@LoliHat @tk
>Trains can't run everywhere.
Not really, In fact, trains can go places where buses and cars can't. You could place subways on top or below a growing street and barley effect foot traffic there, only thing different is that there's stairs there.

If you wanted a car in the same circumstance, that would include bulldozing entire buildings and building more space for parking lots, completely destroying what benefit trains/subways have. Which has happened before.

There were many such cases of people bulldozing businesses and entire neighborhoods to build more highways, leaving those people homeless.

>It's too cost prohibitive if things are too dense.

Not at all, Infact it's the exact opposite. Dense places are often cheaper to maintain, if not profitable compared spread-out-ones that are a net loss.

Dense places often allow for more stores in a tighter spaces compared to spread-out-ones even within the same space surface area, allowing for more tax revenue as more stores can be taxed than just a few. A dense area can have a dozen or more stores compared to suburb's few. There's also the fact there's more person-per-space ratio in dense places compared to cars, allowing more people to be in a single place and thus more potential revenue for businesses, thus more tax revenue for the state. Doesn't happen in car-centered places.

Also not to mention the maintence, a road of 20 miles hosting a few dozen stores to tax is cheaper and often profitable compred to 60 with just a dozen, which loses money. That's also not counting other massive infrastructure like sewers and electricity that have to spread out those 60 miles, rather than 20.

If anything, Dense cities are what keeps car-dependent suburbs alive. that's right, poor city slickers are quite literally keeping America's bigbox rich or working class suburbs alive due to how unprofitable suburbs are.

>Yes, didn't have the freedom people have now... unless you take into account that well off people could afford horses.

Are we truly freer than the people of the past? They could go by foot and animal-back, donkeys There were streetcars and even canals in some places not too long ago. Our only method of travel today is the car and only the car. Sure we *can* walk, but it's extremely inconvenient and then some. Is this really true freedom then?
"Freedom to drive" is good and all but you forget about the "Freedom to not drive".

>But those cities weren't created from scratch.

What is considered "Scratch"? Anyway. Almost all old town were created by a few opportunistic people building a road, then property next to it and then hoping it brings in revenue and then having a state help make the city to be made around it. It's only very recent modern times in which where the idea of the government is creating the town for its people, rather than people creating it.