I've spent vast amounts of time commuting on public transport and by car.
You can't pay me to ever get on a bus again.
And not just in the US/Canada either. Even in the dense cities of Europe, public transportation << car transport. No bus can ever beat the comfort and convenience of putting a large amount of shopping / luggage in the back, getting in your private bubble, and going directly to your destination.
Then there's the people you meet on public transport. 99 / 100 of them are just people who want to go from A to B. But then there are the trouble-makers and weirdos. Do you really want to be stuck on a bus or train, straining under shopping bags or holiday luggage, with some unpredictable idiot eyeing you?
Some people, like newyorker.com, have a platonic ideal of public transport where we are all happily whisked from A to B on hyper-efficient and advanced vehicles, perhaps humming kumbaya to ourselves. But the reality is that it will always be inconvenient and slow - at best - and dangerous and super unpleasant in reality.
The one instance where public transport works well is when you want to travel 5-10 blocks, there's a lot of traffic, and you are carrying nothing, and there just so happens to be a subway going the right way.
The real way forward is to have electric cars, nuclear power plants, remote work, and maybe this new Musk tunnel thing.
Obviously doesn't work everywhere and for everyone, but I'm confident that it could work in more places than most people (especially outside the Netherlands) think, and where it does, it really is fantastic. Not just for the cyclists themselves, but everyone who isn't in the process of getting from A to B as well.