It would be interesting to know the fully baked all-externality cost of it vs alternatives. Tyre rubber, road maintenance, accidents, ship diesel, ports, people

It would be interesting to know the fully baked all-externality cost of it vs alternatives. Tyre rubber, road maintenance, accidents, ship diesel, ports, people, trains, insurance. Anything removing a) complex, expensive moving parts or b) significant externalities or c) people, is a win (except for that jobs thing, but Japan has reducing population). Trains would seem the logical alternative since it touches three big cities on the route, and you could presumably enter/exit multiple places on the route. Trains can handle some interruption, by orchestrating individual vehicle groups around. Surely for this to be as effective it would need a lot of that. Eg buffers, sidings, minor re-routing around issues. Main difference is the “track” moves, not just the vehicles. So you power and manage the track and the vehicles (shipping containers?) are mostly dumb and just need to be attached to it.