America is too big for planes, too. If your transportation solution is flying, now everyone has to get around via endless highways or big, complicated regional airports, and you can only have so many of those. There's a reason why rural areas in North America have completely different politics from urban areas, and why so much of it is driven by a sense of isolation and abandonment. Trains promise to help here because they are able to stop in small places that will never, ever have practical airports.
A good rail network provides a reliable, consistent, repeatable, and straightforward three hour connection from Nowheresberg to the nearest city. Slow, but good enough to feel like they exist in the same planet. Unfortunately, that promise is subtle, and it plays out over decades, so the reward system we've created for ourselves is incapable of supporting it. And thus, we have Amtrak and confederate flags
Yeah going to the grocery store was a 40 minute round trip growing up. You go there and buy as much as you can so you don't have to go again for two more weeks. Having a train will not be suitable for this type of trip.
A 40 minute round trip would be average in most US cities, eg Dallas, Denver, Atlanta, suburban Chicago, etc
Those cities have grocery stores every exit off the highway. I'm in NW Ohio and while every town over 15,000 people has at least onc grocery store, lota of the surrounding villages do not. 30 miles each direction to a grocery store is rough. Growing up in suburbs of major cities, i cant remember a grocery store being further than 5 miles away. It's a vastly different experience.
So wouldn't that be ~1.5 hours round trip? 40min one way
No, but a walkable city is. Even in a small town, there’s no reason you shouldn’t be able to park once then walk to the grocery, the movie theater, the home center, etc