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Comment by ptudan | Hacker News Reader

I'd guess that in Europe there are a lot less long-haul drives than in the USA. Those are the ones that can pay big bucks and make O/O efficient. If you're going on a 6 hour round trip there's no reason you can't drop off the truck at HQ and head home to your family.

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Europe also kept maintaining their rail lines whereas the US has neglected ours because trucks were seen as a way to stick it to the rail companies. Our loss considering that freight trains are 4 times as efficient in terms of cargo ton-miles per gallon of diesel.

The US makes extensive use of freight rail. Like look at the per Capita number at the end of https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_rail_us...

The modal share for rail is also relatively high.

A lot of it is bulk commodities of course.

It just seems like for the quantity of stuff we move around, we should have more rail. We have massive wide open flat spaces to build rail lines, yet, we don't.

Transport by car or truck accounts for 20% of US carbon emissions, while freight rail is just 0.5%, and the freight rail is moving 28% of all cargo "ton-miles".

Rail doesn’t get things to the last mile and can be slow. Efficient in volume not in time.

America’s freight infrastructure is the envy of many country. It isn’t modern,fast, or even that well maintained, but it is extensive. Passenger rail is a completely different story in the US.

I’m guessing you’ve never looked at US rail in any aspect other than passenger rail? The US runs ~8x the rail freight that the EU does.

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