According to a relative who has spent a lifetime being a transport nerd, rail is actually more suited to people transport and roads to goods. The reason is sur

According to a relative who has spent a lifetime being a transport nerd, rail is actually more suited to people transport and roads to goods. The reason is surprisingly obvious in hindsight. You bring 1000 people into a city centre train station and then they deliver themselves to their final destination. But goods either have to be sent to single purpose custom built lines and depots (eg power stations) or else transferred to road and taken onwards in a multitude of vehicles. I am personally very good at delivering myself autonomously on foot for several miles, and I will even transfer myself to another train in minutes without external equipment. Coal is generally less cooperative. Worse, if you decide to keep people in cars, you have to build parking spaces absolutely everywhere they might possibly want to go, whereas most goods just need to be dropped off. People on trains, goods on lorries.