Just so the North American cyclists and pedestrians don't get too depressed: it's also depressing to watch if you come from other European countries. I for one

Just so the North American cyclists and pedestrians don't get too depressed: it's also depressing to watch if you come from other European countries. I for one am from Germany, where the cycling/pedestrian infrastructure is undeniably better in most places, but car traffic still has top priority no matter what politicians may say. Small example: the busy S-Bahn (regional train) / U-Bahn (subway) / bus interchange at Harras in Munich (https://goo.gl/maps/doaJT4vq7viDyK9v5 https://goo.gl/maps/doaJT4vq7viDyK9v5). The western exit of the subway station, which is under the railway underpass, had to be used also if you came from the train station and wanted to legally cross the street to get a bus on the other side - you had to go from level +1 to -1 and then back to ground level. While remodeling the area, they wanted to enable pedestrians to cross at street level too. So now you have traffic lights where pedestrians have to push a button and wait for > 30 seconds to get a green light. Which in most cases means that you have to choose between crossing despite the red light or losing your bus. So a lot of money was spent, but the stated goal of encouraging walking, cycling and using public transit was still turned into a bad joke, because the "prime directive" is still to make sure that pedestrians and cyclists inconvenience car traffic as little a possible.