Having worked for a software company 14 years ago that was specialised in the reduction of so called 'empy milage' I'm all too familiar with intermodal transport. One of the problems between rail and trucking is the fact that by default trucking is much more competitive. It would take enormous amounts of political strength to tax trucking to death. Much of the transportation that goes around in Europe could be handled by train, if only the train systems (being former state monopolies) would get their act together.
15 years ago, I was told that the average speed of a freight train through Europe was like 6 kms an hour. Compare that to the 60 kms an hour for a truck and the fact that it does door to door delivery and you've got a losing proposition.
It is getting better now however, in the Netherlands a
brand new railroad has just gone into production, directly from Rotterdam to Germany's Ruhrgebiet. Hopefully it will reduce the amount of trucking a bit.
Not quite related, but in Bangalore I saw a lot of
these three wheelers. Which I thought was very nice for fine distribution in inner cities (which Europe has a lot of). Packing goods in a small lightweight container to be placed on a vehicle like this for the last few miles sounds good to me.
