That framing as a way to misrepresent the fact auto industry gave people what they wanted. Many newly developed parts of Europe are the same way, because that’s what people want.
Caro's The Power Broker details how Bob Moses was the agent of the powerful forces behind the automobile.
The only stakeholders not represented, or even consulted, were the average taxpaying citizens. Any dissent was ruthlessly squashed.
Urban planners and normal citizens have been critical since the very beginning. The debate really picked up after WWII, with the resumption of peace time economy.
By the 50s, the experts had enough real world data -- more highways creates more congestion, focus on cars to the exclusion of mass transit physically cannot work -- to invalidate the entire premise.
Eighty years later, here we are still clutching at pearls, trying not to faint. As if there's anything left to debate.
I shouldn't be shocked. But somehow I still am. Or maybe just disappointed.
The problem was never the automobile per se, but the emphasis on the automobile to the exclusion of everything else. Starting with land use policies which only accommodate automobile centric development.
The first cars were not that fast and did not accelerate easily, so it makes some sense that there would be advocacy to get every last bit out of the engine through highway design. Add to that the requisite hype for a new, impactful technology and you get the approach that paved the earth.
But we have gradually come to realize the point of traffic calming, roundabouts, transit-oriented design and other tools that make people stigmergically decide on appropriate trip plans and driving parameters.
Transportation is fundamentally about time and money trade-offs. Supply goes up and cost comes down or vise versa. If you want cost low you gotta have a lot of supply. It doesn't matter whether the wheels are steel or rubber you just need to have the supply. For an economy to flourish people need to be able to not be trapped going to a job or shopping at a particular store because the cost of getting there is workable but that is exactly the reality that transit scarcity creates.
If it was just about the cars they wouldn't have spent the 60s and 70s killing mass transit projects while also killing highways. Infrastructure development in the US ground to a halt because in the 60s the upper middle class managed to get far away from the poors for the first time in history and they wanted to keep it that way by keeping the cost of living outside the inner city from getting too low.
I'd only be guessing, but I think the highways and freeways were then defunded in turn because those same financiers couldn't figure out how to profit from further investment. Or maybe they decided to end their partnership with organized labor. Or maybe cashing in other rent seeking opportunities, like ending usury protections enabling explosion of consumer debt, were more promising.
Who knows.
In the UK where I live the government subsidise rail. Rail is very expensive, slow and unreliable especially compared to my diesel car. I would rather cycle to the train station, get onto the train with my bike and then cycle the other side to work. However it costs me almost twice as much to do and takes me 3 times as long.
Even with all the taxes on fuel, emissions and the price of repairing what is now an old car (my Car is over 15 years old and has done many many miles). Driving is cheaper, generally gets me there quicker even when travelling across the whole country.
Rail tickets keep on increasing in price and the service never improves and the whole experience is unpleasant.
In the rest of Europe cars are just taxed heavily and people still buy them. This idea that people don't want cars just isn't true.
The UK once subsidized a working system, then destroyed most of that system without any resulting cost savings, then sold it to billionaires who it now subsidizes.
I am well aware of the story. BTW British rail stopped being profitable back in 1955 (7 years after nationalisation).
It proves that maybe you shouldn't let government take public ownership of companies. Government will frequently provide the worse of both worlds as it tries to appease everyone and ends up serving no-one.
The result for the UK is that we have a very expensive rail service that is horrible to use and it is simply cheaper to drive.