I hear ya.
A lot of car-oriented urbanisation has largely taught its residents that you use the train when there is little or no other choice. That varies from parking in the city being too expensive (i.e. commuters) from simply not having a car (i.e. the less well-off). Travel outside peak hour and the variety of travellers can be disturbing. I also saw it when I got long-distance trains in the US: many patrons were those further down the economic scale than the average.
I think cities like Cleveland have an additional problem. It's local government reluctance to invest in public transport. It's even more obvious in Detroit (look at a map!). Or ask Greg about Grand Rapids: plenty of rail, yet no commuter stations. WTF?
Sydney has a subtly different problem: there once were people who championed rail et al, and had some significant successes. We one had one of the largest tram networks in the world, for instance. But for too long, successive governments look short term with no vision or recognition of long-term need. We had a visionary in John Bradfield http://en.wikipedia....adfield_(engineer) - we need another one and there's just no-one in Macquarie Street like that.
Wade.
P.S. I couldn't make the weecode to do a URL work. :-(
