I’ve been amused with all this work going into autonomous trucking, but I wonder if the money and energy wouldn’t be better spent with serious upgrades to freight rail service, including long haul electrification. Much of what I hear and see with the vision of trucking is that eventually, the trucks will be able to run nose to tail in trains on the highway. For regional delivery this may make sense, but I think that if the freight rail system was seriously upgraded and electrified, large amounts of material could be moved across the country relatively quickly. Not as quickly as with planes, but the environmental cost of jet aircraft is very high. Each rail car can carry at least 4 freight containers of material whereas now, each semi truck can move at most one. In addition, there is no competition for right of way on the rails, no pesky cars making unpredictable maneuvers to try to go faster than the flow.
The Biden proposal is focused on passenger rail as far as I can tell. Is there any mention of electrification expansion in the proposal, or is it sticking with diesel electric locomotives except where the line is electrified already? Electric locomotives should pay back in terms of maintenance costs the same as EVs. Electric busses, trackless trolleys, I think are a good indicator of this. Just removing the Diesel engine and supplying the electricity to the motors from a third rail or catenary overhead has been proven to be reliable. Paul _______________________________________________ Address messages to [email protected] No other addresses in TO and CC fields UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub ARCHIVE: http://www.evdl.org/archive/ LIST INFO: http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org
