>>1551396>railroads in the high-speed rail countries are mostly or entirely public or state-owned corporations. The Japan Railroads (JR)s are publicly traded companies.
>The trade-off for attracting a greater share of passenger travel to trains was a huge loss in rail’s share of freight movementsCitation? If we use the US an an example, handing passenger traffic off to Amtrak (1971) did not seem to affect volume of freight shipped, whereas the Staggers Act massively affected it.
https://www.railserve.com/stats_records/freight_railroad_traffic_volumes.htmlThis suggests that absent deregulation US freight rail would've continued its decline.
> This compares with 500 ton-miles per person in the European Union and less than 170 ton-miles per person in Japan.Not attempting to norm for population density or dispersion is stupid, especially as the US's population centres are on opposite sides of a continent.
>The other cost of emphasizing rail is a decline in total mobilityis similarly stupid. More compact urban design would decrease the length of travel. Number of passenger trips or passenger-km would be a better metric.
>As high-speed rail lines have been built in both Europe and Japan, rail’s share of freight has declined at least as fast as rail’s share of passengers.Which actually works against their thesis, as high speed rail runs on entirely separate tracks, and thus doesn't interfere with freight operations. If their thesis held, diversion of passengers to high speed rail ought to have some positive effect upon freight shipments.
>America’s rail system is the envy of the worldEvidently not, seeing as no one is trying to emulate it or hire American firms for their own projects.
