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by kelnos 1208 days ago
You're not really responding to what the parent poster said. We're not talking about 30-lane highways, we're talking about a small one-lane road that only needs to serve tens of people per day. A train route for that is absurd.
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Because of the space inefficiency of cars, you end up building and widening way too may roads, destroying the countryside. Trains allow you keep development contained without spoiling the countryside. Forgot where I saw this, but a Swiss women used to see lines of trucks in her village until the government heavily promoted electrified freight rail. Now there's little to no trucks in her village.
Basically anywhere in Europe (Switzerland especially) is incomparable to the "vast wilderness" I described above. I speak of roads where a "busy day" is more than (say) 3 light vehicles traveling.