People want infrastructure and then when it gets built, they say it’s too expensive and takes too long. Valid criticisms but many throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Rail for people is hard to get profitable without pretty high cost (or permanent subsidies).
Look at Switzerland - this is the land of trains, all reachable cities and villages have main train station at their heart, use is frequent, and its part of national pride (precision, coverage, cleanliness etc.). Yet prices are brutal, sure if you live here you can often afford it but it still hurts. The price keeps rising.
And I still use our family car for anything else but commuting to work (and even for that sometimes). Morning trains packed like sardines, in reality there are frequent (usually small though) delays which cascade. Car for 4 is significantly cheaper - I'd say 4x for full tickets, less with half/card but then thats 200 bucks a year on its own per head.
Whatever problems you are facing, I doubt that in US rail will solve all of them. Happy to be wrong here of course. I see rather some AI vans/minibuses ondemand hailing and sharing as way more effective and cheap solution. Small bus full of people has minimal env impact and can provide door-to-door transport.
I meant that it takes a long time to build and costs too much to build. But like another commenter said, externalities and the implicit subsidies that other modes of transportation get make it a difficult comparison.
Cleaner forms of transportation should be subsidized. The fact that it costs me $8 to cross the Bay Bridge into SF but costs $10+ round trip on BART is a shame. Especially when you have two or three people in the car.
