Even the commuter trains here are very complex, having to serve far-flung suburbs on multiple branch lines to make it all work.
I do like my commuter train though. Instead of fighting traffic, I get to open a book to read and on the way back, I can even get a beer for the ride home.
At some point, we are going to have driverless transportation using public roadways. That is probably most efficient way to go. Recently my wife and I drove from Connecticut to Florida and it took us three days. But it was much more pleasurable than taking Amtrak, which would have required multiple transfers and taking a much longer indirect route. We would have arrived tired and aggravated. Had we rented a driverless vehicle, we could have gotten there in less than a day and spent the whole time watching movies and reading books. Not to mention getting a good night sleep as the car did the driving for us.
People are going to have to get past the hurdle of getting into a driverless vehicle. I think it will happen sooner than we think. Eventually, we will have vehicles that will fly (like in science fiction) and you definitely will want those to be driverless.
Short distances maybe. But has anyone explained why there is a supposed need for a high-speed train between SF and LA? People really don't need to transit it often, and for those who do, they can take air flights. There is no need for high-speed rail for the masses. Try taking a train from the SF Bay Area to LA. It's noisy, bumpy, and horrible. Making it faster is not the solution. CalTrain is a nice ride but expensive to operate; my daughter used it daily commuting from San Jose to SF. Nice for commuters but heavily subsidized; taxpayers not using it shouldn't have to pay for it.