The car industry influence played a role but is always overplayed in these kinds of discussions, and ignore equally if not more important factors. -On macro sc

The car industry influence played a role but is always overplayed in these kinds of discussions, and ignore equally if not more important factors. -On macro scale, the US is bigger, more spread out, with tons of land, and there's something in the American psyche that pushes Americans to expand, settle, and use all of it. -On a micro scale, and as a consequence of the first point, Americans are accustomed to homes that are much bigger, have yards, and are more adverse to sharing a wall with a neighbor. Sure there have been exceptions like tenements in NYC, but even in those cases those residents could wait to get their own Levittown cape cod in a residential subdivision. -Finally, a ton of this growth happened at right after cars became mainstream and affordable, but before the long terms downsides of car based societies were well understood. Therefore, a huge majority of infrastructure investments were made on what people wanted (cars and space), and not public transit. -Now, while many of the problems of car based societies are better understood, that doesn't nullify the often ignored benefits of car based societies. Also, for public transit to work at a massive scale, people would have increasingly do two things that Americans intrinsically hate: Move closer together and pay more taxes. There may be a growing population that finds that appealing, but the silent majority in this case is an enormous and entrenched one.