Quoting in a new speculative thread as I think it merits further discussion.
Presumably if some current HGV drivers could be displaced from the long hauls up main corridors - which is what rail freight is good at - then they could provide the 'last mile' transport, which is what rail freight is bad at.
Cheers, yeah I think it merits a thread. Basically this truck driver shortage is related to no single issue, it is multi-faceted and therefore multi-solutuion. Various people are blaming it on Brexit, Covid and certainly these are exacerbating factors, but the shortage is europe-wide, and Covid restrictions are generally relaxed for truckers. In fact the issue is also occuring in the states, especially for long haul truckers.
It's hard to attract new employees into an industry that isn't fantastically compensated, has a relatively high cost of entry for getting licences, etc and involves months on the road away from home.
I think rail freight has some key advantages for taking on long distance trucking:
-Long distance jobs tend to be the ones that contribute most to the un-appealing trucking "lifestyle". If truckers could be guaranteed a return to the same bed at night, just doing a couple of 50-mile deliveries a day, then I think that would attract more people in to the industry. Long distance is rail's strength. Trains can be handed off to new drivers every hundred or so miles, with drivers simply travelling up on one train and returning another in the opposite direction and the like.
-Trains require far less staff per unit of goods and rail uses less energy per unit of goods, making it one of the most cost effective methods of transporting goods by land.
-Long distance trucking is the hardest aspect of the industry to decarbonise, due to battery capacity limits, etc that can be relatively easily bypassed with rail electrification - worth noting that even unelectrified rail freight offers lower carbon emissions, although they are overall less effective than electrified fleets.
While I think rail absolutely can increase freight provision if some shifting of timetables takes place, there is generally limited capacity for freight provision on UK railways. HS2 will deliver that extra capacity longer term, but obviously we need solutions earlier than that.
The first step would be to run overnight trains on key corridors in the UK and just make the trains as long as signal loops can handle - truck drivers can drop loads off for the evenings, then they can be shipped to final mile distribution yards by the morning, so they are ready to be sent out to customers. It would involve a level of overnight shift working, but that could be provided by tens/hundreds of train drivers, instead of tens of thousands of truck drivers. As HS2 and freight-oriented upgrades come online, more freight trains can be run in the day with some extra flexibility.
Other infrastructure that needs improving:
-Marshalling/logistics yards.
-Passing loops - counterintuitively, this might be for freight to get past passenger services on regional/rural routes, as they take a long time to get up to speed.
-Electrification - Faster accelerating freight will prove vital for integrating into passenger-oriented service patterns, or diverting around night-time works on infrastructure.
When a I was in Austria a few years ago I saw a couple of trains loaded with HGV trucks heading West at reasonable speed. The UK is a bit restricted for doing that kind of operation here but if those trucks were from Poland or Germany and heading to Spain then sticking a convoy of them on a train makes good sense as they will get their faster with less pollution. There was a carriage for the drivers but would drivers and tractor units be needed? All you need is shunt jockeys to load the trailers on/off at the depots and then hauliers can send a local tractor unit to collect the trailer and drive the last 50 miles or so to the destination. Sounds like a good idea to me…..
Absolutely the idea of last mile delivery by truck is great!
I think the truck trains have merit, but obviously we have to consider our loading gauges in the UK! It definitely strikes as a good idea, as it would have relatively little impact on the existing shipping patterns, but by moving during rest periods, drivers would be able to be significantly more productive.
what I do say is that the current way motor traffic operates in countries across the developed world is genuinely unsustainable. Rail and other transport modes and other necessary and substantial changes in society will assist the demolition of this era of transport. No change no planet the kids are right on this and the scientific evidence supports them. Solutions to the post HGV times will be found.
