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Comment by macspoofing | Hacker News Reader

>People tell me the reasons that everything is more expensive than in Switzerland

US is cheaper than Switzerland for pretty much any product. If you are talking about train service, then the reason for that is because US (and Canada) prioritize freight traffic. Freight traffic is much more efficient in North America than in Europe [1] and unfortunately (or fortunately) is prioritized over passenger traffic.

Honestly, I think America made the better decision.

[1]https://www.freightwaves.com/news/why-is-europe-so-absurdly-...

"European railways had no incentive to take risks to re-engineer and spend billions of euros to increase clearances and rework tunnel heights for double-stacked railcars, because the European railway business model was about moving passengers and not freight – the opposite of how North America dealt with its railroad system. "

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Switzerland moved 40% of all freight traffic kilometerd to the rails too, which is really a lot. (https://www.bfs.admin.ch/bfsstatic/dam/assets/10547450/maste...)

You're going to have to provide some context. I don't know what you're trying to argue.

Just wanted to clarify that this is not valid for the whole continent and it would work for western europe to move the traffic on rails.

A 40% share of tonne-km by rail in Switzerland is similar to the figure for the USA. It's other European countries that have too much road freight.

Note that ships are much more used in Europe.

https://transportgeography.org/?page_id=1828

The passenger modal share for rail in CH is 21%:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_rail_usag...

For the US it is 0.3%.

Given that CH is land-locked, it's not surprising that freight modal share is 46%, because it has to get inland from a port in some way:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_rail_usag...

This is higher than the US, but give that 127M Americans (40%) live in counties that are on the coast, it's probably not too hard to get things to them:

* https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/population.html

* https://www.livescience.com/18997-population-coastal-areas-i...

Heck, Los Angeles county has a population (10M) larger than CH (8.5M), and would be the 10th largest state (between NC and MI):

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_states_and_territories...

So a good number of Americans can get goods pretty direct without long distance inland shipping.

Not everyone living along a coast has an appropriate coast to establish a harbor sufficient for shipping. If you live in big sur you still get your crap from china delivered inland from the port of Los Angeles.

Where did I say that it was necessary? In the US there are lots of major ports all along the coast, which is where most of the population is. For the Pacific:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Panamax_ports#Pacific_...

And from any of those it's probably not that far to any major population centre.

Compare to Switzerland, which has precisely zero ports, and so of course needs rail (and trucks) to get things delivered.

Nitpicking: Switzerland actually does have three ports that provide, protected by international law, access to the North Sea (via the Rhine) and the Black Sea (via the Rhine–Main–Danube canal). In terms of quantities, about 10% of imports are going through these ports, mainly bulk load.

Source (only in german): https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schweizerische_Rheinh%C3%A4fen

The US is certainly not cheaper for two products that everyone has to buy: healthcare and housing. Switzerland is significantly more affordable than the US because the price of these two goods (which are human rights) are regulated.

Housing in Switzerland is more expensive than the US if you exclude LA, SF and NY.

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