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The US has quite a bit of freight rail - that's what is currently one of the things holding passenger rail back. There might not be a train station, but there d
by crote 4y ago
The US has quite a bit of freight rail - that's what is currently one of the things holding passenger rail back. There might not be a train station, but there definitely is rail!
Meanwhile, Europe has so much passenger rail that freight is really tricky to run. For example, there is a really busy freight corridor from Rotterdam to Germany with rail dedicated solely to freight, but the rest of The Netherlands is pretty much 100% passenger. Europe uses a lot more inland shipping instead.
- jabl 4y agoIn Europe there's also problems with cross-border rail freight, partly due to incompatible systems, and partly due to bureocracy (national operators lobby politicians hard to protect their home turf, while trying to expand internationally, running into the same issue there with the local national operator). If you look at the share of freight transported by rail as a function of the distance, in the US that curve goes smoothly upwards, as long distances play into the economic benefits of rail, whereas in Europe there's a sharp drop beyond 500-1000km or so. Meaning that international shipments in Europe largely switches to trucks.
- mrsuprawsm 4y agoIf you mean the Betuwelijn, that is apparently still not at full capacity - only 70-80 trains per day instead of the planned 150 or so. Which I guess is still fairly busy by American standards (3-4 TPH now, planned for 6 TPH, averaged across the whole day)