In WWII there was no interstate highway nor widespread air travel. And yes, most 5K towns are not too far from other 5k towns. But a town of 5k residents doesn'

In WWII there was no interstate highway nor widespread air travel. And yes, most 5K towns are not too far from other 5k towns. But a town of 5k residents doesn't have enough people to justify investing in passenger rail. Hence why countries with lower population density (like the US, Canada, Australia, etc.) don't have much passenger rail demand. If it were due to politics, why is train travel ubiquitous in densely population countries, but not sparsely populated ones? We should expect to see a relatively random smattering of train-dominant and car and plane dominant transportation irrespective of geography. Instead, we see that sparsely populated countries don't have widespread passenger rail regardless of politics. I guess it's a coincidence that the fossil fuel conspiracy [1], just happened to take hold in sparsely populated countries like America, Canada, Australia, etc. and not densely populated ones. 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39512424 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39512424