I don't really understand why examining the current state of affairs in US transportation is productive.
Who built the highway system? Private companies? Hell no.
Basically, the US government did, and that acted as the initial "investment" to make the value of an automobile (via the "Network Effect") very high.
So in a sense, the US government has occasionally placed some bets on technology that arguably paid off. So the large "activation energy" needed to get some technologies rolling is sometimes too large for any one company, so once in a while a government can do something useful.
(This is not to say that they should...I'm willing to concede that such payoffs are largely accidental.)
Meanwhile, public transportation in the US sucks precisely because the government has always sided with big business. there's no real motivation to build a usable mass transportation system in most of the urban areas, despite the fact that such systems can and do work (here in NYC, and throughout Europe and the far East).
My point is not inherently "statist" per se, just that things are never black and white. Government doesn't HAVE to be stupid and useless, is just almost always is.
As for the Roger Rabbit plot, that actually happened, and the events of Roger Rabbit were loosely based on them. Would that lightrail system have slowly evolved into a useful mass transit system for the LA basin? Possibly, but possibly not.
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