I see a lot of people talking about regional intercity service and I think they’re missing the “last mile” problem as the telcos call it.
I can take the subway in NYC from Brooklyn to Penn Station, grab the Acela to Boston South Station, and walk off that onto the Red Line to Harvard Square. In fact unless you’re going well outside either city, you’re probably better off taking taxis or mass transit.
Outside the Northeast Corridor, there is usually no “there” there when you arrive from City A to City B, so you need a car to reach your destination. By the time you get through renting a car, it starts making more sense to just drive the whole distance in the first place.
Which brings this back full-circle to mass transit, which exists in places with European (forget about Asian) population density levels, and doesn’t where it would never work. Even in Europe, trains only account for 5% of inter-city travel.
