Pushing for autonomous vehicles will lead to a local maxima which is worse, more expensive, and less universal than solutions that already exist and have been deployed in every developed country that is not increasingly car dependent.
I wouldn't be so sure about that. I went on Eurostar recently, the experience was quite alarming. The food was terrible, and the tickets very overpriced. The London underground and rail system had many different kinds of weirdos, speaking in strange tongues that would make even the most liberal person in SF blush.
The only exception to this was Japan's transit system. But even then, a bunch of fellow Americans were essentially chimping out, playing music at high volume and screaming obnoxiously. I have to say that I was pretty ashamed of being American that day.
It's a sisyphean effort to build rail in the US, and an even bigger one to drag american suburb dwellers into an urbanist future. Developing autonomous vehicles good enough for 90% of trips is probably cheaper than building rail, the total amount invested into waymo so far (11.1B) will build you about 4 miles of subway in manhattan [1]
You are arguing based on sunk costs, and even if rail was not an alternative, the US could be investing in other modes of transport: light rail (trams), buses and electric bikes.
Also, you are not accounting for externalities. Get the suburbanites to pay for all the extra costs they incur on the roads, power/water/waste distribution, healthcare costs incurred by air and environmental pollution from all the cement for roads and parking lots... Quickly they will change their tune and will be willing to become "city dwellers".
Whoever makes suburbanites pay for externalities will lose an election unfortunately, stupid ass myopic voters will just see the sticker price and thumb their noses at urbanists
Light rail has all the disadvantages of a bus and all the disadvantages of a train, if you’re gonna build rail you might as well spend a bit extra to build elevated, you’re gonna have to fight knuckle draggers in court anyways
>Some say that we have imprisoned thousands, but the reality is that we have freed millions.
Waymo is very much like this. It inconveniences a few people, but it also saves a lot more from accidents, or even worse.