Types and Functions of Rail Freight CorridorsRail is of primordial importance to support long distance trade corridors
and has experienced a resurgence in the recent years, particularly in
North America. It accounts for close to 40% of all the ton-km transported
in the United States, while in Europe this share is only 8%. Still,
rail freight corridors have a functional typology which simplistically
can be differentiated by the distance (scale) they service. All the
types of rail corridors fit within a specific freight distribution strategy
but are imbedded to one-another:
Short distance. Conventional transport economics underlines
that rail is not a very suitable mode for short distances. Short
distance rails corridors are thus established under very specific
circumstances, namely where there is acute congestion and a modal
shift to rail is required to improve the capacity and throughput
of a gateway or hub. This often concerns on-dock rail facilities
where containers are exiting / entering a port terminal on rail
instead of on truck, but the destination of these rail shipments
often goes much further inland. The
Alameda corridor is an example
of a short distance rail corridor of 20 miles (32 km) aiming at
expanding the throughout of the San Pedro port cluster by shifting
away containerized traffic from trucks. The "Agile Port" concept
is an expansion of this strategy by linking directly on dock rail
facilities to a nearby inland rail terminal where containers can
be sorted by destination. On one side, the maritime terminal increases
its throughout, in theory up to 40%, without additional land, while
on the other side, a nearby inland rail terminal facing less land
pressures is used to sort containerized shipments to their respective
inland destinations. The Port of Tacoma is considering implementing
this strategy. The Panama Canal Railway is a dedicated corridor
for maritime shipping lines to shuffle containers to and from the
Atlantic to the Pacific side.
Hinterland access. In this case, the rail corridor is
a strategy to expand the market area of a gateway, often linking
on-dock rail facilities to an inland distribution center where containers
are moved to trucks to their final destination. It applies well
when there is a dense hinterland such as along the Boston-Washington
corridor where the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey has
established the Port Inland Distribution Network to expend the port's
hinterland and provide alternatives for trucking over medium distances.
The Port of Virginia has also established an hinterland access strategy
with the Virginia inland port, a rail terminal located about 220
miles inland. It is thus not surprising that most initiatives have
taken place in this context.
Landbridge. A landbridge is a long distance continental
rail corridor linking gateways which insures the continuity of global
commodity chains. The North American landbridge is mainly the outcome
of growing transpacific trade and has undergone the containerized
revolution; container traffic represented approximately 80% of all
rail intermodal moves. Landbridges are particularly the outcome
of cooperation between rail operators eager to get lucrative long
distance traffic and maritime shippers eager to reduce shipping
time and costs, particularly from Asia.
Circum-hemispheric. This goes beyond rail corridors to
integrate a sequence of maritime and land transportation corridors
in a seamless fashion. A circular transport chain across a hemisphere
is thus established. Such a corridor does not yet exist and is likely
to be decades away. The Northern East-West Corridor the Atlantic
with the Pacific through the transsiberian has been in the design
phase for decades.
