[vel0city]

And I'll vote for it to change and lobby the people around me for change and ride the bus when it makes sense, but what to do for the decade+ until things change and I need a new car?

If the answer is "buy a used car", well, we'll quickly run out of those.

[FirmwareBurner]

Of course, but politicians have no incentive or pressure to improve public transportation when everyone already owns cars and is contempt with this status quo.

I've seen this play out lots of times.

Public transportation only improves when the vast majority of citizen depend on it because then have skin in the game, otherwise it gets shelved and forgotten and stays run down as a charity to the poor.