As someone who has grown up in the South, and who has visited San Francisco, Philadelphia, DC, NYC, Boston and other places, I agree public transport is amazing, and I wish cities in the South could pull it off. I also recognize it's incredibly difficult, and expensive, to do so. And even if we had the money and ability to build rail along freeway lines, and build stops at popular social and residential hubs, how do people get to the rail station? Vehicle. And for many people, the question will then be, "Why drive to the station, wait 15 minutes, take a train with multiple stops, etc. when I can just drive?"

At which point you talk about incentives against driving, at which point you piss off millions of people, and potentially punish those who legitimately couldn't use rail due to work or scheduling circumstances.

You're really blowing off something incredibly difficult, more difficult (politically and financially) than putting someone on the moon. And your snark isn't even conceptually consistent; we thought we were a snowflake in the 60s, we just really were one of the greatest countries in the world. Firearm issues are there but over hyped/more complex than you want to admit, and if anything, we really should let states take the reins at healthcare, because it'd be a lot easier for regional governments to pull something off and get the ball rolling than to constantly fight at our crippled-by-two-national-parties Congress.