We 100% need more trains. But in rural America, we need cars to do anything.

In cities, yeah. Outside cities, impossible

But I'd love to rent autonomous electric cars to move

Been seeing a big push for trains in Florida and California lately, hopefully things with Amtrak go well and we see more lines implemented in the future

Because many of us live in places where you must use a car, there are no alternatives

In such places electric public transport is nothing but a pipe dream

Because trains aren’t economically viable for the vast majority of the US, and where they are economically they are the topic of conversation.

As far as why the conversation would center around the US, that’s just the regular American-centric tilt english conversations generally lean towards. Most of Europe has their shit together in some topics like this (public transportation, for instance) and the US is a huge consumer of automobiles and no one if building mass transit between the middle of nowhere to the other middle of nowhere where we could ‘efficiently’ move individually insignificant numbers of people at a time.

The worrying thing here is the assumption that we can choose...

The world has 2 billions individual cars. Lithium extraction rate may not be sufficient to make 2 billions cars by 2030... and that's assuming we don't need lithium for computers, smartphones, but also not for batteries for the grid (because no solar cell works at night and wind farms are not on demand erther), and... not for electric trucks! Then comes the question of the other metals: copper, nickel, cobalt, ...

Trains will not work everywhere for everyone, but not deploying them now and fast will be a severe issue for North America when resources will get scarce.

We need a smart mix of trains, buses, subways, tramways, shared vehicles, bikes, everything but one individual car per person. That era will come to an end because we're closer to the bottom of our planet's natural resources stock than the beginning.

There's not even a real option of keeping gas cars a little while more, as cheap oil is also coming to an end.

The difference between accepting this and "choosing" individual cars is how ready countries will be when resources will get scarce. It may get ugly...

Trains are electric. They use diesel generators to power the wheels.

You ever try taking your new mattress and bed frame on a train?

Why is it that trains are always proposed as the alternative to cars? I, for one, really want PRT to succeed. It seems to be the best middle ground between efficiency and convinience.