urbanism

I would point you to Switzerland, which has probably the best rural transit in the world. While it's definitely not a 1-1 comparison and rural people will definitely still need cars or at least bikes, rural areas and small towns are quite often connected with hourly or better bus service, sometimes even train service. As an example, here's a station next to a field and a farmhouse that gets trains every 30 minutes in each direction. The railway is fully electrified and carries freight too. The Swiss timetable is designed to minimize transfer time with timed transfers, so you're typically not waiting more than 10 minutes to make your connection between modes.

Now, Switzerland is a very rich country, but the principle of timed connections can make journeys to very rural areas quite feasible. You can have a train that has multiple buses timed to meet it, for example. This sets up a network of low-frequency buses that all meet at the train station to connect to the train, providing more ridership for the train and the buses, and allowing everyone to connect to the other services there.