Video: Taking the trucks from the highways to the railways to save CO2
The fact that freight railway transport is very low in Europe fills the continent roads with millions of trucks every day. Some governments have addressed this problem with special regulations, but when even the truck sector is making proposals to reduce the impact of freight transport, there's room for improvement.
Such is the case of this video (which is in French), extracted from a news report from the morning news at France 2. It shows the opening of a railway connecting between Perpignan (in the south of France, about 20 miles from the Spanish border) and Bettembourg. The route is not, however, incidental. Just to mention one product, thousands of tons of fresh produce are transported across France from Spain to Central and Northern Europe on trucks every year. The lack of a railway alternative is a direct consequence of the different track gauge between the Iberian Peninsula and the rest of the continent, but a similar process happens with Italian products where there's no gauge change.
The video shows that the system improves time by 5 hours, costs 10 percent less for the truck companies and saves 80 percent of CO2. It also shows that the only existing route ran through the Alps between France and Italy, and that new routes are planned to cover the other big route from Spain to Europe near the Atlantic coast, as well as Italy to Belgium. A mandatory equivalent system exists in Switzerland if a truck wants to cross the country. There are also maritime routes between Spain and Italy and Italy and Greece created to achieve similar results.
However, I'm not sure if most truckers like to have to adapt to a schedule of if they will consider that it's economically profitable, despite what the video claims. Switzerland's system (which is very expensive) resulted in more traffic diverted via Luxembourg and Italy, for instance, and the ferry routes haven't captured the portion of the freight transport they expected.
The Ferroutage is a word combination from Fer (iron as in Chemins de Fer, railway) and Route
[Source: TéléMatin on France 2 thanks to Henry]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
rgseidl 4:46PM (9/15/2007)
Austria operates a similar system to alleviate traffic across the alps. Hauliers do like the system, as it allows their drivers to satisfy the mandatory rest periods yet still keeps the freight moving. However, time is lost due to truck loading and unloading.
The biggest obstacle to increasing so-called intermodal rail freight for bulk goods and containers isn't direct transportation cost, it's technical delays at the otherwise non-existent border crossings. Historically, railways were seen as a militarily strategic asset. To deny an invading army use of the local network, the continent is littered with incompatible voltages, frequencies, track gauges and signalling systems.
In particular, only a few of the most modern locomotives are equipped to cope with multiple voltages and frequencies. Similarly, only a few train drivers are already qualified to cross borders. In all other cases, trains must wait at each border for a change of both locomotive and driver.
Another major issue is that until very recently, rail freight was the exclusive province of state-owned monopolies, each maintaining its own R&D, rolling stock production and service organization. Unsurprisingly, this was anything but cost-effective and caused up significant losses. The now-private operators still need to cut costs and raise prices to stop the red ink.
The EU has allocated $8 billion for projects to overcome these obstacles, hoping to reduce demand for diesel and CO2 emissions. However, the road haulage lobby is powerful and resisting attempts to raise transit tolls to levels that reflect the wear and tear - proportional to fourth power of axle load - which they cause on Central Europe's roads. Also, the use of extra-long tractor-trailor combinations was recently limited to certain major roads for traffic safety reasons.
http://www.cer.be/files/McKinseyFINAL-164934A.pdf
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Tim 9:48AM (9/16/2007)
I think it's more important to SAVE LIVES by taking Mexican trucks off USA highways.
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MikeW 4:15PM (9/16/2007)
Damn straight. That truck crash and explosion that killed 34, such a tragedy.
No mexican trucks in the states. Sorry.
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Henry 9:01PM (9/18/2007)
Our bridges and overpasses were not made for so much Truck traffic. A truck causes the equivalent damage of 60000 1ton cars.
http://chicagoboyz.net/archives/4991.html
If we run into a recession who knows how many of us are going to die from falling infrastructures.
As for Mexican drivers its a tradeoff. Either companies will try to save by getting cheaper drivers or cheaper maintenance on their trucks.
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MikeW 3:51PM (9/19/2007)
Recession, think depression. (damn bilderberg group!)
There aren't any one ton cars after the Insight went away beside the Lotus.
But still, the 100psi of truck tires (well the steer axle is usually 100psi, and other axles are still ~80-90psi) really tear up the pavement.
and the HUGE unsprung weight.
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