@nprofile1q... My suspicion is that most of the people who made the decisions that have left the US car-dependent weren't *intentionally* trying to boost cars over all else but simply weren't thinking about the negative externalities. Similarly for the people who devised exclusionary zoning in the suburbs (of course, *some* people did have malicious intentions in pushing this kind of zoning).
"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity"
And that stupidity (a.k.a. "car brains") explains why it's so difficult to dig us out of the hole that we've dug. Especially because almost every incremental step will make things worse before more incremental steps make things better.

[BTW, we won't minimize car usage until we get rid of "Euclidean zoning"]