Also I read that in the US Amtrak gives priority to cargo trains even though laws exist expressly forbidding that, so that a 200km trip with no stops ends up taking 4 hours.
It’s a mix of both, really. They would not be losing significant time by actually going to the sidings and letting passenger trains go by, and time is less significant in freight anyway. The longer trains let them do some (fairly questionable) optimizations in their freight delivery though, and since they go unpunished, they go for it.
Also I read that in the US Amtrak gives priority to cargo trains even though laws exist expressly forbidding that, so that a 200km trip with no stops ends up taking 4 hours.
That’s true - they do this by making their trains longer than the sidings.
You’d think they’d make that illegal, but no. Political failures are incredibly common in the world of rail
Ah. That’s why the US trains are always stupidly long. It’s not economics. It legal.
It’s a mix of both, really. They would not be losing significant time by actually going to the sidings and letting passenger trains go by, and time is less significant in freight anyway. The longer trains let them do some (fairly questionable) optimizations in their freight delivery though, and since they go unpunished, they go for it.