You can't make transit great if cars are also great, because the two are mutually exclusive.
For cars to be good you need lots of space for parking lots and highways. Otherwise, the car is getting you nowhere fast, and there won't be anywhere to park it when you get there. But that also means those parking lots and highways need space. In all but the densest urban metros, that space is two-dimensional, which means all that car infrastructure is spreading out all the buildings.
Transit needs the exact opposite to happen: buildings need to be close-together so that a single line can aggregate more demand, and riders have to walk less when they arrive at their destinations. This is actually how pretty much all cities used to be built, because cars didn't exist yet, so you had to give that space to pedestrian infrastructure. Not coincidentally, those are also the cities with the best transit, and the absolute worst to drive in. You can't have both cars and people sharing the same space.
> You can't make transit great if cars are also great, because the two are mutually exclusive.
I disagree. Regardless of your preferred mode of transit, look at the hours just before and after peak. Roads flow smoothly. Trains run at tight intervals and aren't too crowded. It's great for everyone.
Peak demand time will always be a clusterfuck but with enough infrastructure (ignoring petty ideological bickering about which mode should have what market share) we can probably have a system that's pretty damn decent the other 22hr of the day.
For cars to be good you need lots of space for parking lots and highways. Otherwise, the car is getting you nowhere fast, and there won't be anywhere to park it when you get there. But that also means those parking lots and highways need space. In all but the densest urban metros, that space is two-dimensional, which means all that car infrastructure is spreading out all the buildings.
Transit needs the exact opposite to happen: buildings need to be close-together so that a single line can aggregate more demand, and riders have to walk less when they arrive at their destinations. This is actually how pretty much all cities used to be built, because cars didn't exist yet, so you had to give that space to pedestrian infrastructure. Not coincidentally, those are also the cities with the best transit, and the absolute worst to drive in. You can't have both cars and people sharing the same space.