On the grand scale, sure. That's the conclusion you'd reach if you average all the empty land in the U.S. where absolutely no one lives. But just like europe there are dense places in the U.S.

Much of the U.S. and many suburbs were developed with streetcars in mind that were later removed in favor of private car ownership.

That argument falls apart when you look at countries like Australia, China, Brazil - plenty of open space but cities have public transport because the nation culture isn't dead against it.

I feel like none of the replies to my comment read my second sentence.

Yes, there are many cities in the US with enough density to support public transit. Most of them have it.

My point is that public transit is not a large part of American culture and history which significantly depresses demand for it.

Most Americans grew up in families that owned a car or two and used them to get everywhere. When you ask an American how to get groceries, their immediate mental image is getting in a car, taking a long drive to a big store, and filling up the car with a week or two's worth of stuff. Tell them they can't own a car and all of a sudden they don't know how to solve mundane problems like this anymore. There are other perfectly fine solutions, of course, but they don't know those solutions yet. It's not part of their culture.

Also, most Americans live or at least grew up in cities whose urban planning was designed around automobiles and parking lots. They are spread out to make room for parking lots, which in turn makes public transit slower and less economical. People need cars because cities are too spread out for transit because people prefer to drive because they have cars because cities are too spread out...

There is a huge path dependent effect here where most cities aren't laid out for public transit and most people don't prioritize it.

People from outside of the US love to criticize how stupid Americans are for not having great buses and rail everywhere, but few want to acknowledge that no country is free of its own history and culture. Cars are a big part of ours. We are making progress, but the physical topology of cities and the culture loaded into the heads of several hundred million people cannot be refactored as easily as code.

That argument gets repeated in every conversation about public transit in the US. The truth is that even in large dense cities public transport is abysmal compared to much smaller cities in Europe.

I don't think you're really disagreeing with him. We all agree that transit stinks even in big metro areas (NY/Chicago are decent but still not to European level). The issue is that in those dense areas it's now extremely expensive to build, and in other areas, there isn't enough population to support large build outs (like in the southeast where I grew up). Compounding that is the fact that rail would have to compete with fairly cheap flights.

It's not that expensive if you're not afraid of taking away space from cars. Bus lanes and trams are relatively cheap to build.

The US is a bit smaller than Europe, actually. 9.8mi sqkm vs 10.2mi sqkm. But yeah, less than half of the population density.

I'd suggest that "Europe" in this context is really referring to Western/Central Europe, which is the "Europe" that non-European Anglophones tend to think about.