The big difference between the US and Europe is organization rather than geography or technology. In Europe, trains and planes generally supplement each other - the short distance travel or commute is generally done by train while long distance travel is by plane. Most airports have good or excellent train connection - so they are truly multimodal terminals.
Not so in the US - where everyone hast to compete against everyone. Trains competing with airline, and automobiles, phone or insurance companies competing against each other, and so on while to consumer paying the transaction cost of this competition through the nose. This is the neo-liberal market-schmarket ideology going amok and again has nothing to do with geography or technology.
It is so because the US is not really a unified country with a government overseeing its overall long term interests, but a bunch of corporations sometimes colluding and sometimes competing with one another and the government being a night watchman and a policeman protecting their property rights. Perhaps things were different in the past, but since Ronald Reagan - may rats shit on his grave - get elected, this is the design consistently pushed by the ruling elite.
This is not really about mode of transportation - or for that matter any other form of service, telecommunications, educations, housing or health - but about the overall design of the state and the economy. This is why I think that people like Jordan, who try to rationalize the status quo by inventing "objective" (i.e. technological or geographic) justifications - are missing the point altogether - or perhaps are oblivious to how deeply politicized every aspect of the society and economy in this country is. I would go as far as saying that politics explains far more of the working of the US economy than all other factors combined. Therefore a critique of public transportation or health or education system is really a critique of the neo-liberal political blueprints that underlines the US economy and society.
While we are at that - I was surprised by the reactions of this list to my posting on the subject. Virtually every reply concentrated on telling anecdotes how shitty the Greyhound service is - while my comments that transportation in this country is one of the main platforms of apartheid in this country was all but ignored. If the people who make a critique of capitalism their vocation cannot see politics beneath their everyday life amenities - how can we expect a Joe Schmoe to see it?
Wojtek