I didn’t say it was an inherent problem of public transit. But it is an inherent problem of compelling people to share space
in San Francisco. The library, for example, is a similar story.
The array of policy, economics, and values that make Germany and Japan work so well are not going to magically appear in an American city just because you try to cargo-cult some of their second-order effects. Public space in those countries is genuinely good; you don’t have to ban alternatives to get people to use it.
