The vast majority of trains in the US are diesel-powered, although they're about 4x more efficient than trucks.
It's tempting to imagine they could all run on electricity, but it's probably hard, as many routes go through hundreds of miles of rugged nothingness. This is quite different from rail transport in Europe.
The rail companies are really resistant to electrifying lines. I think because they are focused on cutting costs and spending money would cut into profit. Unfortunately, that means that the government will likely have to pay for it or force them.
They have been looking into battery electric locomotives which don't make any sense except for switching yards. I read recently that there are electric and diesel locomotives which can use overhead power where available and switch to diesel when it isn't. That has the advantage that they can electrify lines incrementally.
Yea and what if a little kid stepped on the track and got electrifried. But at least if it got hit by a lightning it would get some free juice so there's plussed and minused.
Ideally, yes - but the US is lacking in rail infrastructure, so the US *needs* zero-emission, road-based, logistics solutions.
(Disclaimer: Non-expert, but Tesla owner since Q1 2018) I think EV trucks, as a concept is fine, but battery-swapping makes much more sense than using a nonremovable battery-pack that's 5-10x the size of a sedan-sized battery-pack.
> Ideally, yes - but the US is lacking in rail infrastructure, so the US needs zero-emission, road-based, logistics solutions.
Are you aware that the US has the largest rail network of any country in the world, almost the size of the next two (both of whom are geographically larger than the US) combined?
> Are you aware that the US has the largest rail network of any country in the world, almost the size of the next two (both of whom are geographically larger than the US) combined?
Well of course, the US is a big country - but the overall density of rail (both freight and passenger rail) is lacking compared to Europe (and China too, I think?). I live in the Seattle metro area where the major cities (Everett, Seattle, and Tacoma) do have adequate freight rail accessibility, but none of the smaller and medium sized towns and cities elsewhere in the metro have any kind of rail connection to that main west-coast rail corridor, so they're reliant on road trucks to move goods in/out of those larger cities.
...whereas my part of the north-west of the UK (where I try to spend a good chunk of the year, where-possible) has rail connections between practically every small town, even many (most?) hamlets. Even local supermarkets use the rail network: https://www.railfreight.com/railfreight/2022/01/21/tesco-and...
If you measure by mode share, the US railroad industry actually has a higher mode share than most European countries. The main issue with the freight rail industry in the US is that it's over-optimizing for the ultra-long-haul extreme bulk delivery--essentially acting as extensions of ports 1000's of miles inland--and abandoning local freight (where you drop off a car or two once a month or so) in the process. But that's not really caused by lack of rail infrastructure, which was your original complaint.
The ideal would be electrified trains for long distance, and battery semis for local.
The rail companies have not been looking after their infrastructure since they are cutting costs heavily. I read that one reason for Amtrak's poor performance is that freight railroads have single-tracked lines and removed passing sections leading to passenger trains stuck by freight trains.
Most of the US lives east of the Mississippi River, where population density is commensurate with Europe. No one seriously proposes HSR from SF to Boston, but HSR from, say, Chicago to NYC is within the bounds of viability. And it's frankly criminal that we don't have 4h travel times from Boston to DC.
As I've said in the past, the only cities of the 50 largest in the US that are unquestionably out of HSR range are Denver and Salt Lake City, with Memphis, Birmingham, and Oklahoma City on the fringes of viability (from most to least viable). The other 45 cities? Totally viable.
If Amtrak was allowed to ditch its expensive long haul rail lines and focus on reinvesting in Acela we could have those 4h travel times and they would turn a profit at the same time.
This article is about semi trucks. The US already has pretty much the best freight rail infrastructure in the world. Some further expansion is possible. But freight trains can't run everywhere, or handle highly perishable cargo, so the need for semi trucks can't be reduced much.
> the US needs zero-emission, road-based, logistics solutions.
I worked on a SAE HEV Challenge car back in the 1990's.
There is no such thing as a zero-emissions transportation solution.
Let's say you managed to make a solar-powered skateboard navigate existing sidewalks and deliver packages. (Which is not going to happen.) You would still need to build the solar cells and computer boards, which are NOT zero-emissions processes.
If an electric car is zero-emissions when running on battery power, my pickup is zero-emissions if I turn off the engine and coast down hill. Zero-emissions is nonsense.
We can reduce emissions by reducing, reusing, and recycling. The problem is that our EPA overlords hate reusing. If they wanted to reduce emissions, they would not pull old vehicles off the road. Instead they would find low-use situations where they could replace newer vehicles. Instead they destroyed the oldest, most useful trucks in Junker-Clunker.
This reminds me of a coworker / boss at a university I taught at about 10-15 years ago. She had a shiny new Lexus thing that got 15 MPG with a huge engine and an (I think) 8-speed automatic transmission when I had never seen such a thing before. (I know they are common now, but at the time that was odd.) She made fun of my old 1990's Chevy S10 pickup truck that got 25 MPG every time I drove 90 minutes each way to take 1,000 lbs of computer equipment to a recycling center. I only took in for recycling the stuff I could not reuse. Enviromentalism is all about looks. It has nothing to do with reducing emissions.
If anyone believed the claims of the enviromentalists, they would be calling for the executions of the scum who cheat on fake carbon credits. Instead they are buying ocean front properties while selling books about rising sea levels.
Then rebuild the infrastructure. Wikipedia lists 100+ closed rail lines in the US, so the real count must be in thousands. Long haul should never be by road.
