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Transporting humans by train makes sense for lines with a huge number of humans wanting to cross. The length isn't really relevant, except in the sense that the

• capitainenemo 2y ago
  Typically if there's 2 points that a large number of humans want to travel between, a large amount of goods needs to travel between them as well. If the majority of good between those places are using an inefficient mode of transport (like trucks) then freight rail is not being sufficiently incentivised. In Europe it's pretty clear that the lines were not built for this. The reason I brought up length was that if the distances are longer, efficiencies of trains over trucks goes up steadily and by a large degree. And at the same time, the longer the distance, the more air travel makes sense for the humans in terms of time. While it's definitely true that rail makes more sense than car or plane for human transport efficiency, the problem is that if that is causing even a modest reduction in the far heavier freight, passenger rail is more harmful than helpful. So until the vast majority of transport of freight is by rail, better to leave the roads and planes to the humans.