American cities sprawl too much for light rail to be effective. Intercity passenger rail would be great, but within a city I honestly think the way to improve public transit is to improve the business systems. Maybe buses need dedicated lanes on highways so they can skirt traffic, for instance. Focus on getting them to run on time, and keep them clean.
Discussion
if you make dedicated lanes for bus you might as well have trams, IMO
also, it's no big deal to have a killswitch onboard for passengers to pull if there is a problem with the tram not stopping, that's the thing, there is always gonna be passengers for this
idk anyhow i just like trams and trains because they aren't bumpy and are easy to electrify so they don't smell either, and don't require stupid giant lithium batteries and have all that downtime to charge
IMO self driving cars and trucks is a fad that will fade once enough fatalities happen... there will eventually be a class action suit against it and the cost of legal defense will make it impractical