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> what if we built say ten parallel railways 10 ft apart and moved cargo ships over the rails?

Interesting concept. Never thought of it before.

The India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC) has a similar issue. Containers will be offloaded in UAE, then travel via rail through Saudi Arabia and Israel, and then reloaded on to ships in the Mediterranean for a short trip to Greece.

Your idea is much more interesting.

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It's a dumb idea, we already have standardized cargo containers and the technology to load/unload them efficiently. Putting a ship on 10 Train Tracks will require the development of new technology and will make every bridge (weight allowance) and tunnel (the profile would need to be big enough for the whole ship) prohibitively expensive. With normal cargo trains, which are a very efficient and cheap way to transport a lot of goods, you can just use cheap off the shelf stuff.

Also transporting ships with their huge tanks of heavy oil is a huge health and safety hazard.

Good reply. You're right, I hadn't thought about bridges / tunnels. Nor about the fact that the current system is basically "cheap off the shelf stuff".

This exchange has been a revelation in systems-design for me. The value one gets from adding another brain with a differing viewpoint.

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