I had a recent vacation to Japan where the average person commutes by train instead of car.

By your criteria the vast majority of that country wouldn't be classified as a "society".

At least in the US, the government is paying vast and unsustainable sums of money to prop up a failing and inefficient form of transportation.

That inefficiency was created at a time when the US was the only significant industrial power.

We no longer have extra factory capacity from the second world war or armies of returning GIs to work in those factories or buy those products. We now have to compete on the world stage against other economies we're poorly matched to beat.

It is time to move on to the 21st century and design our solutions to fit our current capabilities instead of what existed 70 years ago.