Trains are a tough sell, at least in the western US. So much wide open space, trains are slow, high speed trains too expensive to justify given the sparse population.
I remember once doing the math and finding that there are many times when our local light rail is less efficient than just putting four people in a sedan. When the train is full, though, it's unbeatable.
EVs throw another wrench into that math since they're so much more efficient than ICEVs.
These are not the same thing. Switzerland has a pretty dense population. The section with low population is the Alps, where you're not going to put trains anyway.
Most people that live in remote areas have cars anyway, since sometimes busses only run twice a day. It's a tricky problem to measure "access to public transit".
(The BFS is an amazing source for information, they publish all kinds of statistics)
Switzerland has a similar number of people the bay area, 7-8 million, and is twice as large. So it stands to reason the bay area could have a system as large, useful, and as efficient as Switzerland if not better given it has the amount of same people in a smaller less mountainous area.
I'm still not sure what your point is. My point is the Bay Area has shitty transit and people claim it's because it's spread out. Switzerland is proof that's bullshit. That the same is not true for Fresno or Bakersfield has no relationship to my point.
I don't really know what your point is. That we can't have trains that cover the entire country? So what. That doesn't mean we shouldn't have more in highly populated areas.
I remember once doing the math and finding that there are many times when our local light rail is less efficient than just putting four people in a sedan. When the train is full, though, it's unbeatable.
EVs throw another wrench into that math since they're so much more efficient than ICEVs.