If containerships are the cheapest way to transport cargo, why aren’t we using canals instead of railways and highways to transport goods over land?

Question

If containerships are the cheapest way to transport cargo, why aren’t we using canals instead of railways and highways to transport goods over land?

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Answer 1

Gravity.

Water flows downhill. Where it does that naturally, we use that for navigation, and most of the places that it’s flat enough to make use of without pumping, we already have canals.

Trains can go uphill, and rather than pump water up, and then move the goods up against the flow, we just use lower rolling friction to make bulk transport efficient on rails.

Then we need last mile transport to individual volumes. Just like you don’t need the 500 loaves of bread your grocery store sells daily, most things aren’t needed in the “entire train full” sort of volume. So we use trucks.