A given rail system can do freight or passenger well, but not both.
The US system is optimized for freight.
It's not obvious that passenger is a better choice.
The US system is optimized for freight.
It's not obvious that passenger is a better choice.
I mean, sure, you can get to Kansas City and Omaha via the Missouri. You can't get to Denver, though, or Phoenix, or Salt Lake, or...
-- https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/fareed-zakaria-ameri...
The continental US (no Alaska or Hawaii) is > 22.5 times as big as Germany but has only 8.8 times as many miles of "navigable waterways." (However, it's not clear if the US numbers include the Great Lakes or the oceans; LA to Seattle and Miami to NYC goes by ocean, not some river.)
But, that doesn't leave much for the rest of Europe.
The other aspect is how the rail infrastructure is financed in the US vs Europe. In the US the infrastructure is to a large extent funded by the freight companies themselves, and in return their needs get priority. Take away that incentive and they'll stop funding the rail infrastructure meaning that much of that cost will end up pack on either the local or federal government, with all that that entails.
The biggest issue is speed. The maximum speed is just slightly above that of maximum highway speed, with freight speed limited to less than half of that.
Population density in North Sweden and Norway is low enough that a few times a day is probably sufficient for most local travel. I haven’t been during peak tourist seasons when that number of trains might not be enough.
A fun fact is that since the ore trains travel mostly downhill, braking generates enough electricity that the ore empty trains can return to Kiruna effectively energy free.
That makes it a tourist line, not a transit line.
There's nothing wrong with tourism, but it isn't transit.
The Us transports nearly 10 times as much freight-km as the EU and far more than 10 times tons/person.
https://transport.ec.europa.eu/news-events/news/action-plan-...
Rail operators have also discovered a really nice side effect of ultra long trains: you don't have to pull into a siding to let a passenger train by as required by law if your train is longer than the siding.
I find that very unlikely and this link seems to contradict that: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...
Another aspect that needs to be taken into account is that a large part (perhaps 40%) of any number you see on total tonnes of rail freight in Sweden, is made up of handful of short rail lines doing nothing but transporting iron ore from a few large mines to the nearest harbour.
You claimed that there were "many" countries that had both good freight and passenger rail, but have yet to come up with one. (Sweden isn't an example - its "good freight" service (mines to ports) is where there's insignificant passenger service.)