Have they won out or has freight shifted to trucking from rail? Heavy, slow, and double stacked is the most efficient, but shippers look at more than a single factor.
If it came in on a container ship, and has a long way to go, the next step is often rail. This has led to "inland ports", in such places as Tucson, AZ and Columbus, OH, where the containers leave rail and go on trucks. In the US, it's not exactly "last mile" from there, more like last hundred miles.
Union Pacific's container trains are heavy, fast, and double-stacked. Once they get clear of the congested area around LA, they pick up speed.[1]
> container trains are [...] fast
I never imagined for a second that these things were going slow for our benefit (maybe safety, noise etc). I just had in my mind that they were simply incapable (technical reasons such as track or economic reasons like fuel efficiency) of going any faster.
So they could be speeding through the rail crossing instead of crawling at what feels like five miles an hour?
I think I don't understand tge video, but isn't the train here very slow? I thought it would be minimum 100kph to be fast.
Truck is about 30% more than rail, but they both move an awful lot of stuff: https://www.bts.gov/content/us-ton-miles-freight