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Transporte ferroviario
de mercancías
En el área temática: Ciencias Sociales

El transporte de mercancías por ferrocarril se define

como un modo de transporte en el que las mercancías
se transportan por tierra mediante vagones sobre vías.
Los envíos pueden realizarse en vagones individuales o
en trenes enteros, según el tipo de mercancías que se
transporten.

Definición generada por IA basada en:

Sistemas de transporte logístico , 2021

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Capítulos y artículos
Es posible que estos capítulos y artículos le resulten
relevantes para este tema.

Capítulo

Infraestructura y equipamiento de
transporte
2021, Sistemas de Transporte Logístico
Doctor en Medicina Sarder

3.4 Infraestructuras ferroviarias

El transporte de mercancías por ferrocarril es un modo de
transporte en el que los vagones de ferrocarril transportan
mercancías por tierra a través de vías. Los envíos pueden
realizarse en un solo vagón de ferrocarril o incluso pueden
organizarse en un tren entero, dependiendo de las mercancías
y las necesidades del transportista. Los envíos de vagones de
ferrocarril individuales pueden realizarse en muchos tipos
diferentes de vagones de ferrocarril especiales, como vagones
de tres pisos, vagones intermodales y vagones para mineral. Se
limitan a transportar mercancías solo donde hay vías ( Figs.
3.19–3.22 ).

Figura 3.19 . Vagones de ferrocarril con carga.

Figura 3.20 . Transportadores de automóviles de tres pisos.

Figura 3.21 . Vagones intermodales.

Figura 3.22 . Vagones de mineral.

• Transportadores de automóviles de tres pisos : estos

transportadores pueden transportar tres capas de carga,
que generalmente contienen automóviles.

• Vagones intermodales : estos contenedores pueden

transportar distintos tipos de carga. A veces, incluso pueden
apilarse en dos. Los vagones intermodales pueden ser
vagones estándar de 50′ (los más comunes), vagones
estándar de 60′, vagones con techo inclinado de 50′, vagones
con techo inclinado de 60′, vagones automáticos de 86′,
vagones plataforma de uso general (para transportar
 transformadores/tractores), vagones plataforma de
mamparo (para transportar tuberías, troncos, etc.) y
vagones plataforma de viga central (para transportar
madera, placas de yeso, etc.) (CSX.com).

• Vagones de mineral (vagones tolva) : transportan minerales,

tierra, granos y otros productos a granel pesados ​y sueltos.
Pueden estar cubiertos o descubiertos. Los tipos deLos
vagones tolva incluyen los vagones con cubierta, los
vagones con parte superior abierta (que transportan
carbón, grava, etc.) y los vagones góndola simples (que
transportan carbón, metal, etc.) (CSX.com). El último tipo de
vagón es el vagón cisterna. Los vagones cisterna están
especializados en líquidos a granel. Varían en tamaño y
forma y transportan todo tipo de líquidos, desde jarabe de
maíz hasta productos químicos (CSX.com).
El mantenimiento es uno de los factores más importantes para
que los ferrocarriles funcionen de manera eficiente. Hasta el
siglo XX, no había ningún equipo mecanizado disponible para
realizar el mantenimiento de los ferrocarriles. El equipo que se
utilizaba antes de esa época eran picos y mazos básicos. Hoy en
día, existen varios tipos diferentes de equipos que son clave en
el mantenimiento de la infraestructura ferroviaria
(Americanrails.com). Este equipo incluye ( Figs. 3.23–3.26 ):

Figure 3.23. Ballast cleaners.

Figure 3.24. Undercutters.

Figure 3.25. Tampers.

Figure 3.26. Rail grinders.

1. Ballast cleaners: a machine that specializes in cleaning the

railway track ballast of its impurities.

2. Undercutters: similar to ballast cleaners except instead of

cleaning the stone it scoops it up so it can be replaced.

3. Tampers: machine used to pack the track ballast under the

railway tracks to make the tracks more durable.

4. Rail grinders: maintenance vehicle or train used to restore

the tracks and remove irregularities and extend the life of
the rails.
As rail progresses it is almost certain that the infrastructure
used today will eventually become obsolete, which will include
the equipment to maintain them. In the meantime, this
equipment is essential to maintaining railway operations and
infrastructure.

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Chapter
Overview of transportation
logistics
2021, Logistics Transportation Systems
MD Sarder

1.7.2 Rail
Rail transportation is characterized by "a high level of
economic and territorial control since most rail companies are
operating in a situation of monopoly, as in Europe, or oligopoly,
as in North America (Notteboom, Rodrigue, & Slack, 1998).” Rail
is the choice of companies that need to ship goods long distance
that are generally not time sensitive. This mode of
transportation is considered cheap, efficient, and
environmentally friendly. “Rail Transport is a ‘green’ system, in
that its consumption of energy per unit load per km is lower
than road modes (Notteboom, Rodrigue, & Slack, 1998).” The
major components of rail transportation system are railcar,
railroad, and rail terminal. A railroad car (see Fig. 1.9) or
railcar (American and Canadian English), railway wagon or
railway carriage (British English and UIC), also called a train
car or train wagon, is a vehicle used for the carrying of cargo or
passengers on railroad or railway. With containerized unit
trains, economies of scale are quickly realized with the
declining marginal cost of each additional container added to
each shipment. Freight must be carried on fixed routes and all
transshipment of goods must be conducted at rail terminals.
Transshipment of freight from railcars represents that majority
of time consumed during rail transit. Operating a rail system
involves using regular (scheduled), but rigid, services. Rail
transport is also subject to governmental regulation regarding
the maximum allowable weight of freight shipments and height
restrictions.
Figure 1.9. Rail transportation.
The largest concentrations are on routes between Pacific Coast
ports and Chicago, southern California and Texas, and Chicago
and New York. This is because there is a higher concentration
of people around the bigger city areas, which means more
business for suppliers since the demand is higher and reflects
the higher population. Rail transportation has several limiting
factors in its implementation. The terminal requirements for
rail hubs significantly increase the operating costs.

There are four different classes of freight railroads: Class I,

regional, local line haul, and switching & terminal. Class I
railroads are defined as those with revenue of at least $346.8
million in 2006. They comprise just 1% of the number of freight
railroads, but account for 67% of the industry’s mileage, 90% of
its employees, and 93% of its freight revenue. Seven Class I
freight railroads operate in the United States: Burlington
Northern Santa Fe Railway, CSX Transportation, Grand Trunk
Corporation, Kansas City Southern Railway, Norfolk Southern
Combined Railroad Subsidiaries, Soo Line Corporation, and
Union Pacific Railroad. Fig. 1.10 shows the Class I rail network
in the United States with volume of freight movements. A
regional railroad is a line haul railroad with at least 350 miles
(560 km) and/or revenue between $40 million and the Class I
threshold. There were 33 regional railroads in 2006. Most have
between 75 and 500 employees. Local line haul railroads
operate less than 350 miles (560 km) and earn less than $40
million per year (most earn less than $5 million per year). In
2006, there were 323 local line haul railroads. They generally
perform point-to-point service over short distances.
Figure 1.10. Class I rail network with volume of shipment in the
United States.
Rail terminals, often known as intermodal rail terminals, serve
critical roles in the rail transportation system. Three major
components interact in rail terminal operations: rail track
operations, container storage yard (see Fig. 1.11) operations,
and gate operations. The purpose is to ensure that each
operation interacts efficiently with the other since a delay with
one operation will have impacts on the others. For instance, a
problem with storage yard operations will create delays both at
the rail track and gate operations and have an impact on the
terminal productivity and the quality of its services.

Figure 1.11. Container storage yard.

Railroads are the most expensive component of a rail

transportation system. Railroads are permanent roads
comprised of lines of rails fixed to ties and laid on roadbeds
that provide a track for railcars drawn by locomotives or
propelled by self-contained motors. Railroads limit the
movement of railcars and hence the freight movement.
Switching and terminal (S&T) carriers are railroads that
primarily provide switching and/or terminal services,
regardless of revenue. They perform pickup and delivery
services within a certain area.

Due to the huge investment need in rail transportation system,

the connection to freight points is limited. Once the investment
is made, the operating costs are reasonable and comparative to
truck mode. These operating costs are correlated to the central
location of the rail hubs usually located within urban areas.
These operating costs can also be measured in the rail capital
investment and annual maintenance fees associated with
construction and upkeep. Secondly, rail transportation is
constrained by physical geography. Freight rail transportation
rarely tolerates more than a 1% gradient during transit.
Gradients during transit have fuel consumption and time
implications. Additionally, rail transportation has struggled to
adopt a universal standard for the gauge of rail used during
construction. This may seem a small detail but in actuality it is
very detrimental to the integration of transcontinental rail lines
that cross multiple borders. While these constraints may seem
like major flaws in rail transportation there remain a number
of advantages to this mode of transportation. The first
advantage is that freight shipment by rail is more efficient than
road transport. Table 1.5 provides a general comparison of all
modes of transportation and their unique characteristics and
ideal operating scenarios. Rail transport can also easily be
combined with other modes of transportation for freight
shipments. Methods such as “piggy backing” are used to
efficiently combine road and rail freight shipments for inland
shipment. This is just one of the ways rail transportation can be
modified for each shipment.

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Chapter

Introduction to the Technology,

Applications, and Modal Choice of
Land Transport
2019, Sustainable Transportation and Smart Logistics
Steven S. Harrod

4.6 Rail Freight Service Design

Rail freight service design is particularly different from
passenger service design, because freight does not move itself.
In a passenger service design, two trains may connect at a
station, and the passengers will transport themselves from one
train to another, but in freight, some transfer mechanism must
be provided. Rail freight is also different from road freight,
because it is collective, and, excepting unit trains, depends on
consolidation or intermodal connections. The efficient
management of rail freight depends on the blending of
different loads and destinations into economical combined
flows, and at each transition point, these loads must be handled
with some transaction expense. In rail freight, there is a
fundamental trade-off between the handling cost at
consolidation and the economy gained by consolidation.

Railways offer freight service in three general categories: unit

trains, carload freight, and intermodal freight. Unit trains are
dedicated trains for a single cargo such as coal, oil, or grain,
that operate in continuous shuttles for a single customer. They
are managed as relatively constant repetitive processes, and
there is little attention to this subject in the literature.
Intermodal trains can be either trains that carry shipping
containers or trains that carry road trailers. Intermodal traffic
is further divided amongst trains that operate in a fixed shuttle
pattern, like unit trains, and trains that divide and join at
junctions much like carload freight traffic. The reader is
referred to Gorman and Harrod (2011) for a survey of
management practices for the resources of rail freight.

Carload freight traffic is where the great management

challenges lie. The term “carload” asserts that a customer has
sufficient freight volume to fill a complete freight car. Usually,
the car is loaded at a private rail siding at the customer's
location, and delivered to another siding at the destination.
However, with the decline in rail infrastructure and changes in
industrial location development, many freight customers must
now have their shipments transloaded from rail cars to trucks
for final pickup or delivery. Carload freight service depends
greatly on economies of scale in order for the service network
to be economical. It depends on the low marginal cost of
delivering one car, for once the commitment is made to drive a
train and maintain handling facilities, the additional cost to add
one freight car to a train is very low. Of course, when all the
customers ship small numbers of freight cars, it becomes
important to maintain satisfaction and have as many customers
as possible, and it becomes important to coordinate and mix
the traffic into combined trains as efficiently as possible.

In many networks there is a complicated interrelationship

between the routes of individual cars, the routes and schedules
of trains (where a “train” means the movement of a
locomotive), and the “blocking” of groups of cars. This arises
because, first of all, in many railway networks, there is more
than one path between origin and destination, and secondly, in
many operating plans, there is more than one train or
combination of trains on those paths. Further, the path
between origin and destination may be supported by a direct
train or only by a combination of trains that cover part of the
journey, and there may be more than one choice of
intermediate point to switch cars between these trains.
The switching or handling of a car between trains at a yard or
junction is an additional cost, so railways seek to avoid this cost
by “blocking” cars into groups that will be switched together,
not individually. However, if there is not a great deal of
demand for a particular block, cars will be held in queue until a
sufficient number of cars present themselves to make that
block cost-efficient, delaying the journey of those cars. There is
then a management tradeoff between the number of blocks and
the expected transit time of the freight car through the
network. A smaller number of defined blocks means the blocks
reach their economic size sooner, and cars depart sooner, but
there are necessarily more car handlings at yards. A larger
number of defined blocks means that cars are more likely to
travel with few or no handlings en route, but there could be a
delay if there are not sufficient cars ready to travel to make the
block cost-effective to deliver. The reader is referred to Harrod
and Gorman (2011) for a survey of the planning strategies for
carload freight.

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Chapter

Railways
2023, Geographic Information Systems for Intermodal
Transportation
EunSu Lee Ph.D., CPIM, CSCP, GISP

The freight train’s tracks also share the tracks with passenger
trains in the United States [1].

• Passenger rail: Intercity passenger rail, commuter rail, and

tourism rail.

• Freight rail: international, interstate, regional, and short

lines.

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Chapter
Transportation Systems and
Security Risks
2015, Protecting Transportation
R. William Johnstone

Freight Rail
Freight railroads deliver goods and commodities to virtually all
industrial, wholesale, and retail segments of the American
economy. They are composed of a diverse array of 558 privately
owned carriers of various sizes. In the absence of any
nationwide freight rail operator, the companies have developed
a series of arrangements that allow for the transfer of rail cars
between carriers and for one carrier’s trains to operate on the
tracks of another railroad. The freight rail companies are
divided into categories based either on their revenues (class I,
class II, and class III) or the size of their rail networks (class I,
regional and local or short line), with the resulting divisions
being very similar in each system.

• There are currently seven class I operators (same

designation in both classification systems), with a minimum
operating revenue of $401 million. Although they represent
less than 1% of all freight operators, they operate on 69% of
the track, use 90% of the industry’s workforce, and generate
94% of its revenue.

• Class II freight railroads are those with revenues of

between $40 million and $400 million, and the related
category of regional railroads must operate on at least 350
miles of track.

• Class III freight railroads have revenues of under $39

million, and local or short line railroads operate on less
than 350 miles of track. A subcategory of the latter is
switching or terminal railroads, which primarily provide
connecting services between freight carriers in major cities
(U.S. Department of Homeland Security, 2010, p. 283;
Association of American Railroads, 2012, p. 1).

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Chapter
Protecting Critical Infrastructure
2013, Security and Loss Prevention (Sixth Edition)
Philip P. Purpura

Freight Rail
Freight rail plays an important role in our economy by linking
raw materials to manufacturers and carrying a wide variety of
fuels and finished goods. In addition, numerous passenger rail
systems operate at least partially over freight rail tracks. There
are about 140,000 miles of railroad track in the United States
used by carriers who employ about 180,000 employees. This
business generates approximately $63 billion in revenues
annually (U.S. Department of Homeland Security, 2010g: 283).

The freight rail subsector is complex because of differences in

design, structure, and purpose. The differences result in
disadvantages and advantages for security. For example, the
size of the rail system makes responding to various threat
scenarios difficult. At the same time, trains must follow specific
routes, so if one were hijacked, for example, it could be
diverted off a mainline by authorities. Similarly, if a bridge or
tunnel were destroyed, the rail line would suffer disruption;
however, national-level disruptions would be limited.

Numerous public and private sector groups partner to protect

freight rail. These include TSA, FEMA, CBP and USCG—all
within DHS, and the DOT, DOD, and DOJ. In the private sector,
partners include the Association of American Railroads and
several railway companies.

A serious risk in this subsector is the transportation of hazmat,

especially through populated areas; therefore, industry and
government coordination is necessary for decision making.
Security and safety of containerized cargo are other challenges.
Controversy has developed over the markings of containers to
indicate the type of hazardous materials being transported.
Although placards on rail cars provide helpful information to
first responders during an emergency, the information can also
assist terrorists planning an attack.

Nearly all locomotives and rail cars are tagged with automatic
ID transponders that record and report location as it passes
detectors. Such data is transmitted to centralized control
systems. Consequently, cybersecurity is important.

The railroad industry maintains police and security forces for

its individual railroad entities. The Association of American
Railroads (n.d.) uses a multistage alert system and open lines of
communications with government officials. This group’s
Railroad Security Task Force applied national intelligence
community “best practices” to develop a security plan.

Freight rail protection initiatives include the following (U.S.

Department of Homeland Security, 2010g: 291–300; White
House, 2003a: 57):

• The rail mode works with the DOT to assess risk, security,
and resilience.

• A surface transportation Information Sharing and Analysis

Center (ISAC) exchanges information related to both cyber
and physical threats.

• DHS and DOT partner with other federal agencies, state and
local governments, and industry to improve the security
and safety of hazmat.

• DHS and DOT work with the rail mode to identify and
explore technologies and processes to efficiently screen rail
passengers and baggage and to secure containers and
detect threatening content.

• DHS and DOT work with industry to delineate

infrastructure protection roles and responsibilities for
surge requirements during emergencies.

• An emphasis on employee awareness, reporting suspicious

activity, controlling sensitive information, and employee ID.

Are Rail Cars Containing Toxic Cargo “Sitting

Ducks”?
Authorities face an enormous number of potential terrorist
targets. Risks must be prioritized, since resources are
limited. Toxic substances within rail cars that are in transit
or at a standstill present attractive targets to terrorists and
other criminals (Straw, 2011b). Unfortunately, as public
safety agencies are doing their best to protect citizens from a
variety of threats, inside their jurisdiction or nearby are
toxic substances, necessary for our everyday lives,
unprotected. In one case, a reporter and photographer
gained easy access to an unguarded rail facility close to New
York City and observed rail cars filled with deadly chlorine,
ammonia, and other chemicals. They also spotted unlocked
switching devices that could be used to cause an accident
(Kocieniewski, 2006).

Imagine the carnage from a bomb placed on one of these rail

cars, or a bomb placed on such a rail car sitting near fuel
storage tanks or other target to facilitate a cascading effect.
Although chemical plant security is improving, the
shipments linking these plants to suppliers and customers
must also be improved.
The U.S. Naval Research Lab reports that each year railroads
transport 105,000 rail cars of toxic chemicals and 1.6 million
rail cars of other hazardous materials. They estimate that an
attack on such a rail car could kill 100,000 people. The TSA is
working with railroads to reduce the time such rail cars are
sitting unprotected. In early 2007, the TSA began monitoring
rail cars containing toxic substances. Specifically, the TSA is
recording how long these rail cars are stopped on tracks or
sitting in unprotected storage yards in urban areas.
Rerouting to reduce the danger to cities is an option;
however, this would force transporting the toxic substances
in trucks, which could be more dangerous (Frank, 2007).
More recently, Straw (2011b) reported that DOT and TSA
issued regulations to mitigate these vulnerabilities through
risk-based hazmat routing, secure custody of stationary rail
cars, and location tracking of cars when in transit.

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Chapter

Transportation safety and security

2021, Introduction to Homeland Security (Sixth Edition)
Jane A. Bullock, ... Damon P. Coppola

Freight rail
The US freight railroad network is intertwined throughout the
country, passing through or reaching within miles of almost
every community. Freight rail is still a viable and marketable
alternative to roadway or air transport mechanisms, and the
economy remains heavily dependent on it for the transport of
both raw materials and marketable goods. In fact, the freight
rail network is a $70 billion per year industry that still connects
many of the nation’s distribution hubs and shipping ports
(Association of American Railroads, 2018).

At present, there is approximately 140,000 miles of active

railroad track that is utilized by approximately 600 common
carrier freight railroads (ArcBest, 2018). These railroads serve
nearly every industrial, wholesale, retail, and resource-based
sector of the US economy and are responsible for transporting
a majority of the goods and commodities Americans depend on.
This system includes both large and small independent
companies. In the absence of one single coast-to-coast freight
rail operator, these carriers have developed various
interchange, joint services, and voluntary access agreements
that allow for the transfer of rail cars between carriers, as well
as the operation of one carrier’s train on the tracks of another.
This type of system has maintained a high level of operational
efficiency for the railroads and has helped to further lower
transportation costs. It does, however, increase the complexity
of the security operation needed to support it.

Freight railroads are divided into three classes based on their

size and operating revenues:

• Class I: Railroads that operate over large areas, in multiple

states, and concentrate on the long-haul, high-density,
intercity traffic lines with annual revenues over $457.9
million. There are currently seven Class I railroads, which
account for approximately 69% of all freight rail mileage,
90% of all employees in the industry, and 94% of revenue
(Soy Transportation Coalition, 2019; Association of
American Railroads, 2018).

• Class II: Railroads that operate on at least 350 miles of

active lines and have annual revenues between $36.6 and
$457.9 million.

• Class III: Railroads that operate on less than 350 miles of

line and generate less than $36.6 million in annual
revenues.

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Chapter

Transportation Safety and Security

2018, Homeland Security (Second Edition)
Jane A. Bullock, ... Damon P. Coppola

Freight Rail
The US freight railroad network is intertwined throughout the
country, reaching within miles of almost every community. It is
still a viable and marketable alternative to roadway or air
freight, and the economy remains heavily dependent on it for
the transport of both raw materials and marketable goods. In
fact, the freight rail network is a $60 billion per year industry
that that still connects many of the nation’s distribution hubs
and shipping ports.
At present, there are approximately 140,000 miles of active
railroad track that are utilized by 565 common carrier freight
railroads. These railroads serve nearly every industrial,
wholesale, retail, and resource-based sector of the US economy
and are responsible for transporting a majority of the goods
and commodities Americans depend on. This system includes
both large and small independent companies. In the absence of
one single coast-to-coast freight rail operator, these carriers
have developed various interchange, joint services, and
voluntary access agreements that allow for the transfer of rail
cars between carriers as well as the operation of one carrier’s
train on the tracks of another. This type of system has
maintained a high level of operational efficiency for the
railroads and has helped to further lower transportation costs.
It does, however, increase the complexity of the security
operation needed to support it.

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Review article

Decarbonizing North America’s rail

sector, international initiatives and
local opportunities
2023, Transportation Research Interdisciplinary
Perspectives
Mohsen Mandegari, ... Jack (John) Saddler

1 Introduction
Although the world's rail sector transports 7% of global freight
and 8% of the world’s motorized passenger movements it only
consumes 2% of the energy used by the transport sector and is
responsible for just 0.3% of the direct CO2 emissions derived
from fossil fuel combustion (Rungskunroch et al., 2021). On
average, rail requires 12 times less energy and emits 7–11 times
less GHGs per passenger-km travelled than private vehicles and
airplanes. This makes rail the most efficient mode of motorized
passenger transport. Also, similar to shipping, rail is one of the
most energy-efficient and least carbon-intensive ways to
transport goods and people (Rungskunroch et al., 2021).

The rail sector is often divided into the three services and
infrastructures of, urban (light and metro), conventional
(suburban and intercity) and high-speed-and-freight.
Collectively, in 2016, passengers travelled over 4 trillion km
(15% of which was high speed) by rail. Although two-third of
high-speed rail track is located in China, followed by Japan
(17%) and the EU (12%) (Fig. 1) (IEA, 2022), in jurisdictions such
as Europe, both high-speed and urban rail are primarily
powered by electricity. By contrast, diesel is the predominant
fuel used for freight and passenger trains in most other
countries, particularly North America. Regarding future carbon
emissions, the global use of railways has been increasing with
passenger kilometers growing by 63% (from 2.4 to more than
3.9 trillion passenger kilometers) over the 13-year period of
2004-to-2017 (Rajendran and Popfinger, 2022).

Fig. 1. Freight rail activity in selected countries, 1995–2016 (left)

and share of passenger and freight trains in total train-km,
2016 (right) (IEA, 2022) Note: Conventional rail infrastructure
used by both passenger and freight rail.
As rail is recognized as being the most energy-efficient way of
moving passengers and in-land freight around, a “modal shift”
from trucking freight to more effective rail freight has been
advocated as an effective way to reduce GHG emissions (Hao et
al., 2015). As mentioned previously, although high-speed and
urban rail are powered by electricity in some jurisdiction such
as Europe, to ensure they are truly low-CI operations, they need
to be powered by “green” electricity such as solar, wind and
hydro (Rajendran and Popfinger, 2022). Although diesel still
predominates in many parts of the world, the ratio of
passenger-to-freight transportation via rail varies significantly.
For example, North America has a very high ratio of freight-to-
passengers with nearly all of the railways running on diesel. By
contrast, rail in Japan is primarily electrified and transports
mostly passengers rather than freight. While China is more
evenly balanced, the majority of its electricity is derived from
coal (IEA, 2022).

In 2017, the total global energy use for rail was 53 million
tonnes of oil equivalent (Mtoe) while the IEA’s (International
Energy Agency) base case scenario predicts it will reach 88
Mtoe by 2050. More ambitiously, the IEA’s high-case scenario
predicts a 125% increase (125 Mtoe) by 2050 (IEA, 2022). Both
scenarios project an increase in rail electrification with half of
the world’s rail freight moved using electricity. However, this is
unlikely to be the case in North America which currently has
about 600,000 km of track (Fig. 1), covers a large area, in most
cases has a low population density, with significant upfront
costs and interruption of existing service required to increase
electrification (Allen and Newmark, 2018).

Although there has been limited work on how rail might be

decarbonized while using the existing infrastructure, recent
work has highlighted the important role that policy will have to
play (Rungskunroch et al., 2021). When researchers used Life
Cycle Assessment (LCA) to determine the CO2 emissions
resulting from the running and maintenance stages of rail
operations, they concluded that this accounted for at least 60%
of the sectors total carbon emissions (Rungskunroch et al.,
2021). In related work, techno-economic analysis (TEA) was
used to assess decarbonization options such as electrification
by overhead line, hydrogen and batteries for freight railway
using case studies in Norway and the USA (Zenith et al., 2020).
Although diesel was economically superior to batteries and
hydrogen (in the US), it was suggested that further development
of battery and fuel-cell technologies could close the gap by 2030
(Zenith et al., 2020). When California assessed the cost-
effectiveness of greenhouse gas emission reduction resulting
from increased use of high-speed rail for urban transportation,
the increased investment in public transit moved enough
automobile related travel to the new system, resulting in both
economic and GHG savings (Matute and Chester, 2015). While
some researchers have assessed the potential of hybrid and
hydrogen-based fuels to decarbonise the North American rail-
freight sector (Oldknow et al., 2021) other studies have also
included other modes of transportation such as trucking,
aviation and shipping (Shankar et al., 2019). A similar
approach, which combined all forms of freight when assessing
the GHG emissions associated with this aspect of transport,
looked at scenarios through to 2050 (Hao et al., 2015), while
others related studies compared the efficiency of Canada’s rail
and road freight transport network with various EU member
states and the USA (Wiegmans et al., 2018). Related work
highlighted the preferred approaches that could be used to
mitigate greenhouse gas emissions associated with freight
transport (Miklautsch and Woschank, 2022). However, several
of these technologies (e.g., increased electrification) are
unlikely to be used in Canada (Hammond et al., 2020).

The sparse nature of the available literature on how the rail

sector might be decarbonised was the primary catalyst for the
work discussed below. The various low-CI fuel options that
might be pursued by the Canadian rail sector to reduce its GHG
emissions are highlighted.

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Chapter

Evolution and Trends of Transport

Demand
2019, Modelización de la demanda de transporte
VA Profillidis , GN Botzoris

2.4.4 Evolución y tendencias de la

demanda de transporte ferroviario de
mercancías
La demanda de transporte ferroviario de mercancías a nivel
mundial (expresada en toneladas-kilómetro, t-km) durante los
últimos 35 años presenta fluctuaciones ( Fig. 2.20 ):

Figura 2.20 . Evolución de la demanda de transporte ferroviario

de mercancías a nivel mundial.

Fuente: Elaboración propia, con base en datos de Refs. [38,136] [38]

[136] .

• tasas de crecimiento lentas hasta 1990,

• tasas de crecimiento negativas entre 1990 y 1995, debido
principalmente a la reestructuración de las economías de
los países ex socialistas de Europa, para los cuales la mayor
parte del transporte de mercancías se hacía anteriormente
por ferrocarril,

• altas tasas de crecimiento entre 2000 y 2008, debido al

aumento del tráfico de mercancías en China, Estados
Unidos y Rusia, como resultado de las altas tasas de
crecimiento económico; esto se reflejó en el transporte de
mercancías para productos que normalmente se
transportan por ferrocarril (productos a granel y materias
primas),

• decadencia y estancamiento desde 2008.

Hasta 2008, el transporte de mercancías por ferrocarril tuvo
tasas de crecimiento positivas en Estados Unidos, Canadá,
China, Rusia e India y retrocedió o se estancó en la UE-28 ( fig.
2.21 ).
 Figura 2.21 . Evolución de la demanda de transporte ferroviario
de mercancías por algunos países.

Fuente: Elaboración propia, con base en datos de Refs. [4,38,136] [4]

[38] [136] .

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Términos relacionados:
Sistema de transporte,

Transporte de mercancías,

Transporte por carretera,

Transporte ferroviario, Flota de vehículos,

Materiales peligrosos, Patrias, Estocástico,

Red de transporte, Comunidad Europea.

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