> but highways and automobiles took over

The reasons for this are complicated and nuanced though.

Governments think they push the financial burden of transport maintenance on the people (and its a good tool to register and control people too, but thats not a strong consideration I wouldn’t wager), so they fervently cut spending on public transport and curtail cycling infrastructure in favour of cars.

But roads themselves operate at a crazy financial loss and are one of the reasons governments are in crazy debt (which nobody wants to acknowledge).

This is because road maintenance is significantly more expensive than building new roads. Which means that road use becomes heavily subsidised (much more than trains cost per user) but the cost of vehicle ownership, despite that heavy subsidy, is still enormous and one of the largest expenses an average person can have.

Highways are also heavily state subsidized.

This is an analogy worthy of LinkedIn.

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