[zozbot234]

> I think it's not feasible in America because of the culture. If you have a good chunk of people that are hell-bent against sharing space with others for one reason or another (some are legitimate reasons!), you're already discarding a significant chunk of passengers.

That's why America never layed any railroads in the 19th century, and everyone just rode by horse instead. Oh wait, that's not what happened at all.

[Nasrudith]

You are ignoring major cultural shifts - people also lived tightly packed into tenements then too. The tolerance for such space sharing without common purpose has declined.

[zozbot234]

Which means that culture could easily shift again. It's not like Europe wasn't just as car-obsessed immediately after WWII (and East Asia a few decades after that), they just realized that it was a bad idea and that cars were fundamentally incompatible with dense settlements.