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for than done. By its very nature, it requires
coordination among often bitterly competi-
tive transportation sectors, as well as help
from a host of state, local and federal agencies
with widely varying priorities. But the effort,
we believe, would generate a payoff measured
in the hundreds of billions of dollars.
however, it proved to be too good, encourag-
ing dependence on cars for commuting and
on trucks for long-haul freight. The Federal
that highway delays cost the trucking industry
more than $8 billion a year. All told, the Texas
Transportation Institute the independent
road use estimates that highway congestion
cost Americans an astonishing $87 billion in
more highway capacity. According to the
roughly $70 billion a fraction of the esti-
ahead of traffic growth.
In an era of chronic, rising conges-
tion and high fuel costs, it's no sur-
prise that shippers are attracted to
intermodal systems because they
offer ways to bypass highways for
much of the trip. Here, freight gen-
erally starts and finishes the journey
on trucks, but is moved long dis-
tances by water and rail.
Britain pioneered intermodal sys-
tems in the 1920s. Shipping systems
using the now-familiar steel boxes,
bearing the logos of shipping com-
into their own in the late 1960s with the
global standardization of containers.
States in the decades that followed. For one
thing, the deregulation of interstate truck and
rail transit gave shippers far greater flexibility
to choose modes and routes that minimized
costs. For another, the explosive growth of
global trade and the conversion of virtually
all non-bulk ocean-going freight to container
systems led to massive demand for intermo-
dal options at the ports.