Public Transport and no Private Transport?

One thing that I believe is extremely important is public transport. It's cheap, efficient, pollutes less, and convenient (when a good system exists). In fact, public transport rates as one of the more important factors I used to decide if I like a place or not.

With that said, one of the things I have always imagined is what would happen if all of the investment into private transport - the biggest being cars - went into funding public transport? Wow, what an amazing system that would be. The entire world would be covered my an easy-to use and comprehensive system now, reducing pollution, traffic congestion, time spent on finding parking spaces, etc. How wonderful that would be! And if people, for some reason, decided that they did want some privacy, perhaps there would be some shared facilities that people can borrow once in a while to use for a private family get-away or something.

Of course, it is understandable that this has not happened yet, since it's kind of a chicken-and-egg situation. Without such a system, it is difficult to convince people to invest so heavily in public transport (not to mention many huge industries who would block such a system), and without the investment, it would be impossible to support, not to mention build, such a system. Well, it does seem like many places are making the right investments over time - for example, China appears to be fiercely building up it's public transport system (along with many other sustainable infrastructure projects) with the surplus trade money, which is a very smart decision. Perhaps all societies should consider introducing a "long-term transport surtax" to help build up it's public transit infrastructure, which would save money, resources, and time in the long run. People need to start thinking more of the future rather than having everything about "now."