The problem isn't so much technical as cultural. The American car lobby was quite powerful, which is why we have historically invested so much in highways and s

The problem isn't so much technical as cultural. The American car lobby was quite powerful, which is why we have historically invested so much in highways and so little in rail. But why should the lobby be so effective? Well, if you look at historical advertising, you can clearly see what they appealed to, namely, the liberal American spirit of wanting to be "independent" and "free", and sex. The automobile is a symbol of unrestrained, do-what-you-want-when-you-want mentality. It's why even modest and sensible restrictions around car traffic are met with such violent opposition. It's perceived as an attack on the liberal American ethos. The sex part associates cars in the minds of men with virility and masculinity, as if having a car is what makes you a man, and that without one, you are weak, a mere boy, and undesirable, irresponsible. And many women believe it, too, especially of a certain ilk. (It is true that refusal to own a car when one is needed can be a sign of immaturity and irresponsibility, concealed behind claims of caring for the environment or whatever. But this is quite different from the blanket, rigid, and irrational belief that you MUST own a car, even when it isn't the better option, for vacuously symbolic reasons.) Owning a car isn't the problem, of course, but the excess importance attached to the car through decades of conditioning and cultural reinforcement has made the car something of a religious symbol in the American religion. Similar reasons stand behind gun ownership, something the Left consistently fails to grasp. Some trace this to the myth surrounding the frontiersman Daniel Boone who, interestingly enough, was a Quaker. The firearm is an instrument of self-sufficiency and protection, of being able to face the frontier without fear. It, too, is bound up with American sensibilities regarding masculinity. Restrictions on gun ownership and regulations around gun acquisition, however mild and sensible, are predictably seen as attacks on the aforementioned. Most people, and that includes most people here, are awful at examining their sense of normality, not to undermine it, but to know what they're standing on, to know how it is justified and if it is justified, and so on. Many political conflicts, especially today, are rooted in a failure to understand the true source of disagreement, which often lies in presuppositions n layers deep.