Trains also hugely impact how much people must pay on housing. In areas with great train network, people can chose to live farther and still can avoid unreasonable commute. Just imagine what if Californians can spend their earnings on meaningful activities rather than just housing.

When I visited Russia, I just began to realize how important is train network and how badly neglected it is in US. Moscow has one of the absolutely best train network anywhere - all built by Soviets. Trains comes every 2 mins, they are fast and there are plenty of routes with plenty of stops to basically go anywhere without wasting your life getting stuck in commute, finding parking and pay bucket loads of money on gas.

In US, governments are extremely inefficient - no matter what party is in White House (this is not to say Russia is better but trains are something they did got right). People are always busy in philosophical issues around abortions, gay marriage, gun rights while doing 3 hours commute one way everyday in frustrating traffic never asking why government isn't fixing it for decades.