I think you run into the same problem with airports though. Regional airports in smaller cities are often prohibitively expensive to fly in and out of. When I fly home, I fly to the nearest major metropolitan area and then drive two and a half hours to my destination rather than pay hundreds more to fly to my hometown’s regional airport. That doesn’t sound much different from the problem you’re describing with a high speed rail network.

The cost of high speed rail travel will come down with increased utilization since the scale of cost for adding extra seats is a lot flatter than it is on for air travel. Travel times by land are always going to be longer than by air but there’s plenty of room to optimize the systems we currently have.

Beyond that, convenience and sustainability are diametrically opposed and if we want to continue to live in symbiosis with our environment then we’re going to have to make some sacrifices to the convenience we now take for granted and that is directly harming our environment.