> to turn all of our freeways into green spaces.
And live and die within 20mi of where you’re born?
And live and die within 20mi of where you’re born?
In Europe university students travel hundereds if not thousands of kilometers to do exchange which can be done by train and many actually do. This is usually the most suitable and most likely time for someone to travel really long distances.
There are also those things called planes which many trains have an express line to.
Even medium speed rail enable people to commute distances like 80 km (50 mi) under 40 minutes, ~30 times each day. There are people who are doing that in my company.
(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”?)
As everywhere - there's a tradeoff between efficiency and latency. Sometimes it's not worth going all in with efficiency.