Rotterdam — a city with a population of around 650,000 — has both a metro and a tram system. Extraordinary density is not a prerequisite.

And in any case, there's no reason that public transit needs to be self-funded. We don't expect the same of most of our other public services.

Rotterdam has 3,000 people per square kilometer. Contrast that with the San Francisco bay peninsula's ~1,100 people per square kilometer.

This is demonstrating my point about population density and transit.

The peninsula might not be dense, but San Francisco has a density of 7,194/km2 and the transit situation pales in comparison to Rotterdam's.

There are many urban areas in the US with population density of 3,000/km2 or higher that do not have any public transit at all.

People in the thread are asking why people ride Waymo to SFO, which is well outside San Francisco proper. Thus, the whole peninsula's density is what's relevant.

The US does not have many metro areas with population densities above 3,000/km2. And those that do, like Washington D.C, NYC, Boston, Chicago, do have metro systems.

The problem is when cities treat car infrastructure as absolutely mandatory, and all other transport infrastructure (pedestrian, cycle, bus, tram, train) as optional. When you say that everyone has to be able to get everywhere by car all at the same time, you have to build more roads and parking (at minimum more roads using taxis, self-driving), more roads spread everything farther apart, which means more distance per trip, which means more cars on the road, which means more roads, which means everything is spread farther apart, rinse, repeat.

American cities low density is a direct result of designing for car infrastructure over all else. And car infrastructure is far more expensive than other transportation, and since increased car infrastructure lowers density, it directly makes all other transportation more expensive and less viable.

Since cars are the most dangerous form of transport, for other drives but more so for cycles and pedestrians, it makes it less feasible to use them for your first-last mile. Then you add in that, as the roads grow and distances multiply, speeds are increased to attempt to compensate, multiplying the danger to anyone not in a car.