The airplane is the reason why passenger rail largely evaporated in the US. Local cities have bus and rail*, regional travel is airplanes. Traveling across the country by rail sounds romantic until it takes a week and costs a lot more than a flight.
Rail is handily faster than planes up to about 400 miles. Even past 400 miles, rail can still be faster depending what flight you are comparing to, and how much time you have to allow for security, etc.
There are dozens, if not hundreds of high-demand routes under 400 miles in the US. There are over 100 flights per day just between Dallas and Houston, which is why they are looking for a rail link. There is a similar number of flights just between san Francisco and Phoenix, every day, which is also a prime distance. Repeat that for city pairs across the whole country....we haven't even talked about the East coast yet. And only about 20% of the people who make those trips every day fly. The rest drive. Some of both groups would take a train if there were one.
There is tremendous travel demand in the US. We have enough travel demand in the US over PRIME distances that it would be an enormous tailwind for our passenger rail system, if we had one.
Propagandists say rail doesn't work for the US because of size and population density, but it's just wrong. Take Spain -- a first world country with a high speed rail network. Look at the absolute size of Spain, their population density, and their distance between cities. There are multiple places in the US where you could overlay that map and we actually have HIGHER population density, HIGHER travel demand, and BETTER geography. No, there really is no excuse except corruption.
Also a major downside of mass transit is having to acquire local transportation when you arrive.
I think you mean "a major benefit of mass transit is not having to acquire local transportation when you arrive". That's the entire point of transit you know. When the transit functions, you take the transit to where you want to go.
Planes are much better for crossing oceans than trains though.
*note many of these systems are run by their localities and SUCK. There is not a chance in HELL I’m getting on a city bus or many subways. Say what you will about air travel at least you don’t have bums pissing in the seats, raping women, or shoving passengers into jet engines.
Because air travel is federally regulated. You may remember that for a big chunk of the 20th century, air travel was completely run by the government, and now it's partially deregulated, and in my opinion, it needs to be slightly more regulated. But notice, we actually have airplanes. We actually established an air travel network, using government regulations, back when America still did things. We are comparing an existing air travel network to a nonexistent train network. If there were no airports, no airlines, and no airplanes, there would be no point in pondering the benefits of air travel. That's where our train network is right now. I honestly wonder if we had zero air network, and the only way to fly being to ship yourself on a cargo plane or something, while everyone else in the world had affordable air travel and in-flight movies, if Americans would somehow claim it's because airplanes don't work in America, too expensive, too dangerous, or whatever lame excuse to avoid admitting we just failed.