philly the 59,66 & 75 bus routes. Within Train Sim World 2 the closest route to have a Trolleybus feeding one of its stations is RRO being extended to Wuppertal Vohwinkel where the Solingen Trolleybus line 683 ends. It's the 2nd stop after Wuppertal Steinbeck where the Freight & S8 services start towards Hagen Hbf & Gbf. The picture is a Solingen Trolleybus made by Hess Switzerland on the 682 route
You still need all the trucks and drivers to take the freight from the rail head to wherever not to mention by the time the train has off loaded it’s containers and the truck has delivered them to their destinations the containers would have already been delivered to their destinations had they gone straight their on an HGV. It’s a lot of extra time consuming and expensive faff using a train for most freight If I’ve understood you correctly your using the efficiency v the environment argument. and particularly knock Amazon and their business model of free postage and fast delivery. That’s how the modern world runs today. Most firms these days use the just in time delivery model to avoid storing whatever in an expensive to maintain, land intensive warehouse which means they have to stump up lots of money up front to store things they might not need for a while. Just in time saves money which is passed on to the customer which in turn makes things cheaper and affordable. Something we all want at the end of the day. Amazon despite its dodgy tax dodging which I agree they should pay is the way the world wants to shop. People would rather sit at home and click for a rapid delivery also it’s cheaper for the customers because Amazon isn’t paying expensive rent on shopping centre premises etc. What I’m trying to say is the train can’t hope to compete with an HGV in the modern efficiency based world. Time has moved on from the Victorian times when the world was slower, less efficient and the freight train was more viable Yes the environment is important so what to do? You try and improve the most efficient freight transport you currently have which like it or not in todays world is an HGV. That’s why I think this scheme to electrify a truck via overhead cables on a motorway is a brilliant idea if they can make it work and make it cost effective. What you don’t do is go back in time to a less efficient transport system ( In most cases ) which affects efficiency and which will impact on your trade economy. The HGV is here to stay and if they do electrify the motorways we at least have to thank the train for helping to pioneer the idea and proving it works. Edit ….. I have to ask. Do you shop with Amazon or any other online retailer? Edit 2….. I often smile to myself when I quite regularly see railway carriages, diesel locomotives, modern DMU’s and even old steam trains transported along the motorways of the UK on the back of an HGV! Shouldn’t these be transported to wherever by railway?
Neither is running transport on electricity unless your going to entirely convert to nuclear power stations which provide the most efficient, cleanest, and cost effective form of carbon neutral power. Much more than wind power which spoils the look of the country side with their daft windmills. The now closed Chappell Cross Magnox 4 nuclear power station at Annan in SW Scotland was considered a very small nuclear power station but it could apparently provide enough power for the whole of SW Scotland and Cumbria when it was running in it’s hey day. Coal fired power stations for example which are still used extensively burn something and still pollute. Just more locally.
I agree, and in the UK we could easily have tidal or wave power too (alongside the bloody windmills) But anything is better than burning
So your argument against environmental concerns is "This is what we do now, so why change?"? And no I don't shop with Amazon out of principle, mainly down to the way they pay less than a tenth of a percent of their turnover in taxes but say they're investing in the future of my local area (all the while sending people to space for free and Bezos is worth billions) Until they pay their way and start feeding into local economies by taxes I believe every director of those companies should be in court, prison or worse.
Just in time is the cause for many supply chain issues experienced by businesses today (due to covid) - its not a very resilient practice and many businesses are finding this out the hard way. Also, the practice saves the 'land intensive warehouse' by having everything instead stored in massive shipping vessels with a large environmental cost - it isn't free or without it's own issues. While trains may not be the easy fix that we wish it were, there are serious problems with current practices before anything gets loaded on a truck or train, lets not pretend that people wanting more sustainable and less 'quick and instant' methods are asking to go back to Victorian times.
No my view about environment concerns is to try and improve the best thing you currently have until you can invent something better which in the case of freight is currently HGV’s and is why they are inventing things like electrifying the motorways for HGVs along with other ideas like bio fuel etc. That’s the change you need not having an environmental knee jerk reaction by wanting the world to revert to a freight transport method that is outdated for most freight, slower by being more time intensive, and which will make things more expensive for everyone in the long run which would affect your trade economy. So yes this is what we do now ( HGV’s) it’s currently the best method of freight transport we have so let’s CHANGE what we have now and make HGV’s as environmentally friendly as we can.
those things aren't better. you said so yourself. They're still burning fuel for electricity and still putting lorries with diesel engines on the road. Power lines will only ever be on the busiest motorways, lorries drive all over You killed your own argument there...
Everything in life has its own issues in some shape or form, that’s life unless we all actually stop living. All we can do is choose the best overall option. Anyone wanting sustainable but less quick, instant, less efficient, more costly solutions is doing exactly that! wanting to go back in time to something like Victorian times! Maybe we should just all go back to the horse and cart? Hang on! they aren’t exactly good for the environment either are they. The reality is the world has moved on to the 21st century it ain’t gonna go back to 19 or 20th century way of doing things even for environmental reasons.
The reality could be that we stop allowing corporations to rule the world and actually do what's best overall for people. Yes we can all have next day delivery on items where they're already local, but we're talking about global logistics solutions rather than last mile. Trucks, vans etc are great for last mile and electric solutions are coming for those (right now batteries are just too heavy), but if a load has to move more than a certain distance the ONLY reason to move by truck is that it's a door to door solution, ie laziness. We've been corporate and lazy enough since the 1800s so maybe it's time to find another way
No. Read my reply properly. I said you change the best thing we currently have until we can invent something better. Currently the best we have are HGV’s so we do our best to make them as environmentally friendly as we can, what you don’t do is go back to a system that was more beneficial in the last century. Also when power stations do move over to nuclear which they surely must if they really are serious about going totally carbon neutral then we will have a system up and running to benefit from that. There’s no quick fix but improving what we have which is currently the best we have has to be the starting point.
Are you a socialist by any chance? Socialism, the perfect politics just a shame human nature will never allow it to succeed. Capitalism is what we have, it’s what works to a fashion, yes it has many faults but I can’t see the world changing anytime soon unless you want to live under a totalitarian regime. Expect corporations to rule the world of commerce for quite a while yet because that’s the reality.
No... a realist in fact, but the real thing here is that what we have doesn't work for anyone other than the top 1% and there are much better ways of doing things. It's the same as the end of the steam age for me, and I am damn sure there were many back then that said "This is what we do why change?" the why is blatantly obvious
That only changes my response slight. Best in what fashion? Door to door ease of use? HGV wins Environmental benefits, overall cost of moving 1000 lorries worth of freight, overall cost of manpower, cost of maintaining the route...? From what I can see LONG HGV haulage only wins on one point
To be a realist means something WILL happen in reality. Reverting back to solely transporting long distance freight on inefficient trains in todays world ain’t gonna happen for all the reasons I’ve made clear to you and others ( Or so I thought? ) corporations will rule the world of commerce for the foreseeable future that’s capitalism it’s what human nature allows to happen. Changing from steam trains to diesel / electric trains was improving the best freight / passenger transport system solution they had for the time exactly what they are trying to do with this idea of electrifying the motorways for HGV’s and buses today. You say there are much better way of doing things? Leaving out trains which is a total none starter how would you do it then? Boris and Grant Shaps await your reply with interest.
In a word yes. Although trains aren’t the best long haul option in my opinion that’s what this discussion has been about our differences of opinion on that, and I’m asking you out of curiosity what you’d do aside from trains rather than demanding an answer. It was you who said there are better ways of doing things ( plural ) so pray tell what are they? Or is your solution just to put it all back on inefficient compared to HGV’s trains and that’s it!
If you're shipping bulk loads more than about 100 miles (round trip) then I would suggest ANY bulk transport method is more environmentally efficient. Your argument seems to be based commercially. Fine, go down that route and I'm sure as diesel prices climb and climb that will work out well for you. In the meantime any town or city near the coast will struggle to cope with 2m higher tidal surges within a few decades, but I'll be too old to care by then This is half the issue with environmental debates. People are looking at what we have and how we can keep the same things going because they're familiar (and don't cost much to keep familiar) rather than how they SHOULD work even if that costs a bit more money in outlay and would be cheaper over time. Of course the billionaires are happy with the status quo because it lines their pockets Personally I'm hoping MIT crack nuclear fusion in something the size of a dustbin and all of this will go away anyway because it almost carbon free once you've built the damn thing
These electric motorways are actually quite smart.. There is the arguement of "well what if that power is coming from a non-renewable source" - well, that power plant still operates regardless of the trucks. Those trucks could use that power, and that cuts their emissions - especially if they take a charge from it in a battery. Unlike us, Europe uses rail alot for freight, but their lines are often at capacity. So, at the end of the day- this is probably the best alternative, for now. HGVs aren't all too practical in this era anymore, not with their long-haul nature. Only time can tell what will happen, however.
