Quote:
Originally Posted by accord1999
Well, Europe shows that you can't have both high passenger-km and freight ton-km.
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And Russia and China show you
can. The reason Europe's freight ton-km's are so low is that the freight railroads have to compete against the sealanes ... and freighters will always beat freight trains for sheer bulk haulage.
By contrast, Russia and China have plenty of inland population centers. The US has basically four regions (the East and West coasts, Great Lakes, and Gulf of Mexico) where sea haulage can compete against rail freight, none of which affects lucrative transcontinental haulage; China one (its eastern seaboard); and Russia de facto none (yes, it has tons of seacoast, but relatively few coastal population centers: St. Petersburg, Rostov-on-Don, and Vladivostok function more as gateways to inland population centers).