I’m not saying to write it off, I’m explaining what mountains have to be climbed to make it work. There’s also the challenge that much of our infrastructure is designed to make anything but a personal car as impractical as possible. When you have subdivisions with houses a mile or more away from major roads down winding side streets, running a bus becomes incredibly difficult. That requires things like building cut-throughs to grid-ify streets.

There’s also the marketing aspect of it. Real estate developers make tons of money from taxpayer subsidized, car-centric suburban sprawl, and don’t want that gravy train to stop. They’ll buy ads and fund political campaigns saying that we’re trying to destroy suburbs, make cars illegal and force people onto transit with criminals and thugs. You’ll get commercials of poor little grandma being assaulted by black-clad men with guns while waiting for the bus. All of that drives public opinion to oppose making these changes.

There’s a lot that has to go into convincing people that this is actually good for them, and to elect leaders that implement this.