I recently flew and it was honestly a bit ridiculous. I booked the tickets 4 months early (something I'll never do again), and they rescheduled all of them, and it required me to call in and spend 2 hours re-booking everything, a month before departure. It messed up our hotels so bad, it cost us $175 in lost airbnb reservation fees.

Then on the actual trip, they couldn't take our luggage on the small plane because it was too heavy (they overbooked the tickets), so we didn't have luggage until the next day.

Then the day of return, we found out our initial flight had been moved SOONER 30 minutes, which we found out about 1 hour before... we almost missed the flight.

Then on another leg of that same trip, I was patted down, had all contents of my carry-on completely laid out and searched. Then while waiting at the gate, my name was called over the intercom and I was taken to a back room where my checked bag was then searched while I watched.

Then on another part of the same segment we had to get our bags, exit customs, re-check our bags, go through security again (which took 30 minutes), and then get to our gate.

What a shit show. Air travel knows they have a captive audience, and they are abusing the heck out of it. Now the stewardesses constantly push ads constantly to you, as well as the TV sets in the headrest... They also changed the rules on American Airlines so people in the cheaper classes cannot use the bathrooms of the first class, and they put a divider up, but a clear you can see through! Just to physically block people.

Then as far as trams and trains, the oil and car companies spent a lot of money lobbying in Texas to shut down major transport initiatives in the big cities, so more people would buy cars and oil. That's a big part of why everyone has a car, and the public transport sucks.