Joel N. Weber II
Engineer
I get the impression that the current industry practice in the US is that one facility for transfering intermodal shipping containers between rail and trucks within any given circle with a diameter of 100 miles is generally considered plenty.
I've been wondering if a much greater density of such transfer stations, with each one being much smaller, would do good things for our petroleum consumption and highway congestion.
One of the things I'm wondering about is how small such facilities could be. Is a 500'-1000' long section of land along the tracks, 150'-300' wide, big enough to be useful? I'm thinking if each container is 50'-80' long, that would allow rows of containers 6-20 containers long, and if 100'-200' of that width were used to store containers while waiting for a train or truck to arrive, and there was two feet of empty space between each row of 8' wide containers, that would allow 10-20 rows of containers to be stored. Stack them two or three high, and there's probably enough storage space for a few trainloads of containers. I think a 50'-100' wide paved areas for the trucks to operate in, 500'-1000' long, would probably be plenty of space for them.
I'm wondering if there would be a good place for this type of facility near the Dedham Corporate Center MBTA Commuter Rail stop, for example. US 1 and I-93 are nearby, and there appears to be good access to the highways in place. There appears to be significant amounts of land in that general area that's either undeveloped or parking lot. It does look like there's also some residential use, which might lead to some NIMBYism, though.
Are there operational reasons why the railroads wouldn't want to deal with 20 different rail <-> truck facilities in any given city? I'm sure the wages paid to the rail workers are less with one big facility, but I'd think that would be more than offset with increased wages to be paid to the truck drivers.
I've been wondering if a much greater density of such transfer stations, with each one being much smaller, would do good things for our petroleum consumption and highway congestion.
One of the things I'm wondering about is how small such facilities could be. Is a 500'-1000' long section of land along the tracks, 150'-300' wide, big enough to be useful? I'm thinking if each container is 50'-80' long, that would allow rows of containers 6-20 containers long, and if 100'-200' of that width were used to store containers while waiting for a train or truck to arrive, and there was two feet of empty space between each row of 8' wide containers, that would allow 10-20 rows of containers to be stored. Stack them two or three high, and there's probably enough storage space for a few trainloads of containers. I think a 50'-100' wide paved areas for the trucks to operate in, 500'-1000' long, would probably be plenty of space for them.
I'm wondering if there would be a good place for this type of facility near the Dedham Corporate Center MBTA Commuter Rail stop, for example. US 1 and I-93 are nearby, and there appears to be good access to the highways in place. There appears to be significant amounts of land in that general area that's either undeveloped or parking lot. It does look like there's also some residential use, which might lead to some NIMBYism, though.
Are there operational reasons why the railroads wouldn't want to deal with 20 different rail <-> truck facilities in any given city? I'm sure the wages paid to the rail workers are less with one big facility, but I'd think that would be more than offset with increased wages to be paid to the truck drivers.