I've been in the US my whole life. Be it for a daily commute, or running errands, or visiting friends and family, my experience has been that good public transportation options rarely exist. Drive for my daily commute, fly for any moderately long distance.
I do try to look into it and at least make sure I'm not missing an obvious alternative. For a trip to the northeast next year, options include:
- Train, ~15 hours total transit time each way, ~$200+ round trip
- Departure options limited to 0145 and 0645
- Just not an option for how long it takes and how little time off I have from work
- Drive, ~10 hours total transit time each way, ~$150 round trip in gas
- Awfully long time for one person to be behind the wheel
- If it's just me driving it's no better on an emissions basis than flying
- Fly, ~6 hours total transit time (including getting to airport etc), $150-200+ airfare
I did visit Japan for the first time this year and was amazed how easy it is to go everywhere by train and on foot. Not to mention everything is on time, clean, and safe. If that infrastructure was more commonplace here I'd use it in a heartbeat.
The previous travel examples I gave are for a trip roughly the distance of Hiroshima to Tokyo, which would be ~4 hours on the Nozomi shinkansen for ~$360 round trip, and a train leaving every ~20 minutes. My daily commute is roughly the distance from Ueno to Kawasaki, which would be 35 minutes and ~$3.50 on one of the JR lines with a train leaving every ~5 minutes. I would
happily take either of those options if they existed on just a basis of convenience and time, with environmental impact being a bonus.
But... different countries, geography, existing infrastructure (rail system dominated by freight travel), etc. I certainly wish there were more viable options, and that taking the train wasn't both slower and more expensive than driving!