Until this year I thought the train was the transportation of the past.

But trains are the cheapest form of long-range transport on land as they are electric that don’t need heavy batteries.
The largest competitor to the train is the ship.
Ships can carry lots and lots of containers and don’t need any kind of road maintenance.
The only two disadvantages of ships are that they are slow moving and the fact that they can only be cheaper when the cost of gasoline/diesel/bunker fuel remains low.