As I mentioned previously, a single container lift is £20 (source Julian Worth CILT). HGV running costs £1.89p per mile (source RHA).
Two lifts cost £40 which equals 21.16 miles of HGV running.
The problem is that that
is a significant distance.
The average length of an articulated lorry haul in the UK
is approximately 75 miles (page 7/11).
We are going to have to compete on 100-150 mile hauls if we want to capture a significant market share.
Where 20 miles of lift costs are rather significant.
A container train may have one expensive loco on it, but your ro-ro shuttle train also has one expensive loco on it PLUS 30 HGV tractor units, trailers and drivers, which could be elsewhere earning money.
Let's take the example of a haul from somewhere near the M40/M25 (vicinity of slough) to the vicinity of Mancheser Airport - roughly 165 miles.
A ro-ro train would load/unload in something like ten minutes [two lorries on and two off at a time] based on the experience of the Chunnel Shuttle, then proceed at 140km/h to the destination, arriving roughly 2 hours later, followed by rapid unloading/reloading and a return leg of 2 hours, utilising baloon loops to minimise the need for end-changing or anything like that.
Two loads (one each direction) can be handled at a cycle time of 4hr20 per set.
If we need to carry more vehicles we can easily add more loading and unloading points at relatively low cost, we just need flat wagons and a concrete platform.
A conventional train apparently has a
turnaround time of roughly 90 minutes. (p9/12)
Even if we assume the train has the same performance curve - that is a 7hr cycle time for two loads.
Which means that cycle time is 260 minutes rather than 420 minutes.
So the roro set can haul the same load as 1.6 conventional sets.
Whilst the roro set has to haul 30 tractor units around, the capital cost of HGV tractor units are apparently about £100k each although it is very hard to get good figures.
That ranslates to about £3m in costs.
Which means if the trainset costs more than £5m, hauling the tractor units around in return for increase productivity is a good trade.
Given locomotives cost £3m+, it seems highly unlikely that an 800m set would not be more than that price.
As to drivers, whilst productivity is hurt we have to account for the fact that unless you actually want to pay for four container lifts per transit instead of two, the drivers will end up spending considerable amounts of time waiting around for their lorries to be loaded and unloaded.
Given that a driver is only ot of action for 2 hours during the journey, it seems reasonable that the total saving in driver time will not be that large - to avoid demurrage they are going to be waiting for the train when he arrives.
With a ro ro service, you can just allow lorries to drive directly onto the loading platform - using ANPR to identify vehicles for invoicing purposes.
There is no security problems associated with having to ensure that the lorry that turns up at the far end to pick up the container is the one actually authorised to collect the load.
Additionally thanks to the far higher road-to-road speed of ~70mph average, if we could provide suitably high frequencies we could pick up huge amounts of traffic, including most people who are driving to destinations north of Manchester on the M6
Then you say it will all have to be newbuild lines. ANY newbuild in the UK would only be High Speed for passengers, freeing classic capacity for freight. Any thoughts of newbuild for freight, except minor works, whether by private or public capital are pure flights of fancy.
Any High Speed construction is likely to be on routes where there will be no released capacity that isn't immediately snapped up for local service trains.
And without newbuild for freight, I can't see freight competing or expanding significantly, there are just too many more (politically and economically) renumerative options for available capacity.
