Re:Rail, no thanks (Score 2, Insightful)

You're also forgetting one additional thing:

Driving is focused labor, and riding transit isn't.

Unless you're an incredibly reckless misanthrope, you can't read a book or work on your laptop while making a 5 hour drive. Riding a train or bus you can. 5 hours of getting work done at the rate I bill is a considerable amount of money. Even if I was just reading for pleasure, that 5 hours is worth a lot more to me than the few tens of dollars I *might* save from driving. So unless the thrill of driving the open highway is something you'd pay many tens of dollars an hour for, riding transit makes more sense, all other thing being equal.