Michael Dell wrote in his memoir, that each time Dell Computer doubled in size, he had to completely redefine their processes. Well, the USA has grown a lot. Trying to fit 50-100 year old processes into the modern economy is bound to fail, for lack of scale and imagination.
A public transit system is honestly cheap at the price. Kind of a enlightened-self-interest thing. It lowers the cost of working, lets people make more choices about where to live, and generally makes markets more efficient.
Republicans being for states rights hasn't been true for my entire lifetime (30+ years).
There are a couple of areas where Republicans support federal preemption, such as telecommunications (which falls squarely under even a narrow definition of the commerce clause, as “channels of interstate commerce”). But for the most part they fight federal encroachment in environmental laws (regulating infra-state bodies of water), health spending, etc.
When have Republicans had the federal government intervene to stop a domestic transit or health program that wasn’t reliant on federal dollars?
Blue states have all of the money. There is no reason for them to complain so much about the Senate. If they want a vast socialist welfare state with state of the art transit, they should be able to pay for it themselves.