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[quote user="marcimmeker"][quote user="futuremodal"] One needs only to refer back to the "British Railway Operations" and the "Continental Railway Operations" threads to confirm the odd (to us North Americans) conundrum of the European transportation system, where the railroads are clogged with passenger trains while the roads are clogged with freight.  I asked it then, and I'll ask it again:  Wouldn't it be more productive if it was the other way around?[/quote]One can wish but it won't happen during daytime...Just the other week an accident on a motorway going away from Rotterdam here in the Netherlands resulted in over 100 km of gridlock (in this caser literally meaning standing still for a long time). Just in and around Rotterdam and not only on alternative routes out of town.Now, how do you propose to get 1 million travellers a day in 5000+ trains onto motorways where there isn't room to increase the number of lanes? Not to mention how to deal with the cars once they are at the citylimit? We don't even throw into the discussion the plans to go to 1.5 million passengers a day or the nimby's and the more extreme green loonies. If you have the solution to stop suburbanization and return that trend I would like to here it. Commuting, by car and train, is fast increasing in distance, more than 100 km one way is nothing these days.... I know, I do it 5 days a week.Historically, here in the Netherlands, most freight moved overnight using locomotive that where not needed during daytimes for passenger traffic.Freight came in two varieties: coal and carload. Carload was gathered by locals during the afternoon / early evening, was switched at humpyards, moved in trains that moved from hump yard to hump yard during the night, got sorted again in early morning and then moved in locals to their destination.Coal moved from the south of the country and from ports and neighbouring countries in trainloads to the various regions. There the cars were humped and put in those locals. About half the traffic was coal, especially for home heating. Then came the natural gas sfind in the north of our country and 15 years later coal traffic for heating homes was gone and so were most freight trains and a great number of freight only lines.And now we have mostly, but not exclusively, unit trains operating almost around the clock from the harbor here in Rotterdam. During daytime they get in the way of passenger trains and vice versa.The new Betuweroute should give some breathing space.The overall timetable is difficult to balance. Think about those perfomers trying to keep all those plates spinning on top of those skinny poles.Elsewhere in Europe it is not much different, there is just more room between the big population centers aka wiggle room for certain types of trains.This does not take into account that other not to be forgotten thing: the river Rhine. It comes from the places where freigth is going to...Hope this overview from the Netherlands helps, the World Bank is not always right and from time to time it does have a narrow view of economics. I haven't touched such subjects as the quality of living.greetings,Marc Immeker[/quote]You will have short haul congestion no matter what the mode in overly urbanized areas.  Highway planners over the years, no matter if they're from NA or Europe, seem to have been stuck on the concept of consolidating road traffic onto one or two main arterials, rather than dispersing highway traffic onto multiply dispersed route options.  Congestion takes place quite simply due to the fact that overflow options were not considered in the long term urban transportion plans.  That's why some commuter rail lines can actually make sense, since the aggregation factor is already built into the societal mindset.  Otherwise, it is counterintuitive to force a mass of supposedly independent individuals onto the bulk transport mode while conversely forcing the non-complaining mass of freight onto the individualized transport mode.  This is most apparent in the intercity travel, where the people are less amassed, ergo the double switch of freight to rail and people to road would have a better chance of working.
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