> In England, where 28 percent of all bus passengers are on concessionary fares for age or disability, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher is supposed to have said, ‘If a man finds himself a passenger on a bus having attained the age of 26, he can count himself a failure in life’.

I think this general attitude is the source of the general poor quality of public transit in the US (even though the quote refers to the UK). Public transit is considered a mode of the designated underclass, and nobody making policy decisions considers themselves a member of that class. In the US you aren't really considered an "active participant" in white-collar society unless you have a car (though NYC is a notable exception to this maxim, it holds true in essentially all other cities)