That's awesome if you're not interested in carrying people, but whether a network incapable of carrying people is "a decent rail network" is something many would dispute.

Also, Russia has ~44% of population of the US, yet it still outperforms the US in absolute terms? That's quite impressive for Russia in my book. Having said that, they've always been heavily dependent on rail to lower their transportation costs. Trucks and airplanes won't work for them nearly as well. So I'm not surprised if they're placed so high in rail freight ranking.

> The reason I'm skeptical of the numbers is that UP/US DoT reported 2.7T ton-KMs for 2018 [1].

I'm reading 1.7 on that page. Am I looking in the wrong place? It says "In 2018, 1.7 trillion ton-miles of freight (calculated by multiplying shipment weight in tons by the number of miles that it is transported) was shipped by rail, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation."