Americans are never going to have significant transit upgrades - metro, long distance or short haul.

NYC is "building" err...painting new bus lanes to LGA (less than 3 miles) for 500million and will probably take like 10 years since 5 is the planned duration [1]!

Forget China, other countries in Asia and Western Europe plan and build whole new metros in that time for that cost.

Americans cannot build new things. Period. Maybe we should give up and focus on fixing/replacing existing infra. Like your cousin who cannot graduate high school...maybe he should just take up a trade??

[1] https://www.vice.com/en/article/bvjvvw/bus-lanes-to-laguardi...