Trains take you from one place where you don't want to be to another place where you don't want to be. They are not a substitute for privately-owned transportation, except perhaps in dystopian fiction.

They work wonderfully in extremely dense places like London and Tokyo, but they're awful absolutely everywhere else. Definitely nothing in America that compares to foreign trains yet, it would take us 50 years to come close to catching up.

Trains connecting town centers obviously can’t solve everyone’s transportation needs, but they can help to enable a car-free or reduced-car lifestyle for those who want that and are willing to design their lives around it.

Even if that’s only, say, 10% of the population in less dense areas, it could still make a significant impact on traffic and emissions as well giving an economic boost to downtown areas, since there’s now a reason for people to live near them.

And that's why you are supposed to design your environment. One railway station is in the suburbs, the other is in a high-density office park. Problem solved!

Hop on a plane and visit Europe, or Japan.

You can take public transport pretty much anywhere you want to go. It’s clean, safe, and generally reasonably priced.

The downside is that houses are smaller and more closely packed. By American standards, the kitchens and bedrooms are cramped.

But dystopia? Hardly.

I live in the US. The US isn't Europe, or Japan.