rail <-> truck container transfer facilities

[Joel N. Weber II]

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.

 

[AlanB]

As someone who has visited the Dedham Corp stop at least 5 or 6 times in the past year, I can assure you that there is no place for such a facility in that area. I'm not even sure that you could fit it within the station's parking lot, and that assumes that it would even be a good idea to close the stop and take over that parking lot.

Regarding the why RR's wouldn't wan to do that, it's simple. Too much switching. RR's want to build 100 car trains in one place and move them 100's of miles in one shot to another place. They don't want 3 dozen little facilities each building it's own trains going to dozens of other little places.

And the RR's don't care about trucker salaries or even factor that into their decisions.

 

[Joel N. Weber II]

As someone who has visited the Dedham Corp stop at least 5 or 6 times in the past year, I can assure you that there is no place for such a facility in that area. I'm not even sure that you could fit it within the station's parking lot, and that assumes that it would even be a good idea to close the stop and take over that parking lot.

You could consider building a parking garage if a small container facility capable of handling maybe a hundred containers a day could fit into 2/3 of the parking lot.

Regarding the why RR's wouldn't wan to do that, it's simple. Too much switching. RR's want to build 100 car trains in one place and move them 100's of miles in one shot to another place. They don't want 3 dozen little facilities each building it's own trains going to dozens of other little places.

Then why is CSX willing to switch a couple of boxcars to a lumberyard (as clearly is the case, given what we know about the accident where 150 MBTA Commuter Rail passengers were injured within the last few years)?

I think part of the key to making this work would be to have a large rail yard on the edge of a metro area for sorting between long distance trains and the trains to the various local container facilities.

And the RR's don't care about trucker salaries or even factor that into their decisions.

But shippers might. Unless the railroads have backed themselves into a corner with a billing structure that doesn't let them directly recover the costs that would come from an extra switching step.

 

[AlanB]

As someone who has visited the Dedham Corp stop at least 5 or 6 times in the past year, I can assure you that there is no place for such a facility in that area. I'm not even sure that you could fit it within the station's parking lot, and that assumes that it would even be a good idea to close the stop and take over that parking lot.

You could consider building a parking garage if a small container facility capable of handling maybe a hundred containers a day could fit into 2/3 of the parking lot.

I'm not sure that you could fit more than 25 trucks in that parking lot, and that doesn't leave room for tracks, unloading machinery, and a parking garage. You certainly could not fit 50 railcars into that parking lot, which would mean multiple freight trains interferring with the MBTA schedules, not to mention upping the costs by running multiple trains.

Regarding the why RR's wouldn't wan to do that, it's simple. Too much switching. RR's want to build 100 car trains in one place and move them 100's of miles in one shot to another place. They don't want 3 dozen little facilities each building it's own trains going to dozens of other little places.

Then why is CSX willing to switch a couple of boxcars to a lumberyard (as clearly is the case, given what we know about the accident where 150 MBTA Commuter Rail passengers were injured within the last few years)?

Because lumber isn't intermodal.

I think part of the key to making this work would be to have a large rail yard on the edge of a metro area for sorting between long distance trains and the trains to the various local container facilities.

Now you're talking about having multiple facilities with associated costs, including 20 or 30 management teams, as well as property taxes and the costs of building those facilities. It doesn't pay. The trucks are cheaper at that point.

And the RR's don't care about trucker salaries or even factor that into their decisions.

But shippers might. Unless the railroads have backed themselves into a corner with a billing structure that doesn't let them directly recover the costs that would come from an extra switching step.

I suspect that most contracts would provide the flexibility to allow for that extra switching. The question is, would the shippers want to pay those extra costs, or just maintain the status quo.

 

[Joel N. Weber II]

I'm not sure that you could fit more than 25 trucks in that parking lot, and that doesn't leave room for tracks, unloading machinery, and a parking garage. You certainly could not fit 50 railcars into that parking lot, which would mean multiple freight trains interferring with the MBTA schedules, not to mention upping the costs by running multiple trains.

I don't think the railcars need to be in the parking lot if the passenger platforms were rearranged and a freight siding added in the railroad ROW on the parking lot side of the tracks, with the middle of the length of the siding lined up with one of the end rows of the parking lot. I'm envisioning a mode of operation where the train is unloaded reasonably quickly into the parking lot, perhaps with one of the 6 ''aisles'' perpendicular to the tracks and the parking spaces on both sides of it converted to container storage, along with some of the green area next to it, the containers sit in the parking lot, potentially for a few hours, with no wheels, and at some point a truck arrives and spends a few minutes getting loaded or unloaded and then drives off.

It looks to me like the rows are at least 30 spaces long. If a container is about the same width as an automobile and they were stacked three high, that would provide space for at least 90 containers of the length of two parking spaces plus the aisle between those spaces. Though I'm not sure that would provide quite enough space to get a truck in there for a crane to load it.

Now you're talking about having multiple facilities with associated costs, including 20 or 30 management teams, as well as property taxes and the costs of building those facilities. It doesn't pay. The trucks are cheaper at that point.

What does each facility require other than a crane operator? It seems like having a management team to oversee the operation of one container crane would be overkill.

We ought to have a policy that transportation infrastructure such as this is exempt from property taxes, given that most non-rail transportation infrastructure is exempt from property taxes anyway. It's penny wise and pound foolish to tell shippers that they have to indirectly pay extra property taxes if they want to cut down on fuel consumption.

I suspect that most contracts would provide the flexibility to allow for that extra switching. The question is, would the shippers want to pay those extra costs, or just maintain the status quo.

The real question is, are there benefits to society (related to polution, trade balance, road congestion, and wear on transportation infrastructure) that would justify creating an environment where shippers would have a financial incentive to minimize the miles their cargo spends on the roads.

 

[Long Train Runnin']

As someone who has never been on an MBTA commuter train and even the subway in 7 or 8 years I really wouldn't know but is Boston dying for Inter-Model transportation hubs?

Is current volume to much for what ever is there now?

Or is this just an idea being tossed around?

 

[Joel N. Weber II]

There's relatively little rail freight in Massachusetts, I've seen claimed. This may be because the state bought the tracks inside 128 and focused on running passenger service on them.

And we're only about 90-95% of the way to reaching full double stack compatibility with bridge heights (on the assumption that we'll never want to electrify any track that will ever see double stack cargo, anyway).

I think I have seen a proposal to build a highway from the Readville yards to Route 128 to facilitate intermodal activities. It's striking me that a better approach would be to build more such facilities, except each one smaller, closer to the freight's point of origin/destination.