We do have political power; if you’re in the US, you had the opportunity to exercise it in the last week. Your local elected officials make the plans for roads and bike lanes and zoning and parking lots and variances; and they are usually quite responsive to the voting public.

lol that voting is power. double lol if you think local elected officials plan anything.

Mine do. There is a political process via the legislature and executive, a public planning process that includes multiple technocratic agencies, and then often another political process when citizens who ignored all that realize what's about to happen. Where I live, people complain that there is too much planning and it takes too long (except when it's something they don't want!).

Local elected officials decide whether or not individual apartment buildings are allowed.

It's all there in the public record, easy to find.

You're acting like politics has no place on government built and regulated roads.

All the decisions are politics by definition.

You are free to drive any car you want on private roads.

And we can make political decisions about any non-private road

The omni-presence of cars in US is from "command and control" through laws and the legal system, and in particular the planning system. Our planning system mandates all sorts of things about the built infrastructure that a purely market based society would not choose on its own. This sort of command and control mandates the exact number of parking spaces required for a shoe store versus a bowling alley, versus any other type of land use.

In nearly all of the US it is literally illegal to build out infrastructure with out prioritizing cars and car infrastructure over everything.

This was a political choice that we made, as we do live in a representative democracy.