When you live and work in a city, they're much less practical.
This is the most "tell me you live in America without telling me you live in America" thing I've seen in a long time...
America basically the only place in the world where in its cities, trains and other public transport aren't a major part of people's lives. In other places (Seoul, Tokyo, many European cities, etc.), even people who own a car will sometimes commute via train due to the convenience.
Rail and other public transport in pretty much everywhere in the world are designed to serve commute first, tourist stuff second or third.
Public transport isn't just having some trains, or having only trains between major cities. It is designing whole commute routes from various urban and suburban areas to workplace. There needs to be regional and suburban links that arrive to metro and tram stations. Metro and tram have to operate very frequently to handle commuters. The frequency of the trains should adapt to the commuters in the morning and evening. They need to be convenient, clean and safe too.
Cities around the world are also much better balanced than NA ones. The workplaces and living areas are almost always mixed rather than having a "downtown" area where every office worker travels to. My area has many buildings with a supermarket, apartments and small offices in the same building. There are two car factories in the city next to one of the biggest urban parks.
I agree that European trains work very well for commuting to and from the center of big cities. That's where the jobs and tourist attractions are.
But to go between arbitrary places A and B is usually quite painful. Often the best way is to go to the center, and then from there to your destination.
When I moved to the US and got a car, it was an unreal feeling! I could quickly travel anywhere at anytime!! Practically it felt like my comfortable travel radius increased from 10km to 50km.
Would a Waymo that you don't have to store, park, fuel, or maintain have been restrictive?
So yes, they would be obnoxious at any significant quantity and also not really help with getting across the city since transit is pretty good
I'd easily take extra self-driving vehicles if it reduced human driven ones.
My contention is that in US cities the high cost of existing rail makes it uncompetitive for most uses, and there is no justification for building new rail.
I like Waymo a lot, but the USA desperately needs both transport modes. Don’t think it’s an either/or.
If you feel that way about transit you may not have tried a good transit option like Hong Kong MTR with 90 second headways and travel from and to substantially everywhere you want to be.
You see a robot driving around in a pile of trash.
I see a robot with nobody micromanaging him telling him how to live his life, etc, etc.
<we are not the same meme dot jpeg>
Trains to cover the longer distance and micro mobility options to get to exactly where you need to go
So when I have the option I'd rather take the train - of course I also drive a lot of places.
And with that you can build a system where most places, including 50 people mountain villages are well connected.
I can go from Genf to a tiny village deep in the Eastern mountains with 4-6h. I can make that journey with no planning ahead what so ever.
Cars are actually restrictive. What if you want to have a drink? What if you are in a place that is different from your car? What if you are old or disabled? What if you are a tourist? What if you are not allowed to drive because of a traffic violation? And there are also these people called 'kids'. When I was 15 I went from Switzerland to Czechia with the train, no problem.
True freedom is to have a good public transit and potentially car as an option.
Because of decades to centuries of investment, holistic planning and expertise, we have one of the best networks in terms of quality, punctuality and density.
It's a plant the trees for future generations kind of deal, especially in Switzerland, because large, "flashy" projects are rare compared to to the more continuous and steady improvements, due to how funding and planning are set up.
Oh the horror, you might have to walk a couple of minutes (probably less time wasted than circling around to find a parking spot, and then walking from it to your destination).
> at a time that is probably not exactly when you wanted to arrive
Yeah, no. Trains in properly developed networks are extremely frequent. At the off-peakest of off-peak (Sunday late evening), the RER near me is every 15 minutes. During peak hours it's every 5 mins.