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Mexico building rail rival as water shortages drain Panama Canal

japantimes.co.jp

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Re: Mexico building rail rival as water shortages drain Panama Canal

#21

Post by s1artibartfast »

jedberg wrote: post #3

So one ship will have to unload on one side and then another ship will have to pick up the cargo on the other end? So the shipping company has to have two ships, one on each side, and wait for the loading and unloading? I'm sure smarter people than me have worked this out but it seems like this would take a lot longer than the canal (which only takes 8-10 hours vs 7 hours for this train plus load and unload). Granted…

>I suspect wait times for cranes at each end of this rail would be about the same as canal wait times if not longer.

This is the wrong way to think about it. Wait times would naturally start at zero days, and then increase from there until there is no more demand or the comparative advantage runs out.

Re: Mexico building rail rival as water shortages drain Panama Canal

#22

Post by myself248 »

nickpinkston wrote: post #4
jedberg wrote: post #3

So one ship will have to unload on one side and then another ship will have to pick up the cargo on the other end? So the shipping company has to have two ships, one on each side, and wait for the loading and unloading? I'm sure smarter people than me have worked this out but it seems like this would take a lot longer than the canal (which only takes 8-10 hours vs 7 hours for this train plus load and unload). Granted…

Another possible way this project could be beneficial is if the Panama Canal can't widen its locks, and hence this project could enable ships larger than that (which are more fuel efficient / cheaper) to have a far faster and possibly cheaper (depends on their costs, etc.) route.

Ooooh that's an aspect I hadn't considered. Post-Panamax ships tend to be 2x-3x more TEUs and they continue to grow.

Eeeenteresting.

Plus if they're already offloading to land in the Americas, don't just put 'em onto another ship and sail up to LAX, a rail route up through Mexico itself could mean the containers arrive directly into the US without going through LAX, which has interesting implications for labor.

Re: Mexico building rail rival as water shortages drain Panama Canal

#23

Post by bilsbie »

Solvency wrote: post #10
bilsbie wrote: post #5

Surely this is a mega project: but naively, what if we built say ten parallel railways 10 ft apart and moved cargo ships over the rails? Or this guy only needs to be scaled up 10X to do the job. Not outside the realm of imagination? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crawler-transporter I know the ships are huge and it shouldn’t be feasible but it would be interesting to run the numbers. Edit. Actually if my math is rig…

I literally just asked that on a different related post. https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=Solvency#38992883 Anyone?

Wow! I like how you think. We should discuss more mega projects.

Re: Mexico building rail rival as water shortages drain Panama Canal

#24

Post by jp57 »

For containers headed to the US east coast from the Pacific, is there any advantage of using this route and incurring two extra mode switches (sea->rail->sea), over going to a US west coast port and just incurring one (and possibly zero) extra mode switches?

Given that the containers may be distributed in a variety of modes when they are unloaded at a land port (e.g. different trains, trucks, etc), it's probably reasonable to think about fractional mode switches. I.e. what's the average number of switches across all containers on the ship. Using a rail portage to get to from the Pacific to the Atlantic will add 2 to that number for every container, whereas going to a west coast port might add one or maybe zero (I.e. switch to a truck that drives cross country, vs rail->truck)

Is the increased cost of transcontinental land transport in the US so high as to make this scheme worthwhile for US East coast?

Re: Mexico building rail rival as water shortages drain Panama Canal

#25

Post by myself248 »

Brian_K_White wrote: post #13

Water shortages? I thought the canal connected oceans and I thought the oceans were rising?

The canal forms a ladder that raises ships from one ocean, up through a series of locks, into waterways that cross over the middle of the isthmus, then back down the other side. The canal itself it not all at sea level.

Locks work by controlling the release of water from a high point to a low point. The water needs to already be at the high point, by tapping a river or something that's fed by rain; locks do not have pumps to supply their own water.

To raise a ship, you pull it into the lock, close the doors on the low side, and open a valve that lets water from the high side flow into the lock and float the ship up. Then you open the doors on the high side.

To lower a ship, you pull it into the lock from the high side, close the doors on the high side, and open a valve that lets water from the lock flow to the low side. Then open the doors on the low side and pull the ship out.

The low side of one lock is the high side of the next one, so that water basically follows the ship and gets lowered with it as it descends the ladder. But the water has to get to the high middle somehow.

Re: Mexico building rail rival as water shortages drain Panama Canal

#26

Post by idlephysicist »

Brian_K_White wrote: post #13

Water shortages? I thought the canal connected oceans and I thought the oceans were rising?

I was also confused by this, I had always (perhaps naively) assumed that the canal used salt water throughout. I did some searching and found this article.

> Gatun Lake, which forms a key stretch of the canal system and provides fresh water for its locks, saw little rain this year, as El Niño triggered a withering drought.

https://fortune.com/2023/12/04/panama-canal-dry-backed-up-br...

Re: Mexico building rail rival as water shortages drain Panama Canal

#27

Post by Zacru »

jedberg wrote: post #3

So one ship will have to unload on one side and then another ship will have to pick up the cargo on the other end? So the shipping company has to have two ships, one on each side, and wait for the loading and unloading? I'm sure smarter people than me have worked this out but it seems like this would take a lot longer than the canal (which only takes 8-10 hours vs 7 hours for this train plus load and unload). Granted…

If you're shipping from northern hemisphere to northern hemisphere, then you also save to time/fuel to go down to Panama. No idea if that's significant or not.

Re: Mexico building rail rival as water shortages drain Panama Canal

#28

Post by livueta »

jp57 wrote: post #24

For containers headed to the US east coast from the Pacific, is there any advantage of using this route and incurring two extra mode switches (sea->rail->sea), over going to a US west coast port and just incurring one (and possibly zero) extra mode switches? Given that the containers may be distributed in a variety of modes when they are unloaded at a land port (e.g. different trains, trucks, etc), it's probably reas…

This Economist article on the same topic seems to agree with you: https://www.economist.com/the-americas/2024/01/09/the-dwindl... / https://archive.is/ZU0ws

> But projects like CIIT may still struggle to entice cargo away from the Panama Canal. The largest vessels that go through it can carry 14,000 containers. Mexico’s government accurately reckons that the coast-to-coast rail journey will be quicker than passing through the canal. But it neglects to mention that the trains’ capacity and the speed at which they can be loaded and unloaded mean that the overall rate of goods’ transit between the two oceans will be much slower than the canal.

> Moreover, Niels Rasmussen, chief shipping analyst at Bimco, an industry association, says that carrying cargo by train or road has big snags. Most shippers would prefer to rack up extra miles on other maritime routes than to deal with the hassle of unloading and reloading. And if push comes to shove, many would probably prefer existing routes across the United States to untested road alternatives in Latin America.

Re: Mexico building rail rival as water shortages drain Panama Canal

#29

Post by asylteltine »

nadermx wrote: post #11
bilsbie wrote: post #5

Surely this is a mega project: but naively, what if we built say ten parallel railways 10 ft apart and moved cargo ships over the rails? Or this guy only needs to be scaled up 10X to do the job. Not outside the realm of imagination? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crawler-transporter I know the ships are huge and it shouldn’t be feasible but it would be interesting to run the numbers. Edit. Actually if my math is rig…

Or perhaps instead of 10x wideing, just build a permanent bidirectional conver belt.

Yeah all they need is a blueprint and the logistics bots will take care of the rest

Re: Mexico building rail rival as water shortages drain Panama Canal

#30

Post by profsummergig »

bilsbie wrote: post #5

Surely this is a mega project: but naively, what if we built say ten parallel railways 10 ft apart and moved cargo ships over the rails? Or this guy only needs to be scaled up 10X to do the job. Not outside the realm of imagination? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crawler-transporter I know the ships are huge and it shouldn’t be feasible but it would be interesting to run the numbers. Edit. Actually if my math is rig…

> 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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