I've been on driverless trains in Paris, and Singapore (the entire MRT is automated). The TGV, Bullet and ICE are both semi-auto, with the TGV designing the driver entirely out of the operation in an emergency...
You can sit right at the front of these trains looking forward past a non-existant driver, or back at the millions of other travellers that use similar systems worldwide. 100 years ago, people would scoff at the concept of a driverless train for exactly the same reasons you would write off the same happening in aviation. The comparision of 2D trackwork against 3D international aviation is irrelevant - technology will continue to advance making the apparently impossible possible. Technical faults will cause a few bingles, but so do we!
Dynamic ATC will be possible - after all it will probably be a computer driving that as well. They're apparently already looking at auto-rotate on the A380... That's just the next step.
The public will accept the things to come, because it will be cheaper, and it will be the future's public.