We need to work with the current conditions, and that means BOTH public transit and better EV/road infrastructure.
All the things attributed to the American car-centric lifestyle were a thing to some degree everywhere. Then people got tired of it and changed it. Probably Europe not having much petrol also helped, which also explains the tendency of the European cars having significantly smaller and efficient engines.
There are plenty of cool videos of European cities that used to be traffic hells that turned into bicycle friendly walkable places. Though admittedly the hell part still exist for those who choose the to drive the cars.
That said, like you mentioned: that didn't stop them from making traffic hellholes. Designing a city to need cars is a choice.
Cars are a huge problem in Europe as well.
Take Mainz, Germany; where my father is from; the core of the city is a walkable old city (which my Opa knew every corner of having worked for the city for decades, and he toured me around all over it when I visited...). But then around it are a whole bunch of villages which grew into suburbs, and are connected by freeway. But it seems to me that because each of those villages, towns, and the central city already had a tradition of walkability, the connectivity between the towns, villages, suburbs took that into account when the post-WWII reconstruction happened.
In Mainz I was able to take a streetcar out from the centre of town to a small village in under 45 minutes and go walk in a forest. Here in southern Ontario -- where we have similar density and population to the Frankfurt/Rhine corridor -- such a thing requires a car.
The snark is unwarranted, it is unwelcome, and it is against the guidelines for this site.
America is absolutely enormous, sprawling, and suffers from a relatively recent inability to build things, which is very frustrating indeed.
If we were to cram our entire population into, say, Michigan†, I doubt we would have given over our extensive rail network to freight. But, we did, and Los Angeles tram system was bought out in a shady backroom deal, and there were other various and sundry sins. But mostly, we invented jet travel, and trains just don't cover the 4500 kilometers between New York and Los Angeles in an appropriate amount of time.
Admit it: if you were going from London to Istanbul, you could take a train, but you would fly. Well, London to Istanbul and back, that's the distance from New York to Los Angeles. Which you can do by train! But, people don't.
California, that notorious bastion of communism, voted in a high speed train between San Francisco and Los Angeles, and is still waiting for what they paid for. LA has added quite a lot of Metro in the last 30 years, but with a mere 150km of rail, 93 stations, and only a hundred million yearly riders, there's a long way to go. Meanwhile SF can't get the BART to circle around the South Bay for love or money.
† The size of the entire UK, and there are ten states larger.
As the "densely populated area" remark should give it away, I do not claim that USA should build metro lines between cities. What I say that cars in cities are not the solution.
Funny enough, I am in Istanbul since a while. I flew from London to Istanbul, it took me about 8,5 hours I guess. 30 minutes to Heathrow, 2 hours at Heathrow, 5 hours in the plane(did not take off immediately) ,1 hour at Istanbul Airport, 1 hour on a bus to my destination. Definitely better than the train but only because there's no direct line. The trains in Europe are great but expensive. If there was an overnight train to Istanbul from King's Cross at reasonable price I would have taken it.
The mass transit in Istanbul is horrendous but wherever available, the metro is much much better than the Istanbul traffic. Admittedly, the car could be better if you are in an S class Mercedes and being chauffeured.
If it's a densely populated place, I don't think that "less polluting cars" is the answer.
This underground train thing doesn't have to be called train as I understand trains are considered communism in the USA. It is actually a sharing economy of connected electric vehicles, atmospheric pressure hyper-loop if you wish. Many of those are autonomous too, like level 5 autonomy without LIDAR. They are often used with a loyalty card(called "Osyter card" in London, for example) and even work with your mobile phone if you prefer not to carry a plastic card!
You can always say that in 2 years it would be pressurised and run at supersonic speeds!