So you mean the mad managers are actually sitting in urban design, not building public transit? Rush hour over here is when there’s enough cars on arterial streets so you can’t walk across them wherever you want, there’s no actual jams.

dropping off a pallet or two at each

That doesn’t sound very efficient, over here they consign full lorries at distribution centres to stock up one particular supermarket or two, or maybe half a lorry if it’s been a slow day and the supermarket didn’t get a delivery in the last what three days depends on what they’re missing (customers can survive one of five crisps flavours being out of stock, all toothpaste, not so much). The Swiss have it really nailed down, any business of any significant size over there has to have rail access so the likes of IKEA don’t put a single lorry on the road, and supermarket distribution centres receive containers on rail and then maybe send out lorries: If a village has a train station chances are the village supermarket is within forklift distance. They have absolutely no qualms about pulling a freight car or two with a small passenger train set.