As an American living in Japan, part of the reason I moved here is that I think I'd die waiting for any sizable fraction of Americans to demand more rail capacity! I'll happily choose a train full of sweaty salarymen over, say, rush hour traffic in Atlanta any day!

Rip out the trees! Rip out the bike lanes and side walks! Rip out a row of houses! MORE LANES! This really is generational, I only get it from baby boomer relatives and friends. X don't give a crap. And the younger generations say we should walk or bike everywhere. Will it last? Or will they be subsumed into this seemingly never ending Americana story line?

And then they also say, more trains. Because you can combine walking and cycling quite good with a train.

So normally they might seem unnecessary yet their role might be crucial for directing the people flows during the rush hour.

In the west, humans are becoming less employable as they're displaced by automation--https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU is a good video if you haven't seen it, and it's from before AI/ML took off! Japan seems to have mitigated it by making automation an addition, instead of a replacement, in many cases. It's certainly not the efficient, capitalist thing to do, but maybe it's the better thing to do.