>>1551430>carrying more than six times as many ton-miles of freight each year as all of the EU-27 nations combined.But the US does substantially more total freight shipment, which inflates values across categories. EU-27 has 1.6 trillion tonne-km of shipment by road, compared to 2.96 trillion tonne-km by road for the US. The US requires longer journeys for passengers and freight alike, which distorts tonne-km comparisons.
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Freight_transport_statisticshttps://www.bts.gov/us-ton-miles-freight>Freight doesn’t care about being crammed into tight spaces, delayed a few hours, or being jerkily transferredFound someone who only flies business class or above.
>rail travel can’t compete with planes that need almost no infrastructure to go faster than any trainExcept it can and does compete. The post-9/11 security theatre certainly does air travel speeds no favours.
Overall, the guy just asserted that there was a correlation, and that the only cause was whether passenger rail meaningfully existed, without really demonstrating it. By the figures he cites, a supermajority in passenger auto travel share for the US only converts into a slim (by some sources, non-existent) plurality for rail freight share. That alone ought to show that the connection is weak and that other things are going on.
For example, much freight rail traffic in the US is bulk cargo that would likely be carried by ship in the EU or Japan. Bulk cargo is of lower value (and in many cases uneconomic to ship by truck), which is why, using Department of Transportation data (
https://www.bts.gov/newsroom/2017-north-american-freight-numbers), road traffic in the US has the majority of the value of freight shipped (as in pic related, figures in billion USD)
