An Alternative to the Suez Canal?
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If we include the voluntary shutdown around 6-day war and the yom kippur war[1], we'rd down to 52,000 days, of which 6 were blocked by technical problems, resulting in 3 9's roughly.
Seems like something we'll go back to ignoring soon.
"After Egypt closed the Suez canal at the beginning of the Six-Day War on 5 June 1967, the canal remained closed for precisely eight years, reopening on 5 June 1975." from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suez_Canal#Arab%E2%80%93Israel...
I first heard about it in RealLifeLore's "The 8-Year Long Worst Traffic Jam in History" => https://youtu.be/4DiXRCo7eBs
Trains cannot occupy a whole track from China to Vienna for themselves, right? You need bypasses, stops, segments, etc.
Edit: typo
> radio reliably
The cars are physically connected, why couldn't you run repeaters down its length?
Presumably any issue you'd have with sightline radio on a >2km long train now you'd also have with a ~200 meter train halfway through a ~50 meter tunnel.
> the brake line systems typically used (air actuated)
And have N independent break systems with central control. It should be more not less safe, a complete failure of one system could be backed-up by another.
> can't see the whole train
So run CCTV on the same system you're using for the radio repeaters?
> SMART Union transportation division spokesman John Risch told top rail regulator the Surface Transportation Board (STB) at an October hearing on CSX service problems the average U.S. train is up to 1.5 miles long (2.41 km), but CSX has routinely operated trains two or even three miles long since Harrison took over.
-- https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/national/2017/12/07/47...
Regular freight trains from China to Europe are a real thing by the way, no need to speculate. Service is running flawless as well.
I think the vast majority of railroads have at grade road crossings [exceptions might be high speed rail.] Does anyone know?
Also, I'd say trains could be easier to automate, so having several smaller trains instead of a single huge one wouldn't be an issue, as you wouldn't add the cost of personnel.
Trains can also go to different places easier, so you wouldn't have to move container several times.
That said, train throughput seems straightforward to address: build more rails.
6m shipping container, let's say 7m, so 4 every second.
Largest container ports do 40 million containers per year, that's about 1 per second.
Main problems would be politics and mountains.
By this analogy, no need to limit to one port, either.
But even this analogy doesn't quite hold true, because tracks v. ports are apples v. oranges. The proper comparisons here would be tracks v. navigation routes and ports v. rail depots.
That's quite an assumption. Yeah, that might be a reasonable (if brisk) cruising speed, but the average is probably gonna be a fair bit slower than that, especially when passing through cities or mountains.
> 6m shipping container, let's say 7m, so 4 every second.
Technically 8 (under the above assumption), since containers can double-stack (though not all tunnels offer enough clearance for it).
Still, real-life throughput's usually gonna be a lot lower than this theoretical maximum (by at least an order of magnitude, if not more), namely because trains can't really be packed end-to-end on a track when moving at any useful speed; they ain't exactly able to stop on a dime, so for safety reasons there's gonna be a fair bit of distance between trains.
Further, if you're going to count the time it takes for ports to load/unload containers, then it's only fair to do the same for train depots.
In other words, most countries can cut out dozens of middlemen.
“There can be delays of up to seven days on the route – and no one expected this to happen. We are now running up to 50 trucks a week from China to Europe,”
The truck bit is because they're switching to trucks to avoid the congestion on the train. It's partly due to success, partly due to problems on other modalities (air+container vessel).
Also "China-Europe rail services had been suffering from recent delays caused by military movements at the Kazakh-China border, and there had also been congestion issues at the Poland-Belarus border hub of Malaszewicze."
Though you could also summarize this as growing pains. It's pretty normal and expected to run into issues as usage greatly increases. The article does mention that the cost was subsidized by the Chinese government. Not sure how much economies of scale would apply here (more usage, lower cost, less need to subsidize). 2020 had a crazy jump on the amount of cargo on Chine-Europe by rail.
Strategically, it's an issue that all countries between origin and destination can influence the movement of goods with this method. It's less of a factor with shipping.
I think there are a lack of people working in logistics in these comments. The modality depends on the circumstances. And this is _not_ about throughput vs latency, it's about cost. A container vessel is cheaper because of the reduced friction and the ability to scale. Those cost savings are very beneficial to loads of shipped goods. It's not always beneficial though, in which case another modality is used.
If a plane/train would be the cheapest option it would've been used.
> Trains are low throughput, low latency.
This is too simplistic. You can ship by air/truck/train/barge/vessel. A train is _not_ low latency. It takes a while before the entire train is full (stacked). It's way quicker to drive off with a container on a truck. For a long distance, a train is sometimes a solution. For short distances there is too much of a delay. Train/Barge are quite similar in this.
> That said, train throughput seems straightforward to address: build more rails.
Ugh. How does this address that a track and trains are often quite different across countries? It's a pretty simplistic view. Depending on the need the right solution is chosen. But you cannot just ignore that a big vessel uses way less energy per container than anything else. Thereby it'll be significantly cheaper.
A company can and does use different modalities depending on the need. Meaning, if urgent, by air. But a combination of modalities is easily possible. Meaning, the majority on a big container vessel. Then any unexpected things by train (China->Europe).
I do work in logistics, thanks for asking :)
> And this is _not_ about throughput vs latency, it's about cost.
"Cost" is a tricky subject. Yes, price-wise a container ship is usually cheaper (past a certain distance), but that's only one aspect of cost-to-business. Transit time is another aspect, since it imposes its own costs - both tangible (e.g. spoilage) and intangible (inventory "in limbo" for longer).
EDIT: not to mention externalized costs, like pollution. Right now trains and ships are both pretty bad (and trucks even worse), but - per another comment of mine in this thread - trains (and trucks) can at least be electrified, meaning they could ultimately derive their power from solar/wind/nuclear/geothermal/etc. Ships have fewer options there; the only feasible option of which I'm aware is nuclear, and that doesn't seem to be very common at all.
That said:
> If a plane/train would be the cheapest option it would've been used.
And there are a lot of situations where a train is indeed the cheapest option, or at least cheaper than a ship. And that could be improved further with better economies of scale - i.e. more rails, and more trains on those rails.
> A train is _not_ low latency.
I meant compared to ships. Obviously there are yet-lower-latency modes of freight transportation, including trucks (depending on distance; at longer distances, trains and even ships eventually overtake trucks, but for short distances they're about as good as it gets), but compared to ships, trains are definitely the "low latency" option, both due to better speed and due to loading/unloading times.
> How does this address that a track and trains are often quite different across countries?
We're talking about a situation where a rail connection already exists, which would mean that the issue of different rail standards across countries would already be addressed.
> A company can and does use different modalities depending on the need.
Obviously. Nobody's arguing otherwise.
It's not about throughput or latency. It's about cost. Shipping is _way_ cheaper than anything else. Trains are quicker, but also more expensive. Barge/Train is again cheaper than a truck, but in various cases only a truck is a good option.
> I also think that is true generally today
It's not true in the slightest. If something needs to arrive quicker another modality can be used. What's important is than it is predictable. Meaning, something arrives every week around the same day. Latency can cover up scheduling issues. It's much cheaper and better to control the scheduling issue.
Yes, currently shipping by sea is cheaper, even if it means sending several containers' full of stuff to a place that doesn't need them by the time they arrive. Or worse, sending several containerfulls of stuff somewhere in anticipation of them maybe needing it soon -- because by the time they need it, it's too late to start sending it.
This is of course very wasteful, and the high latency is the source of the waste. But it still comes out ahead in the books.
What I'm saying is that hopefully maybe in the future the parameters of the equation look different, and it's no longer sensible to send huge batches of things just to patch over delivery problems relating to latency.
So effectively what has happened in lean manufacturing and product development flow-based approaches, except on a global scale.
You're again making a lot of assumptions here. What do you mean with "sending several containerfulls of stuff somewhere"? Similarly with "This is of course very wasteful". First you assume that companies often send too much stuff, then use that as a basis that there's waste. You haven't substantiated the first assumption!
> and the high latency is the source of the waste.
Again, this entirely depends on the business (commodity) and circumstances! Further, you take this as a given, while you did _not_ substantiate this at all.
For loads of commodities the time spent on the vessel does _not_ matter. For others it might be a mix. Sometimes it's important that things arrive on a regular basis. Sometimes it's not important.
> So effectively what has happened in lean manufacturing and product development flow-based approaches
Lean manufacturing car companies are happily using container vessel to transport their car parts. I've already mentioned the latency argument is missing the point quite a bit: the scheduling is important. A factory that runs out of parts is way more important than the 2 weeks vs 4-6 weeks. If the 2 weeks cannot be trusted upon it won't work.
Further, substantiate your assumptions. I don't see anything referencing a particular business, the costs associated, etc. Just guesswork.
If they manage to shave a week off the overhead elsewhere (e.g. by throwing money at it), they can switch from flights to rail, and likely achieve the same quality of service at a lower cost.
A tiny fraction is the answer. Shipping back and forth has huge cost implications, including customs tariffs at every country the goods are held at and container/lcl costs (currently up to $20k per FCL!). Businesses aren't generally shipping loads of stuff that they don't need to be moved.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/apr/01/suez-2-ever-gi...
Problems with pre existing rail network can be relevant when using existing old infrastructure, but if comparing to a new canal, the point of comparison should be a new rail connection.
I wonder how far away we are from being able to build rail bridges (or underwater tunnels?) to enable circumnavigation by rail? I'm picturing two loops - one arctic, one antarctic - and tunnels connecting those loops to the Americas (Alaska/Canada and Chile/Argentina), Scandinavia, Siberia, maybe even South Africa and Australia. Seems like something that should be achievable within the next century given the current rate of technological progress.
That's actually quite difficult for this suggestion. The amount of Volts on these lines differ greatly across countries. In this case the intention is to connect multiple countries. In enough countries the tracks aren't electrified. A train which can handle the differences across countries is pretty unique. Tracks can differ in size and lots of trains only handle one electrical system.
See e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_transport_in_Europe#/medi...
I've seen a few "solutions" to dump all containers from Asia in e.g. Spain. This so to "reduce" the backlog. Then have "trains" move the containers to the right place. Aside from loads of other reasons why this wouldn't work, just see how many electrical systems are in use. Aside from just: where are these magical ready to use trains? ;)
Implementing an international standard for rail gauges and electrification voltages/frequencies is still currently much more feasible than electrifying cargo ships (unless nuclear-powered cargo ships become more widespread, which would be great, but that doesn't seem to be happening). Worst case scenario, you start from scratch (which is what we'd have to do here in the US, since electrified freight rail is basically nonexistent here).
Obviously something you'd want to minimize, but seems it would solve the problem of 2 or 3 incompatible systems well enough.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/23/nyregion/nyc-mta-subway-s...
The enduring theme over the last few decades has been infrastructure costs going up. The complete reversal of that required to build a completely new tunnel around the entire planet seems unlikely. That's before you get to the political aspect.
That is almost purely a function of political ill-will for infrastructure, and not any issues regarding construction itself. Actual construction times tend to be pretty short: it takes decades to get the politicians to agree to fund construction, but only a few years to actually build it.
> A lot of US commuter railways are still using electronics installed in the 1930s!!
US commuter railways, you may be shocked to discover, are not at the cutting edge of railway technology. Or railway operations. Of course, the US has a reluctance to admit that it's not the best at something and to actually look at foreign countries for innovations that occurred in the past 100 years that it might have missed out on.
I mean, yes? You seem to be focusing on what's happening today, whereas I was pretty deliberate in my framing of my idea as something "within the next century".
And no, just because people are slow to adopt new technologies doesn't mean those new technologies never were developed. We have the technology today to connect every major city - and probably most minor cities - throughout the Americas or throughout Europe/Asia/Africa with high speed rail, and we probably have the resources, too. Hell, both were arguably true 50 years ago. Our reasons for not doing so are political, not technological.
Less well-known but equally important is loading gauge: the physical envelope through which a freight railroad car must fit. The US (& Canada & Mexico) rely on a wider loading gauge than most of Europe, but have also increasingly standardized on a much taller loading gauge to fit double-stacked container traffic [1]. Europe varies widely, from the tiniest loading gauges in the UK to the roomiest in Sweden (roomier, at least in width, even than the US).
More minor features are the electrification standards (which only matter if you're running electric trains), which side of two track systems you drive on (not necessarily the same as the road network in the country!), the signalling system (especially if the trains have positive train control).
But enough about railroads, how about connecting the world by rail? There are presently 7 major railroad "islands" (ignoring gauge issues) as well as a buttload of ones too small to be worth considering. These are the US/Canada/Mexico system, Eurasia, southern South America, India, Thailand/Malaysia, Australia, and Japan. What does it take to connect these?
Going north from South America, you have to either cross the Amazon rainforest or trace your way up the Andes mountain or coast route. Both of these are technologically possible, but are likely economically prohibitive. The Darien Gap between Colombia and Panama remains a gap largely because there is a conscious political decision not to close it. Heading north through Central America, you again have to build a lot of greenfield track in mountainous jungle terrain, which is technologically feasible but again economically prohibitive. It's not until Mexico that you pick up existing track.
Continuing our proposed circumnavigation, we run out of track in northern British Columbia (or Alberta). So there's more greenfield track needed to reach the railhead of the Alaska Railroad. There's apparently a project started up (again) to make a connection between Alaska and Alberta, but I'm not holding my breath on it actually happening. The Alaska Railroad only barely helps you move towards Russia--it turns south at Fairbanks, and now you need 2500mi (as the crow flies!) of greenfield track to get to the Bering Strait, cross it, and then get to the Russian railhead at Yakutsk. It's not clear how technologically feasible a Bering Strait crossing is; while the water isn't particularly deep, it's a long crossing (>50 mi), and the icing over of the seas presents some structural issues for bridge supports.
India is islanded from Eurasian rail network principally because of political disputes with some of its neighbors and the same mountainous and/or jungle terrain issues with the others. Connecting Japan to Eurasia is pretty easy via Sakhalin (the underwater tunnel would be no more difficult than the Channel Tunnel), although Sakhalin is sufficiently roundabout that it's of questionable utility. More interesting is a Korea/Japanese link that is again of questionable technological feasibility.
Africa's islands are a combination of neighbors hating each others' guts, overall poor infrastructure generally, political instability in several regions, terrain issues (particularly in central Africa), and severe track gauge mismatch issues. There's no technological issues towards connecting everything together, although Madagascar I believe is firmly in the realm of not feasible to construct any sort of crossing to.
Connecting Australia produces an interesting result. The Torres Strait (between Australia and Papua New Guinea) is actually pretty easy to cross--think something like the Florida Overseas Railroad. But actually hooking the Indonesian islands all together is challenging. Sumatra and Java would be pretty easy to link up to Malaysia. But as you head further east along the island chain, you discover nasty deep oceanic trenches that prohibit tunnels and are too far to bridge. Borneo and Sulawesi will forever remain islands, although maybe reach the Philippines from Borneo is possible.
[1] The standard well car can carry 2 containers for a total of 4 TEU--the standard "long" container you see is actually 2 TEU containers, not one.
The largest cargo ships can carry 24k containers at a cheaper rate... With 6 meter for a 20 feet container, that would be a train with 144 km. cargo. I wouldn't want to wait with my car at that intersection...
Emergency cargo is transported with planes.
And they were used/build for a very specific purpose ( mining). These cargo ships were build for the same purpose.
Yes they are, and all it takes is a locomotive or two operated by a couple of engineers to move cargo faster.
That comparison is pointless. It makes no sense to assume that railway must load at least the load carried by one of the world's largest container ships for cargo to be deliverable from point A to B.
Another pointless comparison is the fact that container ships unload their cargo on ports for it to be transported through railway and roadway to their destination, thus it makes no sense to assume that railway should have to transport 24k containers from China to Rotterdam to then reroute it back to other locations. No, it can pretty much work point-to-point with a little shunting throughout the process.
Not to mention that rail has a much lower CO2 output since trains have to push air out of the way, not liquid.
That's not accurate.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_efficiency_in_transport... mentions:
"The specific energy consumption of the trains worldwide amounts to about 150 kJ/pkm (kilojoule per passenger kilometre) and 150 kJ/tkm (kilojoule per tonne kilometre)"
And for a container vessel:
"Assuming a standard 14 tonnes per container (per teu) this yields 74 kJ per tonne-km at a speed of 45 km/h (24 knots)."
This was calculated for a 14.000 TEU container vessel. Nowadays these container vessels are 20.000 TEU easily. Meaning, the energy per TEU is nowadays lower than above quoted figure.
See also e.g. https://www.quora.com/Why-are-large-cargo-ships-much-more-fu...
Nitpicking: the word "boat" is not used for anything big. For small vessels I've seen loads of areas where they need to be electric. So the statement "making renewable energy boats" is inaccurate if you use "boat" instead of "vessel".
The amount of different electrical train systems in Europe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_transport_in_Europe#/medi...
Not everything is as nicely electrified as above map would suggest. There are tracks that aren't electrified while above map would suggest it is.
Still, this could be assumed to be solvable. You need a significant amount of (additional!) trains vs the amount of container vessels. Which means additional track. After all of that is done the cost of transport will be significantly higher. If there was a renewable solution for container vessels then you'd need to replace way less. I'm not too sure about the "much easier" assumption if you take everything into account.
A lot of container shipping companies are state owned (by e.g. China). Some aren't state-owned, though they've received a significant amount of state help in the past. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_freight_ship_companies. France helped CMA CGM various times in the last ~10 years.
So although rail might be the best solution for the environment, I don't see it happening. The cost/price needs to be right, and if the cost is influenced artificially then a business/company might change things in ways that aren't expected, nor good for the environment.
In an ideal world any decision would be taken with the environment in mind. In practice it's quite difficult. Even if you follow this as a country, if you're not big enough other countries might undercut your economy, thereby minimizing the effort of just one country.
Various container shipping companies are ok with stricter regulations. But then they need to be checked and enforced. There's too much potential money to be made to ignore regulations. Note that captains of a vessel can be thrown in jail for various reasons, it's much stricter than financial industry (pay a fine and continue).
From that map it seems that a train can move from China to Austria while using the same train system.
Between Czechia and Germany, all it takes is a trip to a shunting yard to switch locomotives.
(Sorry, czech only) https://logio.cz/infografiky/co-se-stane-den-pote-co-zkolabo...
That's about 1 a second. End to end they would stretch out 600KM - about 1/4 of the distance between German and Kazakhstan.
Basically the Israelis don't have the short-term capital (neither financial nor human) to build it, so the real question is whether the Chinese are interested in initiating the endeavor.
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/suez-canal-ship-eilat-ca...
Looking at the terrain in Israel building a canal from Eliat to anywhere does not look possible, it would be several orders of magnitude more difficult than building the Suez canal was.
While the Negev terrain is uneven, it's also sparsely populated. The land is mostly either nature preserve or reserved for military training. Most of the debate would involve who would be on the hook for the cost of construction, as well as how best to balance the canal route vs. pre-existing nature reserves.
Soviet support could have switched them from a NATO ally to Soviet aligned, and could have potentially fought off a French and British backed invasion as well.
The invasion wouldn't simply be French and British, the US and the entire rest of NATO would 1000% get involved and all means necessary would be used to keep control of the Bosphorus strait.
That was almost the case...
Hah, that's funny id you know history
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindenburg-class_airship
> The Dutch Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis projected in 2015 that the Northern Sea Route may be ice-free by 2030