Given that we already have roads to every residence, the amount of earth moved, steel smelted for tracks laid and additional fuel to run throughout the country, I dont see trains everywhere being a net positive.
Through some dense urban states, yes, but most of the sparsely populated rural states would see them barely used and lots of additional habitat disruption.
We have industrial train tracks near us. Literally noone is clamoring for residential trains here. Even within the nearest city, a 20 minute drive from one popular destination to another becomes an hour and a half excursion if you wanted to take light rail instead.
Cars and planes are an ecological disaster, I don't know a single place on earth where the ecological impact of public transportation is worse than the impact of cars and planes.
And yet, we already have them. Smelting enough steel and moving earth (and forests, and wetland, and prairie, etc) to also add passenger rail to anywhere you could want to go in the sparsely populated rural states would not be a net positive. There are a dozen or so villages within an hour drive of me that each have less than 1000 people living in them. The damage of adding roads and cars is already done. What good would connecting and powering light rail trains between these villages do?
>The damage of adding roads and cars is already done.
No.
We build millions of cars every year, they still consume fuel everyday, they still have to be repaired, they still crash and kill a lot more often than any mean of public transportation.
A few farmers using cars is not a problem, but cities like Austin needing that many cars is outrageous.
> In my home country I could go anywhere in a 50km radius for 50$/month via public transportation.
> Anywhere in the country via high speed train for 100$/month.
That literally isn't feasible to do with a low impact unless your definition of "anywhere" is a handful of major cities, especially since cars aren't going away.
New York City has a population density of 27,000 people per square mile. Statewide is 420, though NYC metro brings that up. Austin is 3,000.
If you want "anywhere", you also need to think about places like Montana, with a population density of less than 7 people per square mile.
Trains make sense for metro areas, not rural areas, and there is a lot of rural area to cover.
