[alephnerd]

> California, with a population 4x that of Seoul

The Seoul Capital Region is 26 million people crammed in a 4,500 square mile metropolitan area.

California is 40 million spread across 156,000 square miles.

It makes sense that CA gets more funding for roads and highways given that the population is much less dense.

Even when you factor in Metropolitan areas in CA, the distances are much larger - the Bay Area has the same population and area as the state of Massachusetts (9,000 square miles and 9 million people), yet I don't see subway connecting Boston to Worcester or Springfield.

That's functionally the same ask that a lot of Public transit supporters (which I am btw) are pushing for, and it doesn't make sense. The area is way too large for a system like the Boston T or the NYC Subway to be created, and the Bay's current setup of local subways (Muni/VTA) mixed with commuter rails (BART/Caltrain/ACE) makes more sense given the size.