I did respond to that. I explicitly mentioned the idea of helping employers by making it easier for workers to get to the employer's shop.

Much of the rest I wrote is a parody of your ideas.

NYC is there and exists, and we have to live with it. But what is in practice and reality necessary in the commons, public, etc. in NYC need not establish a principle to apply elsewhere. I explained why NYC is there -- it's some geography. Maybe that geography is still important; maybe not. But that geography is rare: In the whole east US, there is about Boston, NYC, Philly, Baltimore, DC, Charlotte, and New Orleans. And NYC has the advantage that it is not blocked by the mountains that run from about Maine to Florida. That is, due to the Erie Canal, NYC has a water path to the US Midwest.

NYC is there. It's done. It's not going away, and we're not going to build another one. That passenger trains and other public and commons expenditures are important in NYC does not extend to the rest of the country.

Curious that Adam Smith said some of that stuff.

But I tried to indicate that cost/benefit analysis as in the US law I studied does not include the highly indirect benefits you mentioned.

To me, you include so much that (A) no person or government process would ever be able to sort through and decide what to include versus reject and (B) the way would be wide open for way too much public spending as in my Kumbaya city parody.

Something happened in the DC Beltway: For some years, people kept trying to figure out the best routes. Finally it became clear that the routes didn't much matter because of the years between when the route was announced and when it was finished. During those years, lots of apartment and office buildings and shopping centers would locate to take advantage of the Beltway as soon as it was finished.

Well could do something similar with trains: Build them and let people move their apartment, office buildings and shopping, etc. to conform to the trains.

Maybe could go to some big, low density area of the US, just put in lots of trains, put up lots of buildings, and then let people move in. That is, design the area for trains instead of private cars. My understanding is that China has tried such things and the effort flopped.

Net, for the present US, passenger trains don't work. The main reason is that the way people live now, they need far too many origin-destination pairs, and trains can't serve that many. Private cars and highways can; trains can't.

We're not going to redesign and rebuild everything around trains or anything else. Instead we are going to be incremental. Where there is a need, business will try to find ways to fill it. An example is Amazon based on the Internet, Moore's law, and the Interstate highways. Based on the Internet, more people will be able to work from home and not commute. Maybe there will be a role for drones. Maybe there will be less commuting for education.

Sorry, net, in the US, once again, as has been fully clear since the end of WWII, passenger trains will flop. In particular, I don't see either Trump or Congress putting up the cash to change that.

The US does a lot with trains. E.g., recently Buffett bought BN. It carries coal, lots of coal. IIRC, trains are carrying lots of stuff for fracking.

Trump is doing a lot to get coal going again in the US. Then trains will have to be involved. The mine that just opened is for metallurgical coal. Okay, then, that coal will be used for making steel, and no doubt trains will also carry the steel. And Trump wants US steel to do better -- more trains. Generally Trump wants more US manufacturing: Okay, likely both inputs and outputs will be carried heavily by, right, trains. Trump wants to export coal: Okay, then, as that coal is loaded on ships, likely it will come from trains.

But, passenger trains and Kumbaya city? Nope.