Instead of just googling for sensationalistic news headlines, or pushing some ulterior motive, or grinding some anti-U.S. Railroad axe, why not look at actual competent studies in the field, with reasoned and balanced perspectives? Oh, no, that wouldn't support the cabal's little pet project, then, would it?
Here is one such study of dramatic increases in railroad efficiencies between 1978 and 2004:
US Railroad Efficiency: A Brief Economic Overview
By Gerard J. McCullough, Ph.D.,
Department of Applied Economics University of Minnesota
Therein you will find some relevant conclusions as I have abstracted here:
The operational changes have been dramatic. The AAR Analyses show that between 1978 and 2004 revenue ton-miles per mile of road have grown from 4.5 million to 12.2 million, average lengths of haul have increased from 617 miles to 902 miles, and the percent of train-miles completed in unit trains has expanded from 7 percent to 37 percent. Operational changes have been accompanied by various technological improvements including higher adhesion locomotives, re-engineered rails and cars, better maintenance of way equipment, and automated inspection techniques. The overall effect has been a much higher level of productive efficiency in the rail industry.
Labor output (Figure 2) has grown from 1.8 million revenue ton-miles per employee in 1978 to 10.5 million in 2004.
Fuel productivity (Figure 3) has increased from 216.4 revenue ton-miles per gallon to 408.5 revenue ton-miles per gallon.
Equipment productivity (Figure 4) has increased as well: revenue ton-miles per locomotive increased by about 250 percent, and revenue ton-miles per freight car has increased by about 450 per cent.
[All of the data are from the Analyses of Class I Railroads.]
The economic effect of these changes has been a significant reduction in railroad operating costs. These are illustrated by the bottom line in Figure 5--operating expenses per revenue ton-mile--which dropped from 2.46 cents (current) in 1978 to 2.11 cents (current) in 2004. (Operating revenue per revenue ton-mile, the top line in Figure 5, is treated below as a dimension of allocative efficiency.)
What we have reported here are “partial” productivity measures in which outputs (e.g. revenue ton-miles) are divided by a specific input (e.g. labor hours). Other “total factor” productivity measures are available which take into account not only the relative increases of outputs and inputs but the residual effect of “technological progress” i.e. more efficient combinations of factors such as capital and labor. Most recent econometric studies of rail costs show total factor productivity gains in the rail industry of about three to four percent annually. See, for example, Ivaldi and McCullough (2004). P. 6
III. US Railroads and Allocative Efficiency
The role of transportation in fostering economic growth may have been exaggerated by highway builders and others who benefit directly from transportation spending. It is analytically difficult to disentangle the extent to which transportation investment generates economic activity or economic activity spurs transportation investment.
....
Various independent studies have shown that railroads have a definite allocative efficiency advantage over other modes in providing some transportation services. When all costs are taken into consideration—internal costs absorbed by firms and external costs such as pollution and congestion--railroads often generate lower marginal costs than the other modes. An efficient economy would favor railroads in these cases.
You didn't read the article you yourself posted. Indeed, that author supports my arguments.
Rail freight has gone through marvelous improvements over the last thirty years. It's come a long way. It had to. It was near dead half a century ago, with its share of national freight dropping from 60% in 1950 to under 30% by 1980, and going to near 0% for passenger transport. Rail will never again be our primary national mover -- unless we kill off our highways, intentionally or not, and unless we start laying railroad tracks all over the country, at which point everyone will be complaining about rights-of-way takings being given to private railroads. (In the land grants of the 19th century, the railroad industry was by far the largest recipient of public concessions ever.)
Just as rail brought about in the 19th century, the economic gains brought by the motor vehicle in the 20th century are incalculable. Those gains cannot possibly be sustained, much less repeated, by our current rail system -- or our current highway system. That rail carriers are scrambling to figure out how to move more goods on existing lines is proof alone that, whatever the "efficiency" within the system, its overall capability has hit a wall. It's like getting a few extra horses out of an engine. Rail cannot, will not, and should not be a fall back for highways.
That article you cite by McCullough says the exact same thing. You might have spared us all the statistics and just shown us the article's introduction and conclusion (highlights mine):
[From the introduction]
The focus of U.S. transportation policy in the 19th and 20th centuries was on extending the benefits of transportation to more locales and to more citizens. The focus of policy in the 21st century must also be on reducing the costs of transportation. Current transportation costs associated with safety, congestion, sprawl, and pollution are large. Future costs associated with scarcity of petroleum could be cataclysmic.
The railroad network is a national asset that could be used to reduce the costs of transportation. This paper has two aims consistent with that possibility. The first is to describe the efficiency improvements that the railroad industry itself has made in the past few decades. The second is to describe the role that rail network could play in a more efficient overall national transportation system.
...
IV. Conclusions
We still lack the data necessary to define the proper role of rail passenger service in the U.S., but it is clear that freight railroads have an allocative efficiency advantage in various markets. Though freight railroads have made significant gains in productive efficiency, rail freight is still one of the slowest growing modes of transportation in the U.S. Figure 8, based on National Transportation Statistics from BTS, shows that since 1980 rail freight vehicle-miles-traveled (VMT) has actually grown less rapidly than highway freight VMT or even rail passenger VMT.
So the author and I agree: while rail freight has made fantastic gains in internal efficiency, as a matter of proportional overall economic contribution the system is showing no gains. I disagree with him, however, that overland transport cannot be improved. It can and must be.
Below is how rail stands as compared to trucking in usage. While from 1997, the trends since then are the same. And again, we're ignoring passenger transport altogether, something that private rail has entirely abandoned:
 |
Table 1-51: Growth of Freight Activity in the United States: Comparison of the 1993 and 1997 Commodity Flow Surveys
Edited: see full chart here
| 6,360.8 |
6,944.0 |
9.2 |
9,688.5 |
11,089.7 |
14.5 |
2,420.9 |
2,661.4 |
9.9 |
| 4,791.0 |
4,981.5 |
4.0 |
6,385.9 |
7,700.7 |
20.6 |
869.5 |
1,023.5 |
17.7 |
| 269.2 |
319.6 |
18.7 |
1,544.1 |
1,549.8 |
0.4 |
942.6 |
1,022.5 |
8.5 |
|