>>1235125No, because unless trains run every 15 minutes it will be more convenient to drive.
I like right near a MARC station that I can take directly to DC, I never use it because it's faster to drive, I can drive faster if I'm late and unless it's rush hour traffic isn't an issue.
A car unlike a train goes where you want when you want. If I take a train I have to adjust my schedule around the train, in some cases that means I'll have to take out even more commute time to make sure that I can catch the train to where I want to because they only run at set times.
Unless you have a car you're making payments on the train isn't any cheaper either, most cars get around 30 mpg and my motorcycle gets 70 which is way cheaper.
Part of the other problem is fright rail, we have a ton of track in the US, but we prioritize freight because freight companies own those tracks. Only way around that is to build new tracks which would be incredibly expensive and likely require a significant amount of eminent domain forfeiture which won't go over well.
There is also the problem of semi rural areas being too spread out for public transport to be cost effective. If you look at somewhere like Switzerland rural areas are still dense in the sense that there is a tight city cluster where public transport is built around, while in the US everyone has acres of land and no tight city core. The "density" might be the same county to county, but the layout is not. For public transit to be feasible it would require completely reorganizing the way people live and that just isn't going to happen
