The "public transit" system dies every time you try to apply it outside of a few large cities. Or Europe which is basically a large city. Even then you have to get "public support" in other words, you have to steal money at gun point from the population who does not use their system to keep it going.
People like to be able to go places on their own schedule rather then having to wait for someone else to take them to where they think they should go.
Even in Chile where you had a nice public transit system people preferred to own cars and move around at their whim.
Yup, that's one reason. But the other is the astronomical tax they place on gasoline & diesel that makes it cost 3 or 4 or more times what it costs in mid-America. Up to 90% of the price at their pumps is Big Govt taxes.
So for the middle & lower classes, the inconvenience of using public transportation is usually outweighed by what they'd pay thru the nose to drive their own cars.
Another bonus - as far as their upper classes are concerned - is that with fewer cars driven by the unwashed masses around, it frees up the roads for the chauffeured cars of the wealthy Euro Elites.
Here at home, around 30 yrs ago in my city, someone ratted out a meeting of City Elites, where a panel appointed by our then-100%-liberal City Council was discussing synchronizing traffic signals with much-better available technology to make traffic run smoother. But their consensus was that they didn't WANT to do that, because fewer traffic problems would naturally lessen demand by voters for public transportation. The sycophantic local paper didn't investigate it, as I recall. Rather, some letters to the editor is how we found out.
On a larger scale, our Dem-dominated State House won't free up Fed highway funds that have been available to us for many years, to widen the worst-clogged interstates, because they WANT drivers to get more & more frustrated, in the hopes of channeling that anger into a demand for public transit.
Cars just give people far too much more independence & freedom than they deserve, dammit! How can you control the masses if you can't control their movements, huh? Can you tell me that?
Ve must haff order! None of zis chaos, of effryone going vere-ever und ven-ever it pleases zem!
We have a bus system in this small southern city. If one wishes to go to a particular location and return, maybe a five mile one way trip, one must allot the whole day to complete the errand.
That always comes to mind when I have to take a shuttle van from St. George, UT to McCarren Airport in Las Vegas. (leaving the car there would cost a small fortune.) Drives me nuts to have to depend upon someone else.