By Ton-Miles the US leads the world in freight hauled. But for a variety of reasons, railroads are more interested in extracting profits from existing large cus

By Ton-Miles the US leads the world in freight hauled. But for a variety of reasons, railroads are more interested in extracting profits from existing large customers than they are in increasing mode share. A couple of reasons for this, railroads are natural monopolies with industrial facilities needing to be connected to a single rail line. The railroad companies are much more interested in hauling large bulk from single sources that are time insensitive than a heterogeneous mix of freight that needs to be switched and is competitive on timing with trucks. This results in RR policies like precision scheduled rail (PSR), that tries to precisely utilize rail and crews to shuttle long trains across territory. PSR is only oriented to reduce RR costs. If a PSR train is late, every other train is delayed. PSR has also come alongside regularly running trains that are much longer than sidings, which makes it impossible for other trains to pass. Everyone responds to incentives, and there are a couple of regulatory changes that could fix this. 1. Some level of regulation that penalizes RRs for delayed trains. PSR results in lower operating costs but the externality of delays isn't properly paid for by the RRs. 2. Increased technology investment like signalling improvements, positive train control and automatic couplers. 3. Some level of regulation of freight interchange along with timing and price regulations. You can send freight from an RR in Kansas to Louisianna, but you would have to go through two or more controlling RRs that would rather go point to point on their own network. I don't know what this regulation would look like. 4. Land value tax for tracks. Railroads are disincentivized from improving tracks, particularly with electrification. LVT would be hard to pass generally, but it makes a lot of sense to tax railroads less for electric tracks. Electrified tracks allow faster acceleration and electric locomotives are much more reliable than diesel locomotives. The railroads in the US make immense profits (BNSF makes $6B in profits a year). There are severe regulatory capture problems that prevent these advancements. I have read the Switzerland in particular has excellent freight rail that is speedy and used for smaller loads. I don't know their operating techniques that allow this.