Even more importantly from a financial perspective, trains are less labour intensive. Employing staff costs a lot of money in developed countries (unlike in say Latin America, where higher unemployment means employers can be less competitive), so trains running with fewer staff per rider costs less.
i dunno man, trans being cool is pretty important to me from a financial perspective i wanna spend my money and tax dollars on cool trains
Absolutely trains are cool. But buses are too (just they don’t work better as pretend trains). And there’s lots of other things governments need to spend on (like mental health, education, healthcare, defence, etc) so minimizing operating costs (the never ending cost of running) is very important.