A lot of people want to go directly from point A to B in the comfort of a car. You can't just brush that desire away just because you personally don't value it

A lot of people want to go directly from point A to B in the comfort of a car. You can't just brush that desire away just because you personally don't value it. And regardless of how America should have built up rail/bus infrastructure over the last century, the reality is that they didn't, and a lot of its cities are already setup to immediately benefit from large self-driving fleets of cars. There's still a lot of opportunity to build up high-capacity rail where it makes sense, but that will take decades. Self-driving cars (and busses too!) can deliver utility on a far shorter timescale.