To be honest, I'm not entirely sure what you are saying, electrik. What does "Ever stop to consider how things are being run wherever you are that driving a car is the same cost as a bus?" mean? I have no idea what that means. The cost of driving a car has very little to do with the cost of a bus. I don't really care how much it costs to buy or operate a bus. I care how much it costs to ride the bus. When the total cost (in dollars and in time) is cheaper to ride the bus, I consider it. When it is cheaper to drive, I don't. If it were equal I would still drive. Driving is more convenient. That said, I don't have any particular fondness for driving. Up until I changed jobs and moved into the damn burbs (I work offsite, and chose to live in a centrally located suburb of the large mostly rural area I cover) I was quite happy not owning a car at all. Before this I lived in Seattle and Prague. A car wasn't necessary so I did not own one. Now it is. That's a decision I made. I didn't have to take this job, but I'd love to see you show me examples of successful public transportation systems I could use to commute to the rural areas. For example, a few months ago I was up in Boonville which is about 100 miles north of San Francisco in the middle of nowhere. It's probably possible to get there on public transit, but it would take at least two days versus a three hour drive. But again, that's a choice I made.

Driving isn't always cheaper (see my Bay Area commute example). It's clearly cheaper to use public transit than to drive. Did you actually read my post or was the math just too hard to follow? Travel TIME is a wash, not cost. Driving takes the same time and costs more. When I go to San Francisco I either drive to Pittsburgh (nearest BART station, quite a ways) or take Amtrak Capital Corridor to Richmond and connect with BART. If they haven't sold out, I take Amtrak. The only time I drive all the into Bay Area is when I don't know how to get there on public transit. That's not about cost (public transit is more cost effective), it's about me not knowing the transit well enough to ensure I don't get lost. Getting lost on your own time is okay, getting lost and showing up late for work is not.

Public transit rarely does sustain itself. It could in a few places, yes, but it does not charge the fares necessary to do that here. I believe SF Muni farebox recovery ratio is about 25% (the other 75% comes from various sources such as taxes, vehicle registration fees, bridge tolls, etc.). Commuter rail like BART has a much higher farebox rate. The rest is covered from the same sources as road construction and maintenance. Heck, a lot of public transit dollars comes directly out of funds set aside for road construction. Nothing wrong with that. You'd need a lot more roads if SF Muni didn't exist. It's up to the voters and city leadership to determine how that money is allocated and when special revenue sources are needed for certain projects. Just don't call it class warfare when there is resistance to 100% funding of operating budgets of transit agencies or when expansion projects get voted down. There are a lot of possible projects that could use that money, and almost everything is seeing budget cuts not just public transit. I believe BART could sustain itself, but I'm skeptical about SF Muni.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farebox_recovery_ratio

Don't get me wrong, the creepy communist cities are very well layed out for public transit (less so for car centric transit, however). It's just that they're really, ugly and not that pleasant to live in. It's not an either or. There's nothing to say you can't implement communist style hubs transport in less bleak lower density housing. In fact, in many of the existing cities that's what happened. In Prague they razed just enough of the old suburbs (which are quite charming) to put the horrendous highrises in around the hubs (subway stations). Half the highrises had been replaced, but the effect of the hub was still there. It was a small amount less effective than the planned from scratch neighborhoods, but much more desirable to live in. Of course, that's European suburbs (smaller yards, mostly multi-family structures, narrow streets) instead of American sprawl. It would be less effective still to turn American sprawl into hubs but I think it could be done. It would be costly to do so and unpopular (eminent domain is never popular, especially on the scale that would be necessary). Short of that, however, I don't see how American suburbs can be anything but car dependent. Driving is way too affordable for that to happen yet at any rate.