> The process of assembling a train is far more automated today than it was in the past, so evidence does not support that they are content to just "milk" their current business.
Not really. If you take a railroad worker from the 1980-s, they would be able to work, with only minor training.
The dwell time actually _increased_. Rail companies are focusing on hauling bulk goods (coal, construction materials, oil, etc.) rather than trying to compete with trucks for fast delivery.
It's far easier to optimize for throughput than latency, after all. And rail companies are local monopolies, so they're doing whatever brings more money next quarter.
> If you take a railroad worker from the 1980-s, they would be able to work, with only minor training.
The same could be said about computer programmers.
Trains and trucks serve two different markets. Trains are better for long hauls of bulk goods or containerized cargo where you have a lot of stuff all going from one place (e.g. a port) to another (inland distribution hub).
Trucks are good for "last-mile" local delivery or small loads/single containers going from one place to another.
> The same could be said about computer programmers.
Not really. Programming has fundamentally changed since the 80-s: version control systems, connectivity, new and more efficient languages, etc. Train yards have not changed a bit. Dispatchers might have computers now, and individual train cars can be tracked in a central DB, but the physical work of coupling/decoupling cars and shuffling them around has not changed AT ALL.
> Trucks are good for "last-mile" local delivery or small loads/single containers going from one place to another.
The US is special, it's geographically HUGE, so trucks end up playing an outsized role in long-distance transport.
Trains are much cheaper and more efficient, so they can potentially help to reduce CO2 pollution _and_ the transportation cost. But train companies are just not interested in that.
Having self-driving trucks transported on the interchangeable flatbeds can potentially change that. Trucks can just drive onto the waiting traincars, ride to the destination location, and then just drive off the flatbeds.