For planning future communities, sure. It does not make sense to try to shoehorn trains into many parts of the cities we have today.

Works for cities, doesn’t work outside cities or for small countries.

Are you arguing trains will one day stop wherever they want because those are called trams not trains

I mean, trains -do- need tracks. When they don’t, they become cars/buses, for all intents and purposes.

As to prices, from a quick search, tracks are more expensive per mile, but I didn’t see anything talking about maintenance cost. Hopefully these sources are reliable:

• 3-4 million USD per mile (~2020 prices) for train tracks, assuming flat rural terrain - https://www.freightwaves.com/news/commentary-do-you-want-to-build-a-freight-railroad
• ~2 million USD per mile (2014 prices) for highway, assuming flat rural terrain - https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/1/27/how-much-does-a-mile-of-road-actually-cost

As someone who works in rail infrastructure management, answer is yes, roads are cheaper than railway network. Hell yes actually, by a factor of at least 10 for electrified railway. A poorly maintained road is uncomfortable and you might damage your car, a poorly maintained railway means derailment and fatalities.

I don’t think that’s the right metric, tbh. Even if you swapped out every paved road with a train track, they would not have anywhere near the same utility as trains. Trains have much higher capacity and efficiency but much lower granularity than cars, they fit into a different part of the problem domain of logistics. And while yes, using cars as a one size fits all solution sucks, the same is true for trains – hell, at least while inefficient AF, cars do actually function in this environment, while trains are flat out incapable of addressing our modern day logistical needs.

Also, fairly sure dirt roads are hella cheap.

My point isn’t that we shouldn’t reduce cars, it’s that reduce and eliminate are different things. And as long as cars exist, it’s hella stupid to object any improvement in them. (The self-driving thing is in fact stupid though, but that’s because it’s proven to be a ridiculously hard problem that we do not yet have adequate solutions for, not because it’s not something that would be helpful if we managed to crack it.)

European here. This is so ridiculously wrong and dismissive.

For one, no, even a country with far higher population density than the US doesn’t cover everything with rail. That’s a highly privileged city-dweller take (and I do live in cities and feel kinda uncomfortable in rural towns because it feels like there’s nothing to do). Because yes, in a large city you do have a ton of options within easy walking distance from subways and light rails, but that’s not even close to the case for everything else. Once you leave the big city everything is also too far away in Europe, for more mainstream things you’re stuck with lower quality local establishments (or you luck out and have one of the best ones nearby in your proverbial backyard, but it doesn’t apply for everyone) and for more niche things, everything is just prohibitively far away.

For two, “anywhere you need to go”? How do you decide that? Like do you not have friends or relatives who live a little further away, or in a logistically hard to reach place? Do you not have hobbies for which the locations are just hella hard to reach by public transport? Hell, with the design those networks can get sometimes even nearby places can be super far away – for example, here in Budapest lines for getting into the inner city and out are very well built out (although, minor nitpick, they’re often buses, not trams or trains), but moving laterally along the outskirts of the city is next to impossible. There’s a pretty good supermarket near me with many different options that I’d need about 1.5 hours to get to, one way. It’s about 15 minutes by car.

And speaking of, for three, you fail to account for time constraints. Scheduling is a major issue, I have literally never faced a situation where going by car wouldn’t have been nearly twice as fast as it is with public transport. I’m lucky enough to only be a single train ride away from my workplace, no transfers necessary, but my commute is still an hour one way, while it could be 30 minutes by car. That’s an hour every office day (thankfully we’re hybrid) that I’m never gonna get back. Similarly, while yes, you can get nearly everywhere by some form of public transport (very unlikely that you get literally everything covered by rail though, unless you live in a large city), there are a lot of places that take a ridiculously long time to get to, and the further out you live from the city center the more you’re exposed to that effect.

Trains are awesome, but they’re not a one size fits all solution.