One is that most rail traffic doesn't continu 24/7. A train comes by, the crossings open again and it's anormal road for 15 minutes until the next train.
Cars just run constantly. Cars also have exhausts that blast fumes in your face.
Furthermore the rails are usually 2 or 3 tracks next to each other outside the station. That's 20 meter or so vs a whopping 50m+ for a highway.
> Cars also have exhausts that blast fumes in your face
Yeah I never noticed this as much as the small city where I live now. Both bus stops (near home and near work) are next to a busy road, which is one thing, but one is also right before a traffic light, so lots of accelerating traffic. (The other one is right after, which is much better already.) I regularly hold my breath for a few seconds as a particularly bad cloud (invisibly) passes over me.
I sometimes wonder if, instead of speed limits, we need acceleration limits. Or just emission limits. Accelerate to highway speed in 50 seconds instead of in 20: so long as you're not in traffic that goes from 0 to 100 km/h every two minutes, it should hardly matter for your arrival time. Yet most of the time when I accelerate at a reasonable (not slow) speed onto the (uphill-going) highway, the person behind me thinks they should go alongside to accelerate 5% faster and lock me into the merging lane that is by now running out of space. Must spend 80% more CO2 for 20 seconds to arrive 4 seconds faster at the destination!
One is that most rail traffic doesn't continu 24/7. A train comes by, the crossings open again and it's anormal road for 15 minutes until the next train.
Cars just run constantly. Cars also have exhausts that blast fumes in your face.
Furthermore the rails are usually 2 or 3 tracks next to each other outside the station. That's 20 meter or so vs a whopping 50m+ for a highway.