In early August, I drove down to Cape Breton and then to my birthplace, beautiful PEI. It was a really good drive. I was really pleased with how well the traffic flowed, generally. I went through some construction zones, it being construction season (the only other season in Canada being dead of winter), but even there the traffic flowed pretty nicely for the most part. Once I got through the GTA, it was all clear sailing. The bypass around Montreal is terrific. And the Trans-Canada through New Brunswick and Nova Scotia is virtually all four-lane divided highway with almost no traffic and an ignorable speed limit of 110 km/hr, so you set your car on cruise and relax.
Highway 20 through Quebec is fast and effective, but mostly a boring drive. But New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and PEI are very scenic. I stopped overnight in Grand Falls, New Brunswick, and when I set out early the next morning through the hills of northern New Brunswick, the sun was shining on the hilltops, but every valley was filled with mists – it was spectacularly beautiful.
Construction on the TCH through northern New Brunswick is still a major work in progress, and you have to be impressed with the technical challenges of expanding the road system through such inhospitable country. I was impressed too with the volume of truck traffic on the roads. Truck traffic on the 401 in Ontario is simply non-stop, and I really expected that, but it was notably active in the other provinces as well.
I observed many times with just how good the transport truck drivers are. Every time I see a tractor-trailer negotiating city (or small-town) traffic I think about how precise they have to be to get around corners and back into loading zones etc. What I noticed on the major highways many times was trucks changing lanes because they saw the need to allow traffic to merge half a kilometer ahead. With limited ability to change direction or stop quickly, those guys have to really look ahead, and they do a great job of managing their space needs on the roads. Mind you, every now and then you see one truck doing 90 km/hr asserting his ability to pass the slower vehicle doing only 89 km/hr, and that can be annoying, but what can you do? It’s like racing Clydesdales instead of Thoroughbreds – but they have a right to a little race every now and then. Must alleviate the boredom of a long day driving, I guess. Despite my observation that those drivers are good, however, I came across a slightly outdated report from 2017 which revealed that 20% of fatal road accidents in Ontario involved a transport truck. About 87% of the time the victim was not the truck driver, but the occupant of the smaller vehicle that was unfortunate enough to tangle with one of those behemoths.
Seeing all of that trucking traffic and all of the road construction and repair work inevitably led to me thinking about why the hell we have all those trucks on the road beating the crap out of the roads and scaring or killing Smart Car drivers. Can’t we divert some of that shipping to rail, and ease the burden on the roads?
So, I asked Google. I found an article on the Railway Association of Canada (RAC) web-site which says “Today, around 70 per cent of all intercity surface freight and half of Canada’s exports are moved by rail.” Well crap, I said to myself, there’s no story here. 70% on rail already? That’s pretty impressive. But then I found a Library of Parliament article which said “For domestic transportation, trucking was the preferred mode of transport for most goods in 2018, when 77.7% of the volume of goods transported within Canada was moved by truck, while 22.2% was moved by train… In 2020, Canadian exports to the United States totalled $384 billion and 54.2% of goods were shipped by truck (see Figure 3). Canadian imports from the United States totalled $264 billion, 71.5% of which were shipped by truck.” There seems to be a disagreement here, doesn’t there? How can we have 70% moved by rail and 77% moved by road?
Well, of course what that means is that we’re doing different things with counting. Inter-modal transport will mean that a great many things are moved by rail to a distribution centre and then trucked to a final destination, so both systems are touching the product and claiming credit. The real question is how many kilometer tonnes are assigned to each system? How much weight did you move and how far did you move it?
A Transport Canada “statistical addendum” from 2020 reported that in 2018 (the last year for which statistics were available for both modes of transport) we shipped about 165 billion tonne-kilometers by road and almost 300 billion tonne-kilometer by rail. About seven eighths of the rail shipments went interprovincially – most of it goes long haul and crosses at least one provincial border. Let’s call it two thirds by rail and one third by road to make the math easy. Does that seem like a good number to you? Is that where our freight industry should be?
Here’s another number for you. StatsCan reports that “In 2022, local and regional governments in Canada spent close to $9.8 billion in capital expenditures on new or improved transportation infrastructure, up from $9.7 billion in 2021.
Still, at the end of 2020, the cost to replace all municipal roads rated from fair to very poor condition was estimated at $166.8 billion.” I’ve suggested that we need to get big rigs off the roads to reduce the damage that they are doing to the infrastructure, which brings up the question “how damaging are they, really?”
If you ask Google about that, you’ll come across the assertion that it takes 9600 cars to cause the damage that one loaded trailer truck will cause. I saw an industry rebuttal which says that number is based on a 70-year old study based on an experiment which was intentionally skewed towards finding damage – they chose conditions that would lead to damage because they wanted something they could measure. More recent serious studies support the notion that the 9600 to 1 is an exaggerated view.
However, those more recent studies also support the notion that big rigs are, indeed, beating the crap out of roads. I quickly scanned a few articles on the subject. I was unable to find a clear conclusion about exactly how much damage big rigs cause compared to cars but there is quite a surprising amount of very detailed scientific study on the subject. Trying to get a grip on how damaging big rigs are is key to designing better roads, designing better trucks and trailers and tires, designing tax systems to capture the real societal cost of shipping on our highways, establishing vehicle/axle loading regulations etc. It turns out that there are a lot of variables in the equations leading to any kind of a damage estimating model.
- What temperature extremes are the roads subject to?
- How wet or dry are the weather and road conditions?
- How elastic is the road surface mix?
- Is the secondary layer beneath the asphalt coarse or fine sand?
- Are truck and trailer axles rigid or dynamically supported?
- Is the road surface new and uniform or older and more “pebbled”? (The coarser the road surface is, the more likely a passing wheel is to cause further damage. Damage is an accelerating phenomenon).
- How frequently are road surfaces repaired?
- What are the weight loading assumptions?
A common term in articles on this subject is the “fourth power law”, which argues that the damage inflicted on the road is a fourth power function of the weight ratio, which means that doubling the weigh will inflict 2 to the 4th power, or 16 times, as much damage. Intuitively, the weight of concern is not the vehicle weight, but the axle loading, or even the individual wheel loading. Researchers are convinced that there is an exponential term in the load vs damage model. They’re not convinced that it’s a 4thpower exactly. But if the 4th power rule is simplistic and perhaps overly conservative, it has not been totally abandoned by scientists as a rule of thumb.
And what all of that says is that yes, big rigs really are beating the crap out of our roads. We may not have a really exact model of how badly they’re hurting the roads, but it’s many times more damaging than a light passenger vehicle.
OK, so what does that mean for us? What could we do about it? How do we compare to others?
The United States, in 2022, sent about 2.2 trillion ton-miles of freight by truck and 1.5 trillion by rail, so they’re about 40% rail. Our 65% looks good by comparison. Interestingly, US rail freight has trended down and road freight trended up since 2011 when they were almost equal.
And Europe? Europe has clearly chosen a different model altogether. The European Union statistics page states that “In 2022, maritime transport accounted for more than two-thirds (67.8 %) of freight transport performance in the EU, followed by road transport with one-quarter (24.9 %). Maritime and road transport represented 92.7 % of total freight transport performance in the EU in 2022. Rail transport represented 5.5 %, inland waterway 1.6 % and air 0.2 %.
Comparisons are tricky and dangerous. When considering what our system might look like, it would be important to remember that our population density is about 10% of America’s and about 5% of Europe’s. With a population density 20 times ours, perhaps it makes sense for Europe to be distributing directly by short-haul trucks from marine terminals without an intermediate rail system. Still, by comparison we seem to be doing fairly well. But let’s think about doing better.
Why? Well, first of all, because we’d like to reduce the congestion on our highways, especially around the major cities, and every big rig off the road would be a victory. And second, according to a Library of Parliament document, “In 2020, it (road freight) accounted for 36.7% of the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions produced by Canada’s transport sector, which is approximately 8.7% of total GHG emissions in Canada.” In 2020, road freight produced almost 60 megatons of greenhouse gas, while rail, air and marine freight combined only produced approximately 15 megatons. That means that about 1/3 of our freight shipping needs accounts for 4/5 of freight-related greenhouse gas production. Third, we’re spending $10 billion a year on roads and have a backlog of $170 billion of necessary roads repairs. This is a big money game and it would behoove us to seek cheaper alternatives.
And rail freight is still a cheaper alternative to road. I struggled to find a Canadian direct cost comparison, but a US document from RSI Logistics, a shipping company, said “By comparison, rail direct is $70.27 per net ton, and over-the-road truck is $214.96 per net ton.”
In retrospect, isn’t it a shame that we’ve closed down so may spur lines that could be taking freight from the major cities to smaller ones, so that distribution could be a more local problem? I love the abandoned rail trail as a bike trail idea, but we might be better served if those trails were still transporting goods.
Could we re-build those lines, or build new ones? An estimate (US dollars) from Compass International says that the cost of building a single track on an existing road bed (like the rail trails) would be between $800K and $1M per kilometer. Building brand new double track rail lines (preferred to help with scheduling problems which are the biggest single drawback of rail transport) might cost up to $1.7M per km.
The alternative to improving the rail system is to continue to invest in highway expansion and ongoing maintenance. A FAQ document from the Department of Transport in Nova Scotia from around 2010 estimated the cost of new 4 lane highway construction as $6M/km. That’s 3 ½ times as much as a double rail line. So, it’s not crazy for us as a country to be thinking about expanding our rail network as a greenhouse gas reduction initiative as well as a practical way to minimize the cost of delivering our production to the world.
One final subject and then I’ll shut up, I promise. While we’re building or upgrading railroads, we should be working on electrification, which will really kick the crap out of the greenhouse gas problem associated with freight transport. A Forbes Magazine article (Nov, 2023) tells us that “the Americas are singular in their lack of ability and willingness to do what the rest of the world has already mostly done… India has electrified above 85% of its heavy rail and is aiming for 100% by 2025. China is at 72% and building more electrified, high-speed freight and passenger rail rapidly. Europe is at 60% and climbing… The first electric railroad was in operation over 100 years ago. The technology is bog simple. Trolley wires overhead. Electricity flowing into the wires from the grid…. Is this cheaper than alternatives like hydrogen locomotives? It certainly is.” The author goes on to predict that cost factors will inevitably lead to electrification of our rail systems eventually, so we might as well set about doing it now.
So that’s it, my friends. Let’s get those damn big trucks off the roads and become a world leader in rail transport. After all, it was railroads that made us a nation, and we shouldn’t lose that connection. Comments, as usual, are very welcome.
Dennis
7 responses to “Getting Trucking on the Right Track”
forwarding to family truck driver, Ty Richard Curley
Someone made the news recently by musing on whether or not PEI should re-build its railway. . . . Another point worth considering. New transportation infrastructure gives any competitor nation an advantage (e.g. China), while aging infrastructure in debt-ridden countries almost inevitably falls under deferred maintenance. America’s great interstates, the great boon to tourism as well as freight transport, are products mostly of the 1950s, no? Now they are aging. And, as always, convenience seems to trump environmental concerns or economic savings for consumers. Trains can only go where the rails go. Trucks go anywhere the roads go — and there are are a lot more roads — and anytime they feel like it. Cars are inevitably connected with individual freedom. Trains contracted space; cars promised liberation.
Irrelevant historical sidebar: The peak of rail traffic in North America was in the 1920s, just before the car became king, in the same way that canal construction peaked . . . just before the rise of the railway.
The interstate system was built in the late 50s I believe mostly under the Eisenhower presidency, and mostly as a defence initiative to allow for rapid troop deployment. A recent transportation research board report says it has “a persistent and growing backlog of physical and operational deficiencies as a result of age, heavy use, and deferred reinvestment.“ The report goes on to recommend increasing annual investment in the highway system by 250%.
Your point about ageing infrastructure as an anchor on economic activity is a good one. I think governments need to commit to a model on what that future upgraded infrastructure would look like, and in a climate-conscious universe, they should at least consider the possibility of increasing and improving our rail freight capability.
And no, I don’t think PEI would benefit greatly from a restored railway, since the Confederation Bridge won’t accommodate a rail line.
Just don’t suggest we travel on trains. After our trip to St FX that Christmas I would be averse to that mode of transport. However I did find European train travel was good and also I travelled from Ottawa to Montreal on the train. It was Ok but not as good as European train travel. The removal of the rails in PEI was basically a case of the Federal Government eliminating costs and services to PEI.
Thanks Kate. I do think trains have a place in people transport, but mostly as light rail transit around major cities. And no, I don’t think trains to PEI will ever be effective because there isn’t likely enough bulk shipping to justify it, even for potatoes.
Thank you for your arcticle Dennis. I always said that we were too quick to forget about our railroads. If we look at the cost of keeping up our highways vs getting rid of trucks, I’ve always wished we’d go back to rail. Looks like the numbers you gave us show it would be more cost effective in the long run to use rail more. I remember being in saint Gaur , Germany and watching the rail going by on one side of the Rhine every half hour or so and on the other side passenger trains going by and ships, barges and everything else going down the Rhine and thinking we could do some of this. In our area the infrastructure structure for rail has been mostly removed and I don’t know how viable it would be to introduce it again. Also the cost to our roads is greatly affected by our winters, the thawing and freezing. Hard to say. Ty for your thoughts
I think trains are the answer for bulk shipping between major population centres. So, for example, container shipping from Halifax harbour to Toronto is ideal for trains, and I suspect a lot of that already does go by train. If rails were restored, would it make sense to have a daily train shipment of goods to Sidney for distribution through Cape Breton? Maybe. I imagine with the short distances and the low volume of materials being shipped it would likely be marginal at best.