How about shoehorning roads? Do they make more sense? Cause that's what's happening in a lot of places. My town had electric trams and big green spaces downtown in the 50s, but they've extinguished the tram lines and demolished the green spaces to build freeways cutting straight through historic neighbourhoods.

not above ground.

That is not entirely correct. Look for example at Switzerland.

Sure, there are limits, you probably won't have a train station at every farm 50 miles from everything else, but you also don't need large cities to make it work at all.