It’s about time that Long Beach is able to provide on-dock container rail handling. Drayage trucks have been a massive source of pollution in the area since the 1990s. Even the Clean Trucks initiative, helpful though it was, can’t keep the particulates and other noxious elements of diesel exhaust down. The proper solution is on-dock rail.
Though this won’t touch the total cost of the project, it’s enough to get it going. It can certainly fund studies and preliminary work.
The time frame isn’t till 2025 for the first trains, though.
The Chinese government and several states have been subsidizing rail service from China to Europe. A phase-out is planned for 2023 now. Subsidies were supposed to end in 2022 but an extension was made for COVID.
There are various claims of inflating the amount of traffic.
Rates from Europe to China, the return trip, have been low, so that empty containers get returned to China. In fact, they are set at less than cost; around $100 per container, while the real cost is around $3000 to move an empty container.
But with container rates sky-high now and so many blank sailings from Asia by container liners, the rail service rates have been very high to Europe. Perhaps a subsidy is no longer needed. We’ll see.
Quality of service will be the main determinant of the success of this route in the long run. And we will see if the various countries on the route can figure out how to cooperate over the long run to get total rail shipment times down.
Heavy-duty truck parking is a big issue everywhere. I’m originally from Philly, and can appreciate both sides of this story.
Truckers need places to park their rigs when they are at home– places that are safe to leave a truck worth upwards of a half-million, and near enough to home that they can get to it easily. Neighborhoods in old cities don’t lend themselves to big rigs parking and maneuvering there. Many Philly neighborhoods have narrow streets, and plenty of overhead wires and other hazards easily hit by a big rig. And residents could well complain about parking space taken up by a heavy-duty truck and trailer.
The problem is not easy to solve. A blueprint for action exists, courtesy of the Federal Highway Administration and Cambridge Systematics, but money for truck parking was left out of the infrastructure bill recently passed by Congress. It probably would not have been used for this kind of parking anyway– more likely for truckstop and major interstate parking, or parking near ports and warehouse clusters.
City governments are not well prepared to deal with this kind of problem, and results will vary across the country.
For years many truckers have lived in small rural communities with lots of space, either on their own place or at a commercial spot. That makes truck parking easier. But truckers should be able to live in a big city and find somewhere to park, though like many big-city residents they may have to pay for it.
John Gallagher, Washington Correspondent Follow on TwitterThursday, December 16, 2021
Supply Chain and Logistics 