> It's by far the most efficient method of transport. In what sense do you think it's not?

It's called "hydrodynamics", google it.

A purpose built high speed electric train pushes around air, not water, and can move the same cargo with far less power and definitely less pollution. Instead of doing 20 knots it would travel at 200 to 300 miles per hour. It could also plot a more direct route between, say, Los Angeles and New York than going through the Panama Canal.

A typical container ship doing that route burns over a MILLION gallons of bunker fuel. And there are tens of thousands of ships making that trip per year. When I checked, fuel costs for the trip were in the order of USD $1.5 million plus approximately $300K canal crossing fees.

Between fuel, fees, crew, bonding, and other operating costs each trip probably costs well beyond two million dollars. That's the competition. The high speed cargo train I envision should be able to make the coast-to-coast trip for far less money, pollute less and make a nice profit in the process.

The part that is equally important is that such a train system would have vast ramifications across industry segments. I could see it creating hundreds of thousands of jobs, if not millions. I would feed the industrial base with much-needed cash. It would provide a unique opportunity to build a massive power and data backbone to service the next hundred years of growth, including a transition to electric cars and trucks. It would also provide a solid business advantage to the North American continent for the next 100+ years. The advantages only multiply as oil price increases.

Looking at this as just an idea to get containers on a new-fangled high-speed cargo train would be to miss what lives below the tip of the huge iceberg such a national project would represent.

BTW, the idea isn't to eliminate all container ships. The only way to make that happen would be to create a project of unprecedented international cooperation that would, effectively, connect the continents with high speed cargo rail.

An setup connecting US and Canadian Pacific ports to the Gulf of Mexico and US and Canadian Atlantic ports would cut cargo travel times from Pacific to Atlantic from about two weeks to a day or two at the most.

If you can get cargo from US Pacific to US Atlantic in two days you can now compete with the Suez Canal in getting goods from Asia to Europe (about 30 days).

Container ships could now travel from China to the US Pacific coast. They'd transition cargo to land-based high-speed trains for a trip to the Atlantic. Once on the other coast container ships would take the cargo to Europe and other destinations. It would be cheaper, faster and pollute a hell of a lot less.

Strategically speaking, this would also place the US in a very unique position as the preferred cargo travel route between major world-wide sources and destinations. This has to be good. And it would be an advantage easily good for a century or more.

Going further, I could see a new generation of container ships developed to service the new routes. The idea being to maximize performance at every level.

Yes, I put a effort into researching this a nearly every level. It's hard to post references and links here because the information is spread all over the place and you really need to do a bunch of math to see the logic. It was very easy to conclude that high speed passenger rail in the US is nothing more than highly refined political horse shit. It has nearly no value and it will be a constant drain of resources as we keep them running for the few people who will use them. You would have to both massively modify American cities, roads and culture for them to begin to make sense.

Don't get me wrong, I also understand it would be easier to prove the existence of god than to build a new true high speed transcontinental cargo rail system. We are at an age where we are incapable of approaching large projects due to, well, a million reasons. So, yeah, this, to some extent, is nothing more than a somewhat pointless spreadsheet exercise.