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Blecher_onthe_Hudson t1_ivhpjqb wrote

Reply to comment by HappyArtichoke7729 in Turnpike Authority Forgot to Mention 10X Cheaper Option to Repair Turnpike Extension Bridge by jimmybot

Long haul freight does not respond to induced demand the way commuters do. It's pure economics. We subsidized roads and fuel, creating competitive advantages for trucks over rail while letting them offload their externalities like pollution and traffic. Rail lines had to build and maintain their entire system themselves, what's not to like having the taxpayers do it for them!

Like most of the problems we face, carbon taxes would go a long way towards solving this. Unfortunately this country's leadership is likely heading in the exact opposite direction starting tomorrow.

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pixel_of_moral_decay t1_iviahsx wrote

It's more that people expect door to door delivery and for cheap.

The US still moves an insane amount of stuff by rail.

But nobody collects their purchases personally by a rail depot anymore and carry's them home. Or do all their shopping within carrying distance of a train station. That is at one point how commerce in the US was done. Everyone expects a truck to take it to their house, or at least bring it to stores in their freight rail free neighborhood.

There's a pretty compelling argument for banning free shipping, and perhaps minimum shipping fees. Small businesses have been arguing it for years. At the very least it would help smaller businesses. But it would encourage combined shipping and create more efficiencies in the system.

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Blecher_onthe_Hudson t1_ivicaym wrote

You're off the scent. We are talking long haul container shipping, not local deliveries. I said 25%, u/trafficSNAFU said 25-35%, but its still by far a minority of LONG HAUL shipping. Retail shipping is probably a tiny fraction of ALL cargo traveling the country.

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TrafficSNAFU t1_ivkswrb wrote

The problem is that railroads post 1960's struggled to compete with trucks in the less-than-carload freight arena. If you're a low volume shipper, you won't find any coast savings going to the effort of putting your container onto a train, now if you had multiple containers reliably going between the same origin and destination than it starts to make sense. The same basic logic applies to freight traffic shipped in rail cars (box cars, hoppers, tank cars, etc). To borrow from another railroad forum "Anything not going by truck already with the advent of cheap trucking, and still going through some sort of railroad freight house, containerization took care of. There was no reason to put it on a truck, then offload that at a freight house, load that onto a car, offload that at destination, load that back into a trailer, then deliver -- when you could just drop the trailer onto a train."

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HappyArtichoke7729 t1_ivichvq wrote

You've just described how they do respond to induced demand.

Build nice roads and subsidize them, and they will start using them despite not needing them before, then they will become more reliant on them. Which is induced demand.

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