What are the rough costs of
- constructing, and
- maintaining
a kilometer of a 1+1 road and single track rail? Is rail at all competitive in this regard?
^(I realise it also depends on the type of cargo – I’m curious about rail transporting everything as was the case in the 1800s)
I am struggling to find a source, but the tradeoff between road and railways scales with congestion. The infrastructure needed for moving 1000 trucks per hour on a road is much more expensive than 1 truck per hour. Rails, however, scale much more easily, as the freightline is typically closely managed already.