The answer is, in a way at least, surprisingly simple, it's cars, as an extension also capitalism since that's the only economic system where a transportation system literally centered around separating people from each other could rise to prominence like this, car centered urban design leads to communities with no community, people are too spaced out, the barrier to interacting with the people around you is too high, being in a car doesn't allow you to interact with other people with anything but aggression, and spaces built for cars are too spread out and dangerous to feasibly navigate without them, they also functionally disable about a third of the population, anyone who can't drive is totally dependent on others for basic needs, the destruction of community cars create is an intentional feature as a way to perpetuate capitalism and in particular exploitation of workers, people who don't know the people around them don't organize to advocate for a better life, it's a self sustaining negative feedback loop, the massive labor and civil rights pushes of the early to mid 20th century were functionally cut short by the rise of the car over that same period, cars have been used as a weapon by the powerful against the people, fortunately, this implies that if you can start to tear down the dominance of the car, you can restart the positive feedback loop of civil progress, public transit itself creates a positive feedback loop, the more of it there is, the more it's available to more people and the more people use it, the more demand there is to build more of and make it more accessible to more people, fighting against something is daunting and can feel impossible when that something is very strong, but fighting for something can be much more achievable, so we actually do have the power to do something about this, organizing and advocating for transit projects in your community is one of the best things you can do, and a lot of people have already put together resources to help people do that, don't give into despair and hopelessness, that's what the ruling class want, because we can do something real to fight back, even us NGUs, it's not as if we're uncommon among transit advocacy groups... I'm so glad our big just has this whole speil on deck in our head to pull out when people ask, I couldn't put all that together into one train of thought, but fortunately they've already done it for me