Time to reinvent the Interurban https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interurban
yet, what this historiography conveniently omits is that it was the glorious government intervention that strangled the often privately owned interurban/tram/train companies out of business due to massive amounts of roads being built under public works programs that were all too common from the 1920s-1940s.
As the article mentions later:
automobile doomed the interurban whose private, tax-paying tracks could never compete with the highways that a generous government provided for the motorist.
that provision had many names, one was “New Deal”
I don’t have a solution but two observations:
1) somehow in Asia never happened what happened in the West, that is, private transportation companies are still private, they prosper, and the societies excel at mobility.
2) Never ever destroy built infrastructure. Always plan for the possibility for a comeback. Post-war, many cities removed tram tracks. But even a rusty tram track is cheaper to repair 70 years later than, paying upfront for the dismantling and 70 years later for a complete new construction.
Keeping unused right of ways open is challenging too. Adjacent properties will tend to encroach, and depending on specifics and local rules, may be able to claim the encroached property through adverse possession.
In Somerville, the Somerville Community Path was a disused heavy rail right-of-way when I first visited in 2002 or 2003. Ripping up the tracks and putting in the community path improved walkability to a Red Line station (Davis) and creating a nice space for recreational walking and cycling.
There are real trade offs to leaving disused infrastructure in place. Not losing a continuous right-of-way is a huge upside, but there are definitely downsides too.
Really what killed the rail system was the concept of free highway travel. Private companies will never be able to compete with free, government subsidized travel. It so thoroughly killed private companies that they couldn't even afford to really downsize and salvage what was left of their passenger operations. By comparison you have to pay for highway travel in Japan and China and Korea.
Where I am from in Europe, the rise in property value thanks to rail lines is captured by lucky property owners. That is why as a free market guy I support subsidising rail and other public transport with taxes, if we don't have the Asian system.
Sure, "lucky". Lucky as in, I'm well connected and I hear in advance from the politicians where the transit lines will be so I make sure to buy properties/land in those areas, so later I turn out to be really lucky when the government projects just happen to cross over my private land/property.
Funny how that kind of luck only turns out to favor the already wealthy and connected, 100% of the time, and never the poor. How do you call that type of luck?