Re: Evacuated Tube Transport

At 2:58 PM +0100 11/6/02, KH.Ranitzsch@t-online.de wrote:
>
>* the speed of the transport. Basically, you can move stuff cheaply and
>slowly or fast and expensively. Conventional rail is very slow - slower
>than trucks over almost any distance. Depending on your specific goods
>and the costs of delays in delivery, it can be more profitable to move
>stuff by air.

I don't know. I should suspect that when your loads get really really 
large, you've got lower cost for transporting large heavy loads long 
distances. Take a movement of military vehicles from Fort Hood Texas 
to a port in Savannah. The military is far more likely to move 
everything by rail than by truck. Fewer people have to be operational 
at one time (one or two train crews vs a company or more of 
transportation drivers, repair trucks for flats, etc).

I'll bet that for large loads, your costs and efficiency go up when 
you're moving large loads over long distances. Otherwise, why would 
inter-modal (container) transportation in the US rely so much on rail 
for the long distance movement across the country?

-- 
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Ryan Gill	       rmgill@SPAMmindspring.com
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