Note that Munich itself is built for this. You can’t drop a bus line into an existing layout and expect that it’ll magically work. Which is what most mass transit projects in the US seem to be attempting to do. IOW it’s not even _transit itself_ that makes this feasible in Europe. It’s how they build the rest of their spaces.
It's unfortunate that this is the exact strategy that many politicians and government people default to.
"We got $200M in federal money for improving transportation. Let's spend $50M on it adding a station to this light rail we built 20 years ago to win federal money _that_ time and spend $150M on adding five miles of express lanes to the interstate."
Perfect example. I lived in Dallas for five years. Denton, a city about 45 miles north of downtown Dallas, operates this "commuter rail" line called the A-Train. This line has existed since 2006.
Denton is one of the biggest college towns in Texas. It has two of the biggest universities in Texas (TWU, UNT).
The A-Train doesn't stop at _either college_.
The A-Train also doesn't stop anywhere near where people actually live unless you live in downtown Denton (few people do). So, to use it, you have to drive (or take the DCTA bus, which, lol, don't) to a station to take this train which terminates...
...about 20 miles from downtown Dallas. You need to connect in Carrollton (a station you _definitely_ have to drive to) to take the Dallas Area Regional Transit train, which has a larger network (that still doesn't bring you anywhere you want to go, at least not directly)
The entire system was set up this way because the A-Train runs along one of the busiest segments of Interstate 35E. It runs up this segment because that's where the pre-existing rail was.
This segment is 8 miles.
That rail network goes ALL THE WAY UP TO KANSAS AND ALL THE WAY DOWN TO GALVESTON.
So, to summarize, two of the biggest cities in Texas have a commuter rail that connects them, on a relatively super small segment of rail that was already laid down, but takes passengers to stations where they will need a car to complete their trip.
Oh, and the A-Train only has, like, six stations, operates every 30 minutes between 0600 and 2200 on weekdays and every hour on Saturday, and is closed on Sunday because Texas.
The crazy part about this is that DESPITE ALL OF THIS, this is _still_ better than the *zero* rail service we have in Houston (the biggest and most populated city in Texas).
_This_ is why public transit is an incredibly hard problem to solve here. It will take billions and billions of dollars to _just_ develop DART, Houston's METRO and Austin's Capital into anything closely resembling a real public transit network. Most folks will just vote for a new stadium or more lanes to get stuck in.
(The kicker? I just learned that a section of the Missouri-Kansas-Texas network that the A-Train rides on in Houston was scrapped in 1998 to become...part of Katy Freeway, the 12+ lane monstrosity that absolutely completely fills up every rush hour like clockwork.)
