> and motorists aren't paying anywhere near the cost of road construction and maintenance, they're (quite literally) free-riding subsidized trips on the taxpayer

So are public transit riders. And to a worse degree. What's your point?

We should magically spawn mass transit systems overnight and force everyone to ride them?

By the way, I'm a fan of mass transit, and live somewhere in the US - specifically - where that's a viable option.

It just isn't a viable option in ~80% of the US, and even if those areas start doing everything right to be mass transit viable (no indication of that), it still takes decades.

Rome wasn't built in a day.