Comment by citrin_ru
1 day ago
> Rail is superb for what it does: moving bulk commodities... The problem is last-mile.
Before around 1950x-1970x rail networks were more dense (at least in Europe) - any significant goods source/destination (like a warehouse, a factory e. t. c.) had a railway spur. Lots of rail tracks / spurs were abandoned /removed when it was widely believed that trucks are the future and railways are outdated.
If all these spurs were kept last mile problem would not be as bad for railways. Also electric trucks are well suited to solve this last mile problem.
I think they gloss over a major factor also. They mention:
> Distribution centres are built around motorway junctions (J24 of the M1, the Golden Triangle in the East Midlands) because that’s where road access is.
But they skip _why_ is that road access and motor junction there. It's there because the government decided building roads was something that was it's responsibility. I know this article is UK focused, but for the US if the government decided to build rails also, then they could put them in more convenient places. Instead they allow rail companies to decide which monopoly corridors the companies get to control.