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by jabl
1982 days ago
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A problem in Europe is also that rail freight tends to be more competitive the longer the distance, but European railways are national carriers concentrating on in-country operations. To the point that for inter-country traffic is dominated by trucking. The EU has been trying to fix it by imposing common signaling standards, opening access etc. but it's slow going as all the national operators lobby hard to protect their home turfs. |
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That's not much of a problem any more with the advent of multi-system locomotives - you can go from the Netherlands (=Rotterdam port, central entry for Chinese-origin container ships) to Italy with a single Siemens ES64F4 VE locomotive, for example. All that's needed is regular exchange of the operating staff.
The real problem rather is that European railways are built with "passenger first" in mind, which means that during the day freight trains get set aside and during the night capacities are limited because of (very valid, fwiw) noise complaints.
The US prioritizes freight trains first, and there are not many complaints of noise because the trains are in rural areas with no human (or protected animal) closer than a dozen kilometers.