It's a self reinforcing cycle. Public transit sucks, ergo it is cut, it becomes worse is less useful, ridership declines, nobody is riding it, defunded more - rinse wash repeat. See transit is horrible... Seeing well done public transit is eye opening. We also don't consider sometimes that driving is terrible too in cities. 30 minutes to get down an on ramp, 30 more to go across a bridge. At some point bad public transit and grid locked cities is just.. dystopian. Fundamentally a problem of scale, personal cars just can't move many millions in and out of a city, the math of how much time and space that requires doesn't work.