High-speed rail can't stop too often, so all the towns in between stops and far from that line would have to be served by low speed rail, running a few times a day at most.

As everywhere - there's a tradeoff between efficiency and latency. Sometimes it's not worth going all in with efficiency.

Okay, so 20mi of where you were born and the four other places easily accessible by rail. It just wouldn’t work in rural, spread out America.

(Anyway, if we cave to this demand, getting rid of trains will be next on the docket. Remember when the green folks were all about EVs, until they started happening? And now it’s “no personal transportation”?)