You have that backwards. Low occupancy vehicle travel is the most wasteful form of personal transit.
Rail passengers displaced by freight become low occupancy vehicle trips.
In my state, a commuter rail coach car has about 180 seats. Let's be cautious and assume 50% occupancy.
That's 90 people, and based off the US passenger car fleet averaging 25mpg, they collectively would have used 3.6 gallons of gas per mile.
An eighteen wheeler gets 5-10 miles per gallon.
Even assuming just 5mpg, the passengers in that one coach car would have used eighteen times more fuel than the truck hauling a container would.
Furthermore: freight and passenger use of rail are not mutually exclusive uses. Freight is in theory far less sensitive to scheduling, and like a lot of trucked freight, can happen during times passenger use is low. But because industry has squeezed their supply chains to the hair of breaking under "just in time delivery" to minimize warehouse space and the like...which bit us pretty severely in the pandemic...freight companies are optimizing for shareholder profits and own the tracks. So they prioritize their freight over passengers. Result? Passenger service is riddled with service issues, leading to less passenger use, which is fine as far as the freight companies are concerned, because they can move more freight.
The core problem is that critical infrastructure is being run privately by for-profit publicly traded companies.
Rail passengers displaced by freight become low occupancy vehicle trips.
In my state, a commuter rail coach car has about 180 seats. Let's be cautious and assume 50% occupancy.
That's 90 people, and based off the US passenger car fleet averaging 25mpg, they collectively would have used 3.6 gallons of gas per mile.
An eighteen wheeler gets 5-10 miles per gallon.
Even assuming just 5mpg, the passengers in that one coach car would have used eighteen times more fuel than the truck hauling a container would.
Furthermore: freight and passenger use of rail are not mutually exclusive uses. Freight is in theory far less sensitive to scheduling, and like a lot of trucked freight, can happen during times passenger use is low. But because industry has squeezed their supply chains to the hair of breaking under "just in time delivery" to minimize warehouse space and the like...which bit us pretty severely in the pandemic...freight companies are optimizing for shareholder profits and own the tracks. So they prioritize their freight over passengers. Result? Passenger service is riddled with service issues, leading to less passenger use, which is fine as far as the freight companies are concerned, because they can move more freight.
The core problem is that critical infrastructure is being run privately by for-profit publicly traded companies.