An example of a very light high-speed passenger train is the N700 Series Shinkansen, which weighs 715 tonnes and carries 1323 passengers, resulting in a per-passenger weight of about half a tonne. This lighter weight per passenger, combined with the lower rolling resistance of steel wheels on steel rail means that an N700 Shinkansen is much more energy efficient than a typical automobile.
I was gonna argue that rolling resistance doesn’t have a large impact on efficiency, but apparently I was wrong
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_resistance
It’s really counter intuitive to how we think of rolling resistance.
https://piped.video/watch?v=tfA0ftgWI7U
This video helped explain to me how the material the wheels are made of does impact the rolling resistance because the wheel deforms.