dfwcre8tive Posted June 8, 2012 Share Posted June 8, 2012 Interesting concept: http://www.freightshuttle.com/Freight normally hauled by trucks could one day soon be shipped on an electric-powered, overhead guideway across Texas ... but Texas officials are encouraging a privately-funded business to get the project up and running, perhaps within six years."We think it’s happening at just the right time in our country,” said Stephen Roop, an assistant director at Texas A&M University’s Texas Transportation Institute, and developer of the so-called Freight Shuttle concept. “It can operate in the air space of a highway median.”Read more here: http://blogs.star-te...l#storylink=cpy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheNiche Posted June 8, 2012 Share Posted June 8, 2012 No, this is stupid. Moving freight is not currently expensive. (It is a mere fraction the cost of moving people around efficiently.) When the ordering, manufacture, and delivery of something massive is critical within a one-day margin for error, that only means that a product should really just be manufactured in the same city in which it is being demanded. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pleak Posted June 8, 2012 Share Posted June 8, 2012 Isn't this what we have BNSF and UP for? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
editor Posted June 8, 2012 Share Posted June 8, 2012 No, this is stupid. Moving freight is not currently expensive. (It is a mere fraction the cost of moving people around efficiently.) When the ordering, manufacture, and delivery of something massive is critical within a one-day margin for error, that only means that a product should really just be manufactured in the same city in which it is being demanded.While moving freight isn't terribly expensive, it is full of delays. Some rail bottlenecks can add as much as a week to a cross-country shipment. Near Joliet, Illinois there is a federal/state/local project that's spending TEN BILLION dollars to unclog just one bottleneck. I was talking to a guy at National Train Day and he was telling me about a railroad his company is building in Southern California to help bypass part of the freight congestion there. Theft has become so rampant at Mexican ports that the Chinese are reluctant to ship there. So all the Chinese stuff going to Mexico comes into Long Beach, California and has to be shipped south. So yes, there is a demand for any alternative long-distance transportation method.My thought, though is that hanging the freight line seems far more expensive than just having it on the ground. Which is a train. But then we're back to the freight bottlenecks again. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pleak Posted June 8, 2012 Share Posted June 8, 2012 Putting in new rail lines is darn near impossible due to NIMBY's (same problem as power lines, pipelines, etc) so I guess that is why they are proposing elevated rail on existing transit corridors. That does seem terribly expensive. Wonder what the price differential is vs double-tracking all existing rail lines (since the right-of-ways are already there) in conjuction with separating grade crossings. I know that is really expensive - but it obtains really good results for both the rail and the road that it crosses. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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