System of interstate truck-only highways? Taking the big-rigs off the public highways and allowing them to run 100 feet-long truck-trains down truck-only highways at high speeds would seem a logical way to accomplish many positive things: reduce oil consumption; reduce traffic congestion while increasing effective fuel economy; and reduce emissions of greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming. Truckers seem to love the idea. How about you?

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1 year ago

In response to the comment, where to put these highways, I will cite for example the most traffic congested city in the world, Los Angeles, California. Over the years, L.A. has managed to build freeways running east-west, north-south in multiple corridors. One very easy and cheap way to experiment with the idea of truck-only highways would be to close some of these corridors to automobiles and allow only trucks to use them. For instance, the I-10 and I-60 both run parallel to one another and connect to the I-15 which goes all the way across the nation. This would seem a worthwhile experiment, I think.

1 year ago

In already heavily developed areas like our biggest cities, we do what they did in San Francisco and Oakland--we stack the highways!

1 year ago

Clearly, the long-haul truckers can%26#039;t continue making deliveries in America%26#039;s largest cities. Many of the existing streets in such cities are quite narrow and the traffic is a nightmare. I think we get around that problem by using the truck-and-transfer concept: build huge terminals on the outskirts of the major cities and have the loads routed to smaller delivery vehicles. This could sponsor the birth of a whole new industry and create many good-paying jobs as well. A truck carrying a load of cases of canned soda in multiple trailers could be treated like a train, with the trailers or containers being hooked up to smaller trucks, or the loads offloaded entirely and transferred to several smaller trucks.

LA%26#039;s freeways are more than sufficient to handle all the car traffic if we can just get the trucks their own stacked lanes and ramps. The rights of way already exist along existing freeways, highways and rail-lines. All we need is the will.

http://pubsindex.trb.org/document/view/d...
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/homeaffai...
http://www.radio.cz/en/article/89069
http://english.people.com.cn/200706/05/e...

We already have railroads. The problem is that when little Johnny orders his ipod off amazon.com he wants it in 2 days not 3 weeks.

Who told you truckers love this?

Trucks are not efficient. Trains and river barges are slower, but more energy efficient. Trucks should be used for short haul delivers only. Trucks are a left over of the cheap petroleum days. Look at Europe and Asia and you will see trains doing the long distance transportation.