Lib Dems Would Re-Open 'Thousands of Miles' of Railway

[ostlandr]

I think "long distance freight" means something quite different in the UK and Europe rather than the US. From Land's End to John 'o Groats is only 15 hours by lorry- 1,400 km or so. New York City to Los Angeles is 44 hours/4500 km.

One example of what we're up against: From New York City, municipal garbage is being trucked about 450 KM to a landfill in Seneca Falls, NY. At that distance, a driver can make one round-trip per day and stay within his hours of service. Unfortunately, the truck drivers are avoiding the tolled interstate highways in favor of non-tolled highways, and taking the shortest route possible. This puts large, heavy, smelly trucks on two-lane rural highways, running through small towns. (I won't get in to the issues of speeding, overloads and poor maintenance of the trucks.)
Seneca Falls is served by rail, and also by waterway (the Hudson River and the New York State canal system.) The main obstacle to getting this cargo off the highways is NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) opposition to any proposal to build a truck/rail or truck/barge intermodal site to handle garbage. Plus, truck drivers are generally members of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Chauffeurs, Warehousemen, and Helpers of America (AKA the Teamsters union.) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teamsters Serious political clout there.

Over here, we're belatedly coming to the conclusion that getting large, heavy, long-haul trucks off the highways is the cheapest way to take the load off the highway network, both capacity-wise and maintenance-wise. Studies have shown that getting one large truck off the highway creates capacity for 5-10 cars. And the damage done by trucks to the infrastructure far outweighs their return in fuel and ton/mile taxes. The trucks are what pound the roads and bridges to pieces, not the cars. Safety is improved also as conflicts between light and heavy vehicles are reduced.

That's interesting because a clear stated aim of the national highways agency is to concentrate provision on the motorway network (interstate) specifically for 'strategic' (longer distance) freight journeys. Cars are almost incidental. Freight keeps the economy going.

Of course the concept of 'freeing space up for cars' is also pretty alien. Space freed up pretty much only releases latent demand.

As for the plan. Hmm. Good luck trying to reverse 3 decades of dispersed land use patterns.

EXT Spotter, a few years ago, I saw a really, really detailed 12 page suggestion which pretty much said that. Wasn't you was it?

[Kevo00]

Oddly enough, domestic rubbish is taken relatively short distances by rail in the UK - I know that both London and Edinburgh, and possibly other places, use rail to take rubbish en masse out of the city to landfills - the Edinburgh one being not too far away. But I agree the UK situation is very different from the US.

As for the Lib Dems, following Thursday's debate, maybe they can get into government after all (amazing). I hope this isn't one of the 'crazier policies' that the Tories and Labour hope to hone in on, though I suspect that it would get a lot of agreement generally. I just love the fact that the two major parties have been comprehensively caught on the back foot.