Haul It All On The Rails To Decentralised Distrbution Centres.

[gl556tr]

Quoting a participant on the problems with haulage:
"Trucks pay enough based on weight already. Haulage is in a bad state at the moment, with a shortage of drivers, lack of decent parking and facilities, last thing they need is an increase in road tax."
Ease the problems by using boxes standardised for use on road and rail for major distribution. This'd reduce source-to-destination road-wear somewhat and relieve some pressure for lorry-drivers. More railsx2 would necessarily engender such a means of bulk transport.

[bobbinwales]

Dounds nice in theory but can you give an example of something that's taken a lot by road that could ve transferred to rail.
Can't see how good's from our warehouses for example could get to are stores by rail.

[davebro]

More for long distance I guess - if something is travelling 200 or 300 miles up the M6 that journey could be done by rail & the container then transferred to road for local distribution.

[bobbinwales]

Only way to find out is tax lorries more for fuel say and subsidise rail more. Sounds good in theory but are there many cases where you could replace road by rail

[gl556tr]

I agree, dave and bob, that rail could carry far more goods. IFF only there were more railway lines!

[Hopkirk]

It's already happening to a certain extent.

Go and see DIRFT for example (Daventry International Rail Freight Terminal)

[gl556tr]

Thank you for your mentioning DIRFT, Hopkirk.

Haulage on HS2, when needs be?!

Also, rail-prices must fall to draw more from their environmentally unfriendly on roads.

[Hopkirk]

I don't think HS2 is suitable for slow lumbering cargo trains. It doesn't start in the right place for one thing.

It is helpful though in increasing capacity in the whole system, freeing up rail space for cargo.

Much of the freight now rumbles out of Felixstowe, and I guess other ports too

[Buenchico]

^^^ As Hopkirk says, one of the key advantages of HS2 is that, by having tracks reserved solely for high-speed passenger trains, it frees up conventional tracks for more freight.

[Buenchico]

Hopkirk also mentions Felixstowe, which is the UK's largest container port (and the second largest in Europe, after Europoort Rotterdam). A lot of work has been carried out to increase the number of containers going into and out of Felixstowe by rail (such as increasing the tunnel clearance at Ipswich, to enable bigger containers to go through it, and laying new track in Ipswich, so that trains from the west no longer have to go into Ipswich Goods Yard and then reverse out). However more investment in the rail infrastructure is still needed, such as dualling the track between Ipswich and Felixstowe (which is currently only a single track line for much of its length).

In the meantime, vast numbers of container lorries continue to thunder along the A14 (which is one of the UK's busiest A-roads), just up the road from me, in order to access Felixstowe Docks.

[Hopkirk]

I used to sometimes go down the A14 to Felixstowe docks.

Now I collect the same items from Daventry rail terminal.