101–110 of 134 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Rail would seem in principle to far and away be the most efficient, so I hope these prices change to reflect that.
What principle is that? Prices reflect reality, not the other way around.
Offtopic: How far are we from shortening this trip from 15 days to say, 12 or 10 days? 15 days is half a month. But if this could be shortened to 10 days, it is 3 regular shipment in a month. For someone like Apple, this could be extremely cost efficient. Rather then paying the high price to book every single possible fright from China, they could now do it via train, at least to everywhere in Europe.
The article says 18 days and 12000 km. That's just ~28 km/h on average. I ride my bicycle faster than that :).
[1] A bit old but fairly indicative as far as I can tell: https://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/pu...
Some more detail articles about current China Europe regular train connection (actually it goes weekly to Poland): http://postandparcel.info/56547/news/innovation/dhl-launches... http://www.forbes.com/sites/wadeshepard/2016/06/28/what-the-... It make sense for goods that sending them by air is too expensive, but they are too time sensitive to send them by ship. It takes a day by plane, 14 days by train, 45 days by th…
Some price estimates: (very crude, but shows magnitude of price) Rail is 4 times more expensive than by sea. Air is at least 6 times more expensive than rail, but can be even 18 times more expensive if payload is heavy. Cost of shipping 40′ HC container: - by sea: $1,600 - by train: $6,800 - by air, light, so you pay for volume: 4.6 USD / kg, 40 ft got volume 67.7 m3 * 143 kg / m3 ~= 9 tons, $41,400 - by air, heavy,…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Some price estimates: (very crude, but shows magnitude of price) Rail is 4 times more expensive than by sea. Air is at least 6 times more expensive than rail, but can be even 18 times more expensive if payload is heavy. Cost of shipping 40′ HC container: - by sea: $1,600 - by train: $6,800 - by air, light, so you pay for volume: 4.6 USD / kg, 40 ft got volume 67.7 m3 * 143 kg / m3 ~= 9 tons, $41,400 - by air, heavy,…
Pollution - Air cargo - 0.8063 kg of CO2 per Ton-Mile - Truck - 0.1693 kg of CO2 per Ton-Mile - Train - 0.1048 kg of CO2 per Ton-Mile - Sea freight - 0.0403 kg of CO2 per Ton-Mile So I see this competing with air freight, not sea. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_transp...
- Zeppelin - 0.0887 kg of CO2 per Ton-Mile
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The article says 18 days and 12000 km. That's just ~28 km/h on average. I ride my bicycle faster than that :).
That seems like a very low speed while the train is actually in motion, although apparently[1] american freight trains average around ~40 km/h. I would guess mostly it is various delays that keeps the average that low, and it seems most data is just distance/time estimates, not actual averages of instantaneous speed measurement. [1] A bit old but fairly indicative as far as I can tell: https://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/si…
I would guess that this is rolling out just for the PR, the sheer number of trains needed to replace one decent sized container ship just makes this all prohibitive to ever replace much sea freight plus launching when there is a glut of container ships floating around as well, which is keeping the price lower than most ship owners can breakeven. Ok so it's quicker, but it's not that quick. The only winners would be t…
For anyone looking for a quick answer, this is from the 4th paragraph in the article: While the train can carry about 200 containers, versus 20,000 on a large cargo vessel, the trip takes about half as long as a 30-day sailing between East Asia and northern Europe. That will make rail a competitive option when maritime shipments are held up or miss the booked departure, especially compared with airfreight, which cost…
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13317649
It's just a completely different method of going about arguments.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not sure about CO2 impact, but one problem is that these trains are running pretty empty back to china (china doesn't want to import so much from Europe by rail). I think they are running 50 trains a year, with a heavy subsidy to make it affordable (half the cost).
Do the freight ships do the same? What do they bring back with them?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Rail would seem in principle to far and away be the most efficient, so I hope these prices change to reflect that.
Do you mean more efficient than ships? Ships are far more efficient. They can scale up far larger, making for much lower fuel consumption per ton, and don't need to maintain much (or often any at all) infrastructure between terminals. Trains exist just because a substantial minority of the planet's surface isn't covered by water.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Rail would seem in principle to far and away be the most efficient, so I hope these prices change to reflect that.
Do you mean more efficient than ships? Ships are far more efficient. They can scale up far larger, making for much lower fuel consumption per ton, and don't need to maintain much (or often any at all) infrastructure between terminals. Trains exist just because a substantial minority of the planet's surface isn't covered by water.
Produce more CO2
Increase Global Warming
Oceans rise
Everything is covered by water
Profit?
:)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It depends. A big airplane can carry like 20,000 kg total. This is the weight that fits in most containers. So its the airfreight cost vs the waiting cost.
An airframe isn't going to fit inside an ISO container