[k_g_b_]

Public transport being massively/too popular is the only way for it to get anywhere near the level of funding it needs. That's not really a failure mode, just a symptom of the real failure. It was extremely easy for governments to ignore it and leave it to rot for decades because it had next to no lobby compared to cars.

The 9€ and Deutschlandticket reinvigorated that lobby - although that's being snuffed out again.

[belorn]

Looking at the Swedish railway, the issue is related to budget but the problem is not that simple. The main issue is that the railway system lacks redundancy in track capacity, meaning that any failure require short term fixes in order to reduce short term losses. Those short term fixes eventually leads to overall higher downtime and higher failure rates, which only lead to a even more focus on quick fixes and shoddy repairs. Building out new capacity becomes too expensive and takes too long time, and takes money from the budget that is needed to do all the quick fixes that pop up. When those lines become too popular, the pressure only increases to continue do quick fixes, since any downtime has even larger impact both on the straining cargo traffic and passenger throughput.

It becomes like the meme when people talk about nuclear power. Sure, it would had been an good idea 10-20 years ago, but there is no time to do it now and it cost too much. Next year will be even later, and it will cost even more. Any new funding need to be channeled directly to the starving short-term budget, which will continue to always be too low on funding.

[bluGill]

One differente with nuclear power is that today we have a better option - renewables - and so nuclear doesn't make sense at all any price. By contrast we don't have anything completely better than mass transit for some cases and to it makes sense to build it and make it cheaper.

[qcnguy]

This is backwards. The public transit lobby is the Green/climate lobby which is absolutely massive and incredibly influential because it peddles to politicians a unifying moral story about the end of the world that justifies unlimited exercise of political power.

What does the auto industry have in response? Jobs? The left don't care about jobs to begin with, they view anything linked to capitalism or employers to be inherently suspicious.

To see this is true, just look at which group is a net tax payer vs net tax recipient. Car drivers subsidize public transport everywhere I know of (unless you get into stupid arguments that assume world peace exists solely for the purpose of oil transport).

[bluGill]

Much of the green mokement is a hypocrite that wants to appear green- but don't take their cars or gas away. And so polititians exploit that to build minimal transit - enough to look like they did something but not enough to take away cars.