Which is the difficulty in talking about "America needs to do such and such": we are much more diverse, and when we're talking about one context someone else hears their context or isn't able to imagine a different context. Perhaps these kind of conversations would be better had at local levels than national
Unfortunately transportation policy is heavily influenced at the national level and the federal government doles out gargantuan amounts of funding to keep the highway lobbying industry happy. We can't only have a local conversation or even a state conversation, though of course those conversations happen as well and are arguably more important.