I gave data showing that the hundreds of billions of tax dollars spent on roads supports trillions of miles traveled, while billions of dollars spent on Amtrak (largest rail system in the US) leads to an order of magnitude less miles traveled
Yes but like I said the comparison is totally flawed since you counted all costs for Amtrak but only a subset of costs for car traffic.
If you are convinced roads+cars is an order of magnitude more efficient than rail, maybe you can explain what you think is the cause of that difference. Does rail require more land? Does it require more maintenance hours? Does it require more expensive materials? Does it require higher insurance fees? What's the reason?
operating and capital costs for transit in the USA are absolutely sky-high compared to the rest of the world. It doesn’t cost Japan billions to extend their subway a couple miles, but it does in NYC. The “why” is complex but well documented.
I'm not sure that's true, and I don't see any obvious reasons why that would be the case. Do you have a source to back that up?
Of course we need roads. But the question is how many and how big they need to be.