Momentum Freight's Weblog

A different type of intermodal transport is being proposed for the I-81 corridor, which is quickly becoming a favorite of freight carriers; since it goes through the relatively unpopulated Shenandoah Valley rather than the more populated I-85 and I-95 routes, it has less traffic to contend with. A rolling highway has been proposed for a Harrisburg PA-Knoxville run, giving trucks the option of rolling onto a flatbed rail car, grabbing a seat in a passenger section and let the railroad do the rest.

That’s not as efficient as classic intermodal transport, where just the container is moved by rail and picked up by another tractor or ship at the other end. However, some freight can’t be containerized and some firms might opt to have their driver and trailer come along. Such systems are currently being used in Austria and Switzerland to ease the burden of trucks trying to tackle the Alps on their own.

It’s a nine hour drive between Harrisburg and Knoxville, and if trucking loads came from a bit further away, drivers would have to stop for the night to finish the run; with a rolling highway taking 15 hours to cover that run, a trucker could get his time away from the truck in and be ready to do the rest of the leg. That would cut four hours off the trip if a trucker needed 10 hours of down time to keep HOS-legal.

Such a rolling highway would take some of the strain off of I-81 and take away the need to expand the highway to accommodate extra traffic. The key question is whether such a rolling highway would make economic sense to trucking transport firms and whether it would have to be subsidized by state and local governments in order to make it cost-effective for truckers.

Sources: http://www.thetrucker.com/News/Stories/201…81gridlock.aspx
http://www.railsolution.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_highway

The Canadian government is looking to buy the privately owned Ambassador bridge between Windsor and Detroit; with a steady flow of trucking loads crossing each day, the bridge carries a quarter of the trade between the US and Canada. One of the reasons why Transport Canada (the northern analog to the DOT) is interested in buying the bridge is that the owner of the bridge, Matty Moroun, has been in court trying to slow down an alternative bridge that the Michigan and Canadian governments are working on downriver from the current bridge that would shunt a lot of freight carriers south. The area has a need for more room to cross the border, but the new bridge would cut down on business at the Ambassador, so Moroun is keeping his lawyers busy.

Moroun has supposedly put a $3 billion price tag on the bridge, but with only $60 million in toll revenue, the bridge would be more likely worth half that figure; at a 5% required return, $60 million a year indefinitely would only be worth $1.2 billion before expenses were factored in. Transport Canada was willing to pay closer to half of Moroun’s asking price.

This might be a good place for eminent domain to kick in and have the governments involved force a sale at fair market value. Unlike some of the more controversial uses of eminent domain where cities have forced a sale of property in order to turn it over to developers, this one would be a seemingly legit use of that government power, although one a bit tainted by the collateral benefit of shutting up a pesky adversary.

Source: http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=2538184