Over long distances freight by rail is pretty efficient but they’ll still need plenty of truck drivers for runs of a few hundred miles.
The benefit of double stacking trains to reduce congestion is minimal at best and combined with the astronomical cost of restructuring the whole rail system for it is laughable.
I think the opposite is true. Most railroads are dedicating alot of their budgets to makIng these improvements for double stack trains. With height restrictions eliminated, stack trains can literally haul twice as much cargo in one trip than before..
Norfolk Southern is doing this on the Pokey in WV and the Crescent corridor on the East Coast...
The changes to the height restrictions also mean that other types of freight can also take advantage of the new routes. There are more and more “overheight” box cars on the rails now too, and those also need the increased clearance that the doublestack container carriages do. However, all this means nothing if no one is shipping freight, and there are still miles of empty cars sitting on sidings out in the middle of nowhere waiting for the economy to pick up again.
The growth of double-stack intermodal trains has been one of the greatest economic developments this country has seen in the last few decades. The "congestion reduction" benefits are meaningless. The biggest impact is the reduction of shipping costs over long distances.
Two double-stack projects in particular -- the Pennsylvania Clearance Route (1990s) and Heartland Corridor (ongoing) initiatives -- have enhanced Midwestern cities like Columbus and Chicago as major warehousing and distribution hubs . . . simply by providing double-stack rail access to the ports of New York and Norfolk.