I agree that short-haul and long-term public transportation systems are very complementary, and as you allude to, there may be a chicken-and-egg problem with building one over the other.  However, I think of long-haul rail networks as an alternative to air travel, and in the short term, can't people get around in their destination city the same way they do now when they fly?  Rental car, taxi, friends, family, public transport such as it is (you're right that the US is far behind Europe in this respect, but most major-ish cities at least have buses).