Your opinion is not unpopular; it's the default and prevailing opinion in the US or any economy with access to cheap energy and without any efficiency incentive

Your opinion is not unpopular; it's the default and prevailing opinion in the US or any economy with access to cheap energy and without any efficiency incentives (read: scarcity or foresight). Flying is the most energy- and carbon-intensive mode per passenger-mile. Which as alluded above, is not a meaningful economic factor, yet. (Unfortunately by the time it becomes meaningful enough to be profitable, it might be too late to transition to anything else because the capital won't be there.) RE highway vs. train - If you can imagine a continuous stream of cars on a highway, why wouldn't you be able to also imagine a continuous stream of trains on a track? A mile of track filled with train cars can hold more people than a mile of highway, easily. And it has one centralized power plant with a much higher efficiency factor (because it's a larger engine and because it uses better fuel for the purpose). It also has far less total wind resistance, since the train has only one front face and one rear face. And if it's high-speed rail, well, it moves faster than cars. But again, efficiency is not currently a meaningful factor. Traveling the last few miles from the train stop is very much a solved problem. Even if you drive, that beats making the whole journey by car in my book. But those wishing to minimize it can always move closer in near the stop... thereby concentrating land-use in cities again and maybe letting the scourge of suburbia die off like it needs to... in a paroxysm of mold-infested particle-board.