Scotland moves forward on Lightening Traffic by Looking Backward

BBC NEWS - Freight move 'eases' congestion:

A new rail freight service which could take more than 200 lorries a week off Scotland's roads has been launched.

Apparently there was something to this 'railway' design of old, where freight travelled in long lines of containers from city to city, piloted by a handful of people instead of a hundred, using one huge engine instead of a hundred large ones, and in a burst of unimpeded traffic coordinated with crossing-gates and flashing lights.

I wish this article had some kind of hard numbers, so that I could chant it as I whacked our leaders on the head with a large blunt object. Fleets of individually-steered vehicles may be versatile in their routes, but if they're all going to the same place anyway they're nothing more than a waste of labour and petrol and a burden on our roadways.

And in the Colonies they're engaged in ripping up railways to make room for bikepaths. Penny-wise and Pound Foolish hits the Environmental front, it seems, with the help of arrogant selfish bicyclists whose inflated sense of self-worth either has them making environmental decisions based on their queer love of a bicycle commute, or has them over-valuing the benefit of having a few hundred people driving their bikes on special elite roadways instead of highways choked with petrol-hungry lorries.

Someone explain just where the actual benefit is of ripping up railways which are now provably all but impossible to replace. Or when was the last subway/tube project completed in the western world?