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Can RailTrucking alleviate Australia's trucking congestion?

Over the months since I started working on RailTrucking the idea has been growing from an interesting idea to be handed off to a captain of industry to something that is a real need and should be executed properly sooner rather than later.

The idea of taking over 5,000 trucks off the road between Brisbane and Sydney may sound audacious, but it is also critical in so many ways.

  1. Diesel conservation/ carbon conservation. Trucks on rail can safely travel at 135km/p hr instead of 100 on rail that has a co-efficient of friction that is a fraction of road tire friction. Plus rail has a maximum 4% grade compared to 8 or even 10 on some parts of the Pacific highway. Better yet the minimum radius of a turn on rail is 1km. Road turn radius's can be as short as 150 metres!
  2. Driver fatigue. While the drivers do have to hit a dead-mans brake button (a braking system that kicks in if the driver does not respond) the level of concentration compared to driving on the road is far less stressful and far healthier for the driver.
  3. ROI on the cost of rail infrastructure.... just think... 1000km of rail only services 15 trains a day on the busiest day... what a waste.
  4. And best of all... safety. Taking trucks and driver fatigue out of the travel equation just has to be safer...
What do you think?

Comments

  1. More trains. less trucks - yes!

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  2. Quick thoughts from an ex-transport industry exec.

    1. How is this better than using containers? Similar outcome but far higher capital cost.

    2. Most Australian linehaul is about transit times. The logistics of marshalling and de-marshalling a truck train would blow these times out.

    3. The congestion associated with (say) 5000 trucks arriving at a small number of railheads in the space of a few hours would be a serious problem (visit any container terminal for verification!). At the moment trucks start to disperse as soon as the enter the target city.

    4. You could probably achieve many of the same benefits with far less infrastructure costs by putting trucks on the highways in driverless convoys - the technology for this is well advanced.

    5. By 'alleviate trucking congestion' you are presumably referring to linehaul routes. However, trucks on these routes tend to use these routes during off-peak hours when they would otherwise be unused.

    6. There is a role for rail, but while our country remains geographically dispersed it is mostly confined to bulk commodities.

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