Exactly. I live in a big city. It's already dense enough that transit congestion is a major problem. One coworker bought a house a couple of years ago, and in the last year told me that his commute essentially doubled.
Further increasing the density of my city (especially if we do it before putting adequate transit in place to prevent congestion from becoming worse) is not something that I want to happen. Why would I vote for it? I'm happy for density to stay at the same level it's at now, or only gradually increase. I haven't heard a convincing argument for why I should be in favor of increasing density at more than a relatively slow rate.
Cities should look after their current residents. If the residents don't want density to increase, then who is to say that's the wrong policy?
It's a factor of poor public transit. Imagine walking out of your house, walking 3 minutes to the nearest bus stop, waiting at most 5 minutes for the next bus, and then not worrying about any congestion until you're at work.
If you miss the bus, the next one will be there in 10 minutes. If you don't want to wait for 10 minutes, another bus that will take a slightly different route and cause you to walk an extra 7 minutes from bus stop to your destination, will be there in 3 minutes.
Unfortunately most Americans have never experienced anything close to that level of public transit, and cannot imagine cities functioning like that.
Toronto has a transit system that works like you describe (~10 minute waits), however, most still find it easily worth $600 a month to drive a car so you don't have to spend 20 minutes every day outside in -30 weather walking and waiting for transit.
Furthermore, even if you wanted to take transit occasionally, it's not worth it because the fare ($3 one-way) is almost always more than the marginal cost of driving (gas).
Then you have the signaling aspect (there's a perception that only poor people take the bus).
I don't think anything will change unless car ownership triples or more in cost.
Yeah, Toronto is much better than most North American cities, but it's not perfect by any means, at least if one is to believe r/toronto. :)
Regarding car ownership, yes, you can always tax car registrations and gasoline way higher and spend the extra money to add more frequent service, retrofit car lanes into bus-only lanes/streets, add bike lanes, and lower fares.
Further increasing the density of my city (especially if we do it before putting adequate transit in place to prevent congestion from becoming worse) is not something that I want to happen. Why would I vote for it? I'm happy for density to stay at the same level it's at now, or only gradually increase. I haven't heard a convincing argument for why I should be in favor of increasing density at more than a relatively slow rate.
Cities should look after their current residents. If the residents don't want density to increase, then who is to say that's the wrong policy?