> Romanticizing horses, specifically, is a very rose colored glasses situation.

Apologies, I wasn't trying to romanticize the horse aspect. Rather, the public transit and train shipping aspect.

In the US, at one point trains were so popular that even rural farms would have small train depots to load up crops on and ultimately ship goods wherever they need to be. You'd even find stores with train station docking.

In fact, before the national highway system, pretty much the only way to travel was by train.

We've taken a costly step backwards by building out the highway system and moving to semi shipping rather than keeping and expanding public transit.