Laws follow practicality, so the first thing to do is make sure drivers pay their full costs on a per-mile basis. Things like gas taxes being earmarked for ro

Laws follow practicality, so the first thing to do is make sure drivers pay their full costs on a per-mile basis. Things like gas taxes being earmarked for road construction-- when I buy other miscellaneous stuff I pay a general sales tax that can be spent discretionarily by the government. Not applying that to gas is an inappropriate subsidy to cars. Where autos own the road (most everywhere) road funds should pay for sidewalks; where highways divide communities, there should be liberal allowances for pedestrian bridges. Finally, public transit needs to be professionalized in order to provide a fuller alternative, in the sense that transit organizations can't be run with a 'politics as usual' approach-- the point of the system cannot be simply to kick the can down the road on historic pension obligations. If government wants to require public transit to be better in certain respects-- handicap access and perfect safety come to mind-- these desires should be evaluated against the counterhypothetical of, "if you make the system less useful by only opening one set of doors at the stop (for safety) x number of people will die as a result of being forced back into cars."