Ahh, good point to introduce Pangloss, very important aspect of the whole "Cars are LIES" thing
In St.Catharines where I live, folks complain constantly about the high price of gas (tho it seems lower than many places are repotrting, but I digress) and also the steady death of our downtown AND the traffic at certain intersections at certain times of day
Right now our town (and I guess most of the region, but St.Catharines specifically) has our General Hospital basically in the dead-centre of downtown. However, we've been told that it has outlived it's usefulness and has to be torn down or something (the whole situation stinks to high heaven...) and a new one built. The pretty much "written in stone" new location for it?? The most logical place, naturally, out past the western limit of the town in the ridiculous mess of urban sprawl that's been growing unchecked for the past 10 or more years. There happens to be a river between 95% of the town and the new "conveniently located" hospital. There are 3 choices for crosing this if you are a pedestrian or cyclist, and a 2 more if you are able to take a highway (tho both the highway routes are pretty inconveniently located as far as the hospital goes anyways)
The area where our hospital is currently is expected to kind of die right out, leaving the core of our town dead as dead can be and making the "City of St.Catharines" a giant, idiotic swirl of sprawl with the heart totally ripped out. I can't listen to anyone kvetch about gas-price-related anything if they have not gotten involved at LEAST at the municipal voting level to try and reverse the totl dead-end course that seems to be laid out for our own town.
There are lots of solutions, but like PanGloss said, it'd be a short-term HUGE expenditure for long term huge gain- except that the "gain" would be spread out over every citizen and no one person would get mega-rich, so it'll never happen.
The same crappy system that makes the Oil companies able to take the whole country for suckers is very much alive and well at the municipal level as well. Think globally, Act locally dammit!!!