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this post was submitted on 27 May 2024
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The why:
Trains pay for their infrastructure, trucks don't pay for the road.
Time. Shipping by rail means lots of sitting and shunting into different trains. Trucks can just go.
First and last mile. Because we have set up industry and commence to work off road, that means to go by rail has a first and last mile that has to be truck anyway. So double/triple handling adding to cost. I wonder if we'll redo some.
Setting up rails to be autonomous single cars powered by overhead electrical lines that can just go from one location to the next could solve a lot of this.
Your first point isn't exactly true for the rails relevant to the article. Outside some mining railways, the track is owned by the Australian federal government, like the roads. I don't know how the usage fees and tax structures compare between the two modes.
With regards to your second point, it depends on the cargo as to whether that matters. A lot of the cargo will also travel by ship for some of its journey, and that will take a lot more time, so the land side journey time doesn't really matter.
Autonomous pod bullshit doesn't help here. One of the major advantages of rail freight is the economies of scale. You load up a big efficient train full of stuff because you have so much stuff heading in one direction.
The article actually has a quote that sums up the why:
The answer is just to invest in rail and incentivise its use.
That's pretty interesting to hear about the government owning the rail. Wasn't aware anyone did that. Depends on the fees for each but for the ones I'm aware of truck fees are negligible.
This article was talking about "across the country", the example being between Melbourne and Sydney.
Autonomous trains are a legitimate idea. Yes it gets a lot of attention from 'innovators' which make it sound like a scam, but it's legit idea. It has a lot of hurdles to get through. It solves some problems like not having to shunt and move individual cars around which can be a real problem. The economy of scale of one long train is a double edge sword, it introduces a lot of arrangement, assembly, moving individual cars around at the start and finish, and time (cost of inventory in transit is very real). Also it allows one crew (people are expensive) for many cars. I don't think there's a fundamental reason we can't do both on the same system. When you get down to it the benefit of rail is that steel on steel has lower rolling resistance, lower wear and tear, and cheaper infrastructure.
Government owned infrastructure is common outside North America.
Autonomous trains work in sealed environments (e.g. a metro tunnel) and make sense when you're running trains every few minutes or less (e.g. a metro system). For freight the ideas are thrown around to scare workers into agreeing to worse terms under the threat of losing their jobs to automation.
Isn't that the norm? Denmark also owns its rails.