I’m not personally a fan of rail trails. Most of the rail trails I’ve seen kind of start nowhere and go nowhere, and they’d be much better off being part of a larger transit infrastructure (like a bus-only route or tram/light-rail route) than as just this weird long park thing that crosses multiple stroads.

But as for driving, yeah, it sucks. There’s pretty decent research to show that car dependency is awful for small businesses, because if you have to drive to the store, you’re usually just going to pick the one-stop big box mart instead of stopping at four or five mom and pop shops.