Comment on It took years to come up with a plan to cut road deaths, and just 11 days to kill it
TheHolm@aussie.zone 1 day agoRail is bloody expensive to build and to maintain. Not to mention that you still need trucks to deliver from train station to the destination. Trucks makes much more sense.
Zagorath@aussie.zone 1 day ago
Absolutely untrue. Rail is insanely cheap to maintain, compared to roads. Especially roads taking heavy freight. The amount of damage a car does to the road increases by the 4th power of its weight. Meaning Carey twice the weight, do 16 time the damage to the road.
Plus, they can take much, much higher volumes of cargo. One train can carry as much as 4 road trains and not even be an especially noteworthy freight train. So operation costs are lower.
And they’re safer, since rails are not shared with cars and are a more controlled route.
Yes, upfront costs are higher, but after that it’s literally all wins.
TheHolm@aussie.zone 23 hours ago
Very often you do not need “higher volumes of cargo.” And you still need trucks to get cargo from train to final destination. Rail is dead for a reason.
yistdaj@pawb.social 8 hours ago
The reason road trains exist is to make trucks more efficient than normal trucks by transporting in bulk - instead of carrying the weight of multiple trucks + cargo, it’s only one big truck. More efficient, and therefore cheaper.
Rail is even more efficient than road trains at transporting in bulk from region to region, as they don’t waste energy on friction, and are even better at carrying in bulk. Road trains don’t exist in most countries because they usually have rail to take its place, trucks have their niche in the first and last legs within small regions. After all, moving a truck across regions is less efficient (and therefore more expensive to do).
The only form of transport more efficient than freight trains are cargo ships, which can’t go inland. There’s a reason mining companies often build their own freight railways to transport between mine and port.
Australia is finishing a build of Inland Rail, a rail freight corridor right now. I’d hardly call it dead when we are expanding the rail network. Admittedly the initial build is over budget, but the initial build is always the most expensive part.