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Comment by honkhonkpants | Hacker News Reader

America has only about 5x the freight rail traffic of Europe, while Europe has over 100x the passenger ridership that America has. I don't think the freight advantage (if it can be called that) justifies the disadvantage of our relative passenger immobility.

By the way 40% of US rail freight traffic by weight is coal, which is nothing to be proud of. If you erase the fact that USA is still a massive coal consumer, it starts to look like Europe moves as much freight as America does.

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> America has only about 5x the freight rail traffic of Europe, while Europe has over 100x the passenger ridership that America has. I don't think the freight advantage (if it can be called that) justifies the disadvantage of our relative passenger immobility.

It is "justified" if the American configuration (cars & trucks carry people, trains carry goods) uses less energy than the European one (cars & trucks carry goods, trains carry people), which I suspect it does when you do an apples-to-apples comparison and leave out metropolitan rail systems, where people-vs-freight tradeoffs don't apply.

> By the way 40% of US rail freight traffic by weight is coal, which is nothing to be proud of. If you erase the fact that USA is still a massive coal consumer, it starts to look like Europe moves as much freight as America does.

Again, to do a fair comparison you have to subtract coal from European transport systems.

I'm not sure how you arrived at your conclusion. US transportation energy consumption for all purposes (goods and passengers) is much higher per GDP per capita than for any European country. For example Germany has a per-capita GDP about 2/3rds at much as USA, but uses less than 1/3rd of the energy for transportation.

Not sure what you're getting at with ignoring metro rail systems.

The US has to transport goods and people longer distances, so all other things being equal US transportation will be more energy intensive. However, having the US switch over to the German mode of transportation, where goods move on trucks and people move on rails, will make the system more, not less energy intensive since goods contribute more ton-miles than people.

Freight lines and passenger lines are usually (though not always) different, especially on the country-side where you have no electrification for freight lines and HSR-dedicated lines.

In the USA, all passenger rail outside the northeast is not electrified and freight lines are a strict superset of passenger lines.

I still think you are presenting a false choice. It isn't necessary for the US to put goods on trucks in order for us to put people on trains. Nobody today drives their cars from the coal field in Gillette, Wyoming to the electric power plant in Montrose, Missouri. Adding trains for people will not somehow make the coal-hauling railroads of America more congested or less effective.

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