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This particular route is one I take, but that’s more a function of failure to expand the highway capacity much in the last several decades. Anyone can make the train option seem more attractive by letting the otherwise-more-desirable car route fall into disrepair.

Well mile for mile, railways are less expensive to construct and maintain than highways.
So in the long run, maybe California will have to start converting some of their highways into railways.
Automobiles will never completely disappear, of course.
But with the limited range of those little battery cars, they may some day load their cars onto something like Amtrak's Auto Train to ride from San Diego to San Francisco... or Seattle or Portland.... then they'd have their own personal car to use when they got there.

Public transportation really sucks, particularly if you live outside the combat zones called big cities. I have found out just how bad it is since I lost partial eyesight several years ago and have to rely on bus/train transportation.

I do want to thank all you who subsidize it, though, since city busses are a lifesaver to me, no matter how bad!

Our little PT here in the Victor Valley operates on about 20% collected fares and the rest on governmental subsidies, and routes operate from 6AM to 7PM,takes two hours to get to where one could in 10 minutes in a car, and never on Sunday. ADA (dial-a-ride, not available to the general public) eats up over half the subsidy while producing less than 5% of revenue!

Greyhound, which is still a private corporation, makes the local transit look great. Amtrak makes two stops per day, before 5AM westbound, and about 11PM eastbound, and thus is nearly useless.

All that being said, after having to give up driving, my monthly expenses dropped dramatically! Altogether, for local bus, taxicab fares and other transp. cost are several hundred a month less than operating an automobile.

Of course, it helps to be retired....lean back and enjoy the two hour trips to and from the grocert store. And buy a monthly pass....