Europe is well known for having excellent passenger train service while America’s trains typically run on track where freight has priority. Almost any regular Amtrak customer has had experiences where they have to weight for a freight train, which isn’t surprising as the freight companies own most of the tracks outside of the Northeast corridor. Interestingly, according to a recent Paul Krugman post, Europe may have the opposite problem.
I was a bit surprised early this week reading about the ferocity of fuel protests in Europe led by fisherman, truckers, and farmers. The farmers I expected, the fisherman were a bit of a surprise, but the relative strength of the truckers may have to do with the above graph. Regardless, goes to show that in our efforts to improve passenger rail in America we probably put some emphasis on new track rather than undercutting our relative strong (and quite energy efficient) freight rail system.
Image from Paul Krugman’s blog
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