|
|
| Re: High speed rail on the NEC-300 kmh service (614571) | |||
 |
|||
| Home > SubChat | |||
|
[ Read Responses | Post a New Response | Return to the Index ] |
|
||
|
Re: High speed rail on the NEC-300 kmh service |
|
|
Posted by WillD on Fri May 9 00:03:39 2008, in response to Re: High speed rail on the NEC-300 kmh service, posted by Broadway Lion on Thu May 8 10:39:55 2008. Using existing interstate ROWs as the backbone, new rail lines *can* be built.In most of the country you'd probably be best off going with a completely new ROW which avoids the developments that inevitably cluster around highways in very rural areas. You're not going to gain a significant number of customers from those towns and it'll only make land acquisition that much more expensive. LION doesn't see the fed doing anything of the sort. Ergo it must come from regional governments and/or private enterprise. What fantasy world are you living in where states can afford this? How exactly do you expect the states to cooperate in starting these sorts of services if the Feds aren't involved? Hell, at the very least the feds should fund HSR as payback for the Bush administration's glut of unfunded mandates they've handed down to the states. Include head-end (UPS, FedEx etc) as strictly containerized shipments such as the airlines already use. Use the EXACT same containers, that way they will be inter modal with air. I'd love to see a HSR line sell space on their trains to the package companies. However, using airboxes is probably not the best idea. A group of air containers in a larger space holds significantly fewer packages than the same area being occupied. UPS uses 45 and 53 foot air container trailers (45' illustrated there), which carry either 4 or 5 air boxes. Those airboxes hold between 200 and 300 packages, so the maximum a 53 foot air trailer will hold with those airboxes is 1500 packages. When I used to load the South Jersey to Jacksonville trailer we put 2200 packages in a 48 foot trailer on occassion and were expected to do around 1800. Thus an airbox fitting the profile of the airplane can result in nearly a 25% reduction in capacity. You'd probably be best off going with a new kind of airbox designed specifically to fit in whatever cargo section of the HSR train you allocate. The train isn't going to have the same sort of profile as an airliner, and loading a standard shipping container on an HST would be impractical. It is interesting to contemplate the possibilities a new HSR would open up for shipping. In California with the completion of CAHSR UPS, DHL, or Fed Ex could offer a same day ground service. You could get a package picked up by 10am, it'd be processed into a container by 11am, delivered to the train station and loaded before noon, it'd arrive at the terminal station by 2:30, be unloaded from the container and loaded into a package car by 3:30 and likely delivered by 4:30pm. In California and Texas UPS could restructure their air networks around these HSR networks and their existing large air hubs at Ontario and Dallas Fort Worth. By going with a same-day-ground approach they could condense operations and offer cheaper next-day air options which wouldn't require going through the expensive smaller airport operations at LAX and SFO. |
|
|
|
