[sustran] Re: rail vs road freight distribution

[Sunny]

Dear Scott,

Thank you for your comments. In my opinion Indian railway system mostly 
connects every nook and corner of the country including the small 
villages. This is the only reason why the railways are the most used 
means of transport in India and especially by the poor. Secondly coming 
to the point of giving options for the farmers, the scene in India as 
far as I know and experienced is that the farmers do not directly do the 
sales but rather the middle persons do it. They buy the yield from the 
farmers and take them to the nearby cities, as agriculture is the major 
occupation of the country most of the states produce their food and 
where there is need of shipment it is done usually by a goods train. 
What I intended to say from my post is that building new roads would 
encourage the middle men to use their own lorries which they feel would 
reduce the travel time but on the other hand there will be an increased 
ownership of lorries. But on the other hand this would be a negative 
impact to the society as there is an increased risk of accidents and the 
lorry travel has its own economic impacts as Todd has cited in his 
latest reply.

Coming to HIV and relation to lorry drivers is important as there was 
not much improvement among some social groups on creating an awareness 
on condom usage. Some groups have opposed the idea of providing condom 
vending machines in public places saying that it is a shame on the 
society. I don't advocate lorry removal but suggest to increase the rail 
usage for freight purposes.

Sunny

D. Scott TenBrink wrote:
> Todd makes good points here regarding rail vs road subsidy.  I also 
> agree that a
> basic network formula does not reflect the distribution patterns of 
> nodes of use
> and production, the responsive change of nodes and network to one another as
> well as other forces, or the potential for production and consumption nodes to
> be one in the same.  Yet I do notice a tendency on this list to say that rail
> will simply replace road as a freight distribution system without considering
> the difference between the two networks, and the impact of these 
> differences on
> distribution.
>
> Stripping the main point from Oster's argument (and disregarding the somewhat
> unsettling breast-feeding obsession), he points out that rail has fewer nodes
> than road and that this results in roads being more effective medium for
> transport for the produce farmer.  I see two reasons that it is better for the
> farmer: he can ship on his own schedule instead of timing his shipments with
> the train and making reservations for space, and the road goes right from his
> farm to the market with no need to transfer goods.
>
> Todd makes the point that people are not randomly distributed, but 
> clumped into
> urban areas.  However, farms are quite widely dispersed and supermarkets tend
> to be (somewhat) evenly distributed across an urban area.  Thus, it 
> seems quite
> obvious why the farmer would choose to support road over rail, and I 
> think that
> was the point of the original message.
>
> Are people arguing that rail can accommodate the farmer better, or that the
> farmer should not have such a large voice in the decision (or something else
> completely)?  I do agree with Oster that Sunny overlooks the difficulties of
> switching from road to rail shipping, particularly for payloads that have
> widespread production/consumption locations.
>
> I also found the reference to HIV and lorry drivers to be a bit off.  
> Certainly
> HIV is a concern that desperately needs to be addressed regardless of
> profession.  Eliminating freight transport by road would be quite a 
> round-about
> and isolationist way to address it. I don?t think our goal is to limit
> opportunities for human interaction.  I would advocate education and condom
> distribution over lorry elimination.
>
>
> -Scott TenBrink