I think there's a catch 22 here as well. There's a lot of people monitoring 2m here but no one is putting their foot first and transmitting. If I do it weekends and evenings there's a contact to be had. I am mostly on HF though.
One thing I am tempted to do is to get a 2m rig on the car because it's great fun listening to the talk ins at radio rallies "I'm by a field and it's got cows in it"
People need to get on air and talk. And yes forget the digital stuff - barrier to entry both on cost and complexity is too high.