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When someone calls cars "inefficient", and seeks government intervention for the sake of "efficiency", all they're doing is expressing a personal preference and trying to impose that preference by force on their fellow citizens.

I can go two directions here. The interstate system itself is a government intervention, where is your outrage about that? When talking simple scientific terms, efficiency is a function of energy put into a system and work returned from that system, nothing more. When it comes to cost effectiveness, it certainly costs a lot less to pay one guy to run a back hoe to dig a hole for a foundation than it would cost to hire 20 or 30 guys with shovels. When we are talking trains we are talking efficiency regarding the amount of freight tons miles/gallon of fuel and we are talking cost effectiveness when we consider the number of operators required. If it weren't for the interstate system, government intervention, you would see a huge difference in the placement of many businesses relative to the nearest railroad.

If it weren't for the interstate system, government intervention, you would see a huge difference in the placement of many businesses relative to the nearest railroad.

Do some research for me. What % of business in America are placed within walking distance of the nearest "interstate." If the "interstate" has replaced the railroad, and business would be placed near the railroad then surely a large % of American business must be near the interstate.

And you can NOT count gas stations, or fast food places, which probably are a majority of the business located by an interstate. Because if riding a train you have NO NEED for either of them and therefor they would NOT exist near a railroad.

"The interstate system itself is a government intervention, where is your outrage about that?"

Had I been alive when they were proposed, I might have opposed them. My understanding however is that one of the rationales for their construction was to facilitate the movement of troops in the service of national defense, which is a constitutional function of government.

"When we are talking trains we are talking efficiency regarding the amount of freight tons miles/gallon of fuel and we are talking cost effectiveness when we consider the number of operators required. "

When you are talking trains, you are talking efficiency regarding the amount of freight tons miles/gallon of fuel and cost effectiveness.

Even if we grant that trains are more efficient with regards to these factors (which I don't) why should these factors be the only or even primary factors? Asserting that they should be is a value judgement. Why should the state enforce yours?

"If it weren't for the interstate system, government intervention, you would see a huge difference in the placement of many businesses relative to the nearest railroad."

You have no argument from me there. The unintended consequences of one government intervention are the pretext for the next, and thus we lose our freedom.