I entirely empathize. I was recently in Budapest and even there (in a land which coastal Americans demonize as almost totalitarian under Orban) the "socialist" (I am speaking sarcastically of the American right wing's view of transit) mass transit system was far better than anything anywhere in the States. On metrics as diverse as frequency of tram departures, modernity and cleanliness of all vehicles, superb onboard dynamic signage updating riders as to stops and timing, absence of graffiti....you name it. Why can't the US match this? We know all the Usual Suspects (General Motors tearing down transit lines (whether that story is apocryphal or not), the American preference to be alone on the open road versus shoved into a "tin can" with others, evil Robert Moses-ish planners whose animosity to transit seems virulent enough that one wonders if his dog had been run over by a bus, NIMBY types who see mass transit as a good thing as long as they don't have to use it, etc. etc.
But I am gonna vote for physical path dependency. If Ford hadn't made the Model T so damn cheap (thus enlisting a few tens of millions of voters favorable to the car and not the bus), and if the USA hadn't been so rich after WWII (thus being able to finance modern road-building on a scale never seen in Europe), then we may have had a chance to build a fine mass transit system in some cities. But we missed our chance and now the roads are as they are, and to run a rail line down the middle of one ain't gonna fly with our voters (remember we have over 200 MILLION licensed drivers here!). But if it's 1950 in Budapest and hardly anyone can afford a car and those broad Imperial boulevards are not very crowded... let the buses and trams come. I don't know how we could ever get to that situation in the USA...
I entirely empathize. I was recently in Budapest and even there (in a land which coastal Americans demonize as almost totalitarian under Orban) the "socialist" (I am speaking sarcastically of the American right wing's view of transit) mass transit system was far better than anything anywhere in the States. On metrics as diverse as frequency of tram departures, modernity and cleanliness of all vehicles, superb onboard dynamic signage updating riders as to stops and timing, absence of graffiti....you name it. Why can't the US match this? We know all the Usual Suspects (General Motors tearing down transit lines (whether that story is apocryphal or not), the American preference to be alone on the open road versus shoved into a "tin can" with others, evil Robert Moses-ish planners whose animosity to transit seems virulent enough that one wonders if his dog had been run over by a bus, NIMBY types who see mass transit as a good thing as long as they don't have to use it, etc. etc.
But I am gonna vote for physical path dependency. If Ford hadn't made the Model T so damn cheap (thus enlisting a few tens of millions of voters favorable to the car and not the bus), and if the USA hadn't been so rich after WWII (thus being able to finance modern road-building on a scale never seen in Europe), then we may have had a chance to build a fine mass transit system in some cities. But we missed our chance and now the roads are as they are, and to run a rail line down the middle of one ain't gonna fly with our voters (remember we have over 200 MILLION licensed drivers here!). But if it's 1950 in Budapest and hardly anyone can afford a car and those broad Imperial boulevards are not very crowded... let the buses and trams come. I don't know how we could ever get to that situation in the USA...
When you have 27 transit agencies that largely don't coordinate with one another, it makes for a not great rider experience!
https://www.seamlessbayarea.org/blog/transitagencieslist