[ATsch]

> The US is HUGE.

China is huge too. Russia is gigantic. The US was huge before the 1950s too.

The terrible city sprawl of the US is not a law of nature, but specific post WW2 city design policies that could easily be reversed at any time.

> I don't know why cities don't have better public transportation.

It's the same policies. Take the minimum parking requirements: you can't have multiple shops accessible from one station because every shop needs to be surrounded by a walking distance worth of parking. You need to duplicate your entire network because things like corner stores don't exist, meaning there are basically no trips within residential areas. Allocating almost all budget to cars for the last half century has lead to severe loss of experience with designing transit. The Buy America clause says that foreign companies must set up temporary factories in the US whenever someone orders a trainset from them.

There's lots and lots of things, but they all originate with car-centric post-ww2 policies.