There's a secondary issue that in a lot of places the sky is a lot more crowded and the airports are very crowded.
I wanted to be a pilot. I took lessons in the 1990s at a small field, relatively uncrowded, relatively low cost. I stopped due to weather/money.
When I tried again after I finished college where I lived things were more expensive and the airspace was so crowded you would run up costs waiting in line to take off, and the whole thing was much more stressful.
It has to be fun, in a busy enough environment it becomes stressful enough fewer people want to fly.
I learned to fly in Southern California literally under the bravo umbrella - wait time was never significantly bad (maybe $20 of “time”) and I has substantial radio/tower/airspace experience by the time I got my PPL.
