That would be nice, but in the US the people leading public transit don't care about good transit. I know they have limited budgets, but they do too many bad and over prices projects to assume anything else.

Yes as is slowly happening in many urban areas throughout the world. Unfortunately, unlike Europe, the US has spent the last 100 years remaking the American urban fabric for the car. It'll take time and lots of capital to change cultural attitudes in the US to make car driving more acceptable. People continue driving in slowly increasing amounts even in well-planned countries like the Netherlands. In the meantime, pushing existing car uses into lower-emitting forms is key. This isn't an either/or.