>>1215178>Sounds like a meme to meThat other anon isn't completely wrong, like you say sprawl is the main issue, but also irregular car-centric urbanism.
OTOH, it's not true that that's soooo terrible for public transit, because main streets have very few traffic problems, so a well-planned bus system could cover the vast majority of area that isn't the sprawl suburbs with no more than one transfer between lines.
Which again comes down to two issues: First off, cities don't want to invest in public transit to actually have a good service (because few people use their current shitty service, thus they don't attract riders, so on, classic vicious circle); and it's also a cultural things, most americans outside the classic examples of public-transit rich cities just don't know their way around public transit, and they already expect it to be filthy, unreliable, uncomfortable and impractical. They also don't want to walk even 500 m from the bus stop to their destination, which in europe is like the common measure for public transit coverage.
Finally, however, with all the Uber and Lyft and whatever, all these arguments are rendered m00t to some degree, since people could just take the train and then catch an uber for a few bucks to get to their destination
tl;dr:
1- it's true that less relevant cities right now aren't set up for comfortable public transit use and thus regional rail service loses potential
2- it's not true that this couldn't be solved to a certain degree
3- it's not true that THAT'S the reason why regional rail is pointless, since it's as easy as connecting to a taxi-type service
tl;dr-tl;dr it's mostly a meme, and regional rail would work if it offered a reasonably practical service. Greyhound works, so a train would too as a sort of "premium greyhound" that would be attractive to non-lower class people.
