If I just need to get somewhere, I want to take a clean fast train like Japan and then walk.
The development and building of newer, more efficient electric vehicles does not preclude the investment in more high speed electrified rail and busses. That complaint is a non-sequitor.
EVs might be fun for drag racing, but if you want to drive on a circuit ICE is still the better option for now.
I guess I haven't taken any corners agressively enough to really notice the problems you describe with weight.
I will say though that at least for non-racetrack scenarios, the extra weight isn't always as noticable as you'd think because the centre of mass tends to be extremely low relative to an ICE vehicle.
I like them, they are smoother and quieter than the ones they replaced (in fairness that was the oldest diesel buses mostly), I don't like the new on board announcement "Next stop <X>, You are at <X>" style but that's because I'm not partially sighted/blind and it's a small price for making life a lot easier for those folks (and headphones exist).
The US is trapped in a local maximum due to history, geography and finally politics. There's a lot of local resistance specifically to highspeed rail because to stay highspeed the trains usually bypass smaller local towns so they don't get the benefit but all the negatives of it's construction.
I'm not clear how something that ran up to 138 kmph (85 mph) during an (intentionally low-speed) efficiency test, would be equivalent to a golf cart?
Good luck convincing all those Americans the rail line has to run through their property to freely give up the right-of-way. You're already dead in the first few hundred feet of rail when the first person says "fuck off, no" and starts challenging your eminent domain.
Electric busses and trains can have quite powerful and good air conditioning systems.
The problem with this in Houston is the disgracefully stupid urban layout that makes it very hard to effectively serve the city with public transit.
Do we really need to turn this into a discussion of lost causes? Yes, you monumentally fucked up urban design in many parts of your country.
Yes, fixing it is theoretically possible. No, it can't be done in any reasonably small time scale.
As a planned city the downtown urban area was ideal for all kinds of transportation, with streets wide enough not to be obstructed by double-parked wagons, and suitable for streetcars to be installed just about anywhere when they arrived. Much more amenable to public transport than SF or New Orleans, even though horses were the primary consideration to begin with.
The problem was always overpriced real estate downtown, and it got to be too late for newcomers to afford, so anyone that could then started or settled in nearby communities at different distances outside city limits.
With unbridled growth, the city gradually annexed or enclosed these "suburbs", some of which are inside the 610 loop. Pretty much part of the urban area now, but not originally connected by more than one trail usually, which must have left some residual bottlenecks to this day. And that's inside the loop, where people once commuted in from the western suburb of Bellaire, or the close-in location of the Heights.
Just outside the loop to the southeast, people used to consciously depart from Houston and drive "all the way out" to Pasadena. When public transport was on the rise in the county (far too late) about 50 years ago, Pasadena voted not to pay the extra 1% sales tax which was earmarked for Metro, simply because they did not want innumerable people in the big city who couldn't afford cars to descend on their much smaller industrial suburb so easily.
I guess without intervention, stupidity trumps planning if growth is excessive or too accelerated.
For me, I'm just fine on a bike in 100 degree heat with (life-giving) humidity to boot, but I'm probably not the average senior citizen. The homes I like best were built specifically for this climate before A/C, and have more than enough windows to open, and I prefer not to use A/C when driving alone either.
I came from Florida so this is Northern Living to me, if I didn't like it hot I wouldn't be here :)