I’m not really sure what point you’re trying to make here -
It’s not like rails are in any significant way displacing solar panels.
If one were motivated, you could use the same land for tracks and for solar panels by raising the solar panels above the tracks and catenaries, making double use of the land at the expense of having to build platforms for the panels.
Finally, solar energy can’t be used to transport passengers by plane since electric plane travel is not at a mass-market scale (nor is it even certain that they will ever be able to).
The costs of the platforms would significantly reduce the efficiency of the solar cells.
My point is that planes have the advantage of not needing tracks which come with costs. There are the maintenance costs and the costs of not using them otherwise. We shouldn’t be surprised if trains can’t compete on many connections.
Of course there are connections where trains are more efficient. It’s just not all of them. An analysis should try to identify which connections should be cheaper but are not. Listing them all destroys any meaningful critique.
I’m not really sure what point you’re trying to make here -
It’s not like rails are in any significant way displacing solar panels.
If one were motivated, you could use the same land for tracks and for solar panels by raising the solar panels above the tracks and catenaries, making double use of the land at the expense of having to build platforms for the panels.
Finally, solar energy can’t be used to transport passengers by plane since electric plane travel is not at a mass-market scale (nor is it even certain that they will ever be able to).
The costs of the platforms would significantly reduce the efficiency of the solar cells.
My point is that planes have the advantage of not needing tracks which come with costs. There are the maintenance costs and the costs of not using them otherwise. We shouldn’t be surprised if trains can’t compete on many connections.
The amortized savings of having the tracks outweigh any opportunity costs introduced by the tracks taking up space.
Do you have any numbers?
In France, airfrance stopped to fly some routes since they cannot make them cheaper than a TGV
Of course there are connections where trains are more efficient. It’s just not all of them. An analysis should try to identify which connections should be cheaper but are not. Listing them all destroys any meaningful critique.
Well, airports are not free
Neither are railway stations.