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We don’t need electric transport trucks, we need to get rid of trucks

November 17, 2017

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At the 1967 International Container Conference in Genoa, Italy, Gabriel Alter (my late dad) outlined what he called a “land bridge” for moving goods in containers from ship to rail to truck for freight distribution across the country. With the development of the interstate highway system, the launch of the Boeing 747 and of course, the dawn of the shipping container era, he saw the transportation world changing.

He would tell me that “freight belongs on rails, and people belong in planes and cars, it is crazy to mix them up on the roads.” He projected terrible congestion on the highways and in the ports if transport trailers kept taking more of the freight that the railways used to carry in their old boxcars. He was certain that many would die in crashes between cars and trucks, that it was a fundamentally dangerous mix.

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