James Drogan

Keith, your comment reminds me of the following.

"Success takes a balance of forces, but technology is not always necessary and is almost never sufficient." Michael Scott-Morton

and

"Systems aligned with human motivational factors will sometimes work. Systems opposing such vectors will work poorly or not at all." John Gall

That said, in the case of intermodal freight transportation, my view is that information, processes, and people can be changed all we might wish, but we are laboring at the margins inasmuch as the fundamentals of the infrastructure and the way that infrastructure is operated need to be rethought. Business transformation and reengineering writ large, if you will.

Now the likelihood of the happening in a way that can be transformed into action is very, very small except in situations where a significant economic power (e.g., Maersk). Even then, it will likely only happen on selected trade lanes or components (e.g., a port) of a trade lane. There is some interesting thinking out there (e.g., Global Movement Management: Securing the Global Economy by Gould and Beckner at IBM; Toward a National Intermodal Transportation System - Final Report - NCIT by the National Commission on Intermodal Transportation), but there are few (no?) fora available for integrating and implementing these ideas. That is, they are nice research, but seem not to be leading to results.

I agree that this is a tough, tough nut to crack. In the inefficiency and ineffectiveness of the current system uncountable, but likely huge amounts of money and time are irretrievably lost. We may be constrained by socio-political-economic forces and sheer size of the problem to nibbling at the edges.

Can we nibble more thoughtfully? Probably so, but our approach to system analysis, particularly in the consideration of collateral effects, likely needs a tune-up. For example, what's the point of deeper dredging of the harbors if the inland transportation system is a dirt path?

And then there is the Doha Round.

There is a silver lining to all this. It makes for a pile of interesting work. And every once in awhile the blind pig will find an acorn.