I have made this case and you ignore it. It boils down to people having the choice to try out and use different forms of transportation without moving to another area. It has to do with children growing up with the ability to get around by bike or bus instead of having to rely on drivers giving them rides until they're old enough to drive themselves.

Bad business is outlawed. Why should sprawl-development be exempt from the morality that prohibits other (morally) bad businesses such as organized theft? Just because no single developers creates sprawl single-handedly doesn't mean they don't effectively collude to do so in their aggregate market behavior.

It's not about the percentage of facilities. It is about the proportions of cycling, transit, and driving. If driving isn't less than 50% in a given area, sprawl is going to continue to grow and reduce the viability of cycling and transit in those areas.

Good point. I was thinking of an add I saw for a used bus. These can sell for well below $100,000. I chose that amount as what I thought would be an average for all multi-passenger vehicles, new and used, including shuttle vans, etc.
I'm familiar with the type of person you describe but I'm afraid to say that this wage level is only inadequate because people have automotive expenses and pay rent or a mortgage instead of buying/building a small cottage on an inexpensive parcel of land. Have you watched any of the youtube videos about people building 'tiny houses' and living rent-free and mortgage-free? Yes you'd probably need a mortgage for the $20,000 or so you need to get the land and build the house but you could also probably save up this amount of money in a few years if you cohabitate with someone else making $12/hour and living conservatively (i.e. cooking/eating at home for most meals, shopping at discount stores, etc.), riding a bike for transportation instead of paying insurance, car maintenance, fuel, etc.

I just point out that the cost of living in a particular area is a function of how many people drive. If everyone drives, the per capita cost of living is higher than if some people drive and others don't. For me without a car, $12/hour goes a lot further than $16/hour does for someone who drives. If many businesses that pay $16/hour would pay $12 to employees who cycle, they could pass the savings along to their customers and thus reduce the price of their products. A lower cost of living translates into more affordability IF the cost savings of low-wages aren't siphoned off into manager salaries, stock dividends, etc.

Miles-per-passenger-gallon is what you need to compare to personal vehicles. Ten passengers at 6mpg = 60mpg per passenger, 120passengermpg if there are 20 passengers, etc. For simplicity, just think of a shuttle van that might get 15mpg but carries 5-10 people. A 40mpg vehicle with 4 people in it might get 160passenger mpg so coordinating carpooling is also a good idea.

Anyway, while fuel economy saves costs, conserves energy, reduces CO2, etc. the real point is sprawl reduction to promote transportation choice. Even if electric cars would get 1000mpg, they would still clog up roads, drive sprawl-development, and people would have little choice but to drive because bus transit and cycling would take too long for most destinations.

I can't imagine that the cost of building and maintaining one bus is more than building and maintaining cars for all the passengers inside. Therefore there's something wrong with the idea that transit costs more than a personal automobile.

If anything, bus producers and marketers are milking the subsidies and public funds available for transit to make disproportionate revenues while car sales make their revenues by selling volume. This is another reason automotivism is poised against sprawl-reduction. If car markets shrink, that will mean higher car prices.

More people would invest in 'selling' bike riding as transportation if sprawl didn't discourage it. Sometimes you need to heal before you can have fun. You don't "sell" bone-setting as a way to make walking more attractive but people accept the need for this uncomfortable and time-consuming procedure to be able to have the freedom to use their leg later once it's healed.

Cars sell but road construction doesn't. Nevertheless, road construction is a prerequisite to driving. If you had to sell road-construction as being "fun," no one would ever be able to sell cars as "fun."

Discussing why Australia lacks sprawl is about as fun for people living in North American sprawl as it is for a fat person to look at why her high school friend never put on weight while she did.