~85% of the American population live in urban areas, and that’s expected to increase to ~90% by 2050. So I would argue the myopic view is one in which the majority live in areas that could be better served by public transit but we deny it since California is far away or something.

Most of us aren’t traveling to remote areas that would be burdened to sustain public transit regularly enough for your argument to work. Most of us travel locally to work or school on a daily basis and somewhere to gather on the weekends probably in a local population center with entertainment options. That can easily be served by well built public transit that we wouldn’t be so reliant on personal automobiles as a country.

Is that to say cars don’t have a place in society, absolutely not, cars won’t just go away nor should they. The vast majority of us probably don’t need to rely on one for daily transit though if our public transit infrastructure was better built.