Not talking about train stations, I'm talking about the silly idea of "personal transit", lowest-bidder-but-high-cost taxpayer funded pods on tracks that would somehow magically not collide from software problems, not have people pee and throw up in them, and not have someone in the suburbs put a bomb in it, set it for "downtown arena", then let it leave and take off.
The big problem about tmass transit is approximately like this, and it cannot be taken away by engineering design:
Mass transit depends, most of the time, on government financial support, and government control. It is the bureaucrats that'll decide where the stations go, not the consumers. And sooner or later they'll figure out like they've figured out in Israel that they can control population patterns by creating lines to one area but not to another. Want an area to be developed faster? Build lines where there are few people. Want an area to lose inhabitants? Cut off bus and train.
Of course, it encourages people to move from the suburbs and into European-style massive apartment complexes easier to track (think the London CCTV system), easier to control. Where the government regulates and controls housing and transit less (as in America, and post-Soviet Eastern Europe), you get people moving OUT of the hives.
And of course, as I mentioned, when people move through a centralized system, it's easy (once they're properly scared, like they are in Israel) to persuade them to submit to searches.
Aside:I will remember forever the day when my fiancee arrived in Israel. She did knewthat they do this sort of thing in Israel. Though I warned her, she was not emotionally prepared for it and of course, when we reached the Tel-Aviv bus station, the idiot rent-a-cop decided to get thorough on her. I will never forget the shocked look on her face when he rifled through her luggage.
Now, not a single Israeli (outside a dozen libertarian wackjobs like me) will admit their privacy is invaded by this. But, yes, this sort of oppression let us call the child by his name exists. It's going to be there if you introduce mass-transit.
Returning to main narrative:Introduce mass-transit, and you give away your freedom of transportation to the people in charge of it.
Historians agree that one of the key reasons America retained her culture of individual liberty through the 20th century is the proliferation of the private automobile. It is as much a tool of liberty as the modem, the rifle, and the private house.
Give it up, and there is no America.
People who hate private cars hate America, and they hate capitalism, and YES, damn it, they hate freedom.