Posted on 06/06/2012 2:44:37 PM PDT by Zakeet
Freight normally hauled by trucks could one day soon be shipped on an electric-powered, overhead guideway across Texas. It may seem like an idea more suitable for Tomorrowland – and artist renderings of the project do resemble Disney’s famed monorail system – but Texas officials are encouraging a privately-funded business to get the project up and running, perhaps within six years.
[The developers] have formed Freight Shuttle International, a company that is cobbling together the estimated $2.5 billion needed to build the first leg of this futuristic transportation system. The guideways would be built within the existing right-of-way of Interstate 35, initially stretching about 250 miles from San Antonio to Waxahachie – but eventually extending north through Dallas-Fort Worth, and south to the Mexican border. Ultimately, Freight Shuttle guideways could be built on more than 2,000 miles of highway right-of-way across the state, he said.
The system would haul cargo of various sizes, packed in both intermodal containers and freight trailers. Terminals would be built at each end of the route, so that trucks could load and off-load their goods onto the Freight Shuttle guideways. The shipments would be placed on unmanned transporters powered by linear induction motors using electricity and a magnetic field. They would glide on steel wheels across the guideways at about 60 mph, Roop told members of the Tarrant Regional Transportation Coalition during a meeting Wednesday in Fort Worth.
Shippers would be able to get their goods across the state for pennies on the dollar compared to what it costs to haul freight in tractor-trailers, said Ken Allen, a retired logistics executive for grocery giant H-E-B Stores and chief executive officer of Freight Shuttle International’s operations unit.
(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.star-telegram.com ...
This will never work because it relies on the private sector rather than government handouts!
They’d be better off to build a canal.
LOL, let's the accounting on that. More like hundreds of pennies
We already have that.. its called “TRAINS”...
Like in choo choo trains..
the canal/barge system has been a reliable transportation system all over the world for hundreds of years..
Teamsters and other union thugs - hardest hit
Takes too much land compared to elevated (unipost) tracks.
I'm all for alleviating the traffic problems on I-35, but this would need some heavy-duty safeguards.
Water transport is still the cheapest per ton mile.
exactly.
“They’d be better off to build a canal.”
Wouldn’t it be pretty hard to elevate all that water?
What Texan could possibly argue with installing a full-length shade cover over I-35? LOL
If they had enough traffic, it wouldn’t take much water.
For just dollars on the dollar.
They have barges that go 60 miles an hour?
And how many sets of locks over that 250-mile stretch between Dallas and Austin? I-35 climbs higher above sea level as you head north.
Not hard in a technical sense, just expensive to build and time-consuming to use. Canal locks don't exactly make for speedy transport.
Still, it does seem a little wacky. Sending freight one car at a time along electric rails? A conventional train might move a lot more stuff with less energy consumption in a reasonable period if there's no urgency. If there is urgency, we have other ways to get the goods where they have to go.
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