What you’ve been failing to consider, which I think I may have been taking as read to my detriment, is that the way our cities are organized plays a big role in determining which mode of shipping is more effective. The denser of a center you have, the more businesses you have concentrated in one place, the more you need capacity and the less you need flexibility. That inverts as things get more spread out and stuff needs to get to more different places. When you have a city organized around its rail infrastructure rather than a sprawling car-dependent mess, that rail infrastructure absolutely kills at supplying the place, significantly reducing the severity of the last-mile problem.
I will also note that even the most anti-car places still rightfully allow for delivery vehicles, and neither I nor I think any other person who doesn’t like cars would begrudge that. I personally just think that pretty much any shipping done by big rig when it could be done by rail is a missed opportunity.
Here are a few additional links for you to consider:
This only addresses passenger transit and none of the logistics issues which have been my actual argument.
This is not practical for transporting cargo around a moderately sized urban area. It never will be.
ok then
What you’ve been failing to consider, which I think I may have been taking as read to my detriment, is that the way our cities are organized plays a big role in determining which mode of shipping is more effective. The denser of a center you have, the more businesses you have concentrated in one place, the more you need capacity and the less you need flexibility. That inverts as things get more spread out and stuff needs to get to more different places. When you have a city organized around its rail infrastructure rather than a sprawling car-dependent mess, that rail infrastructure absolutely kills at supplying the place, significantly reducing the severity of the last-mile problem.
I will also note that even the most anti-car places still rightfully allow for delivery vehicles, and neither I nor I think any other person who doesn’t like cars would begrudge that. I personally just think that pretty much any shipping done by big rig when it could be done by rail is a missed opportunity.
Here are a few additional links for you to consider:
Trucking is heavily subsidized
The interstates are increasingly a metaphorical financial albatross around our collective neck
The places that are connected by and organized around rail are invariably the most economically productive areas of any city