What you seem to be saying is, in any case, cancel the rail projects.

From what I’ve gathered, rail projects tend not to alleviate road traffic problems, but instead increase overall people-carrying capacity for the routes they follow. In other words, they won’t pull cars off the road. Probably the only thing that would is for people to decide not to use their cars. Of course, if they’ve got no other viable option, they won’t do that, will they?

Rail transit would also have to go hand-in-hand with a urban recentralization strategy—to try to pull growth back into the city centers, as opposed to further sprawl.

Another option that almost no-one considers is electric trolley buses. They can serve as sort of a half-step between nothing or diesel-bus service and electric rail service. They require a significant infrastructure investment, but not nearly as much as rail and construction is not nearly as disruptive and is much faster (basically, it’s stringing miles of electric wire). Electric buses still don’t have the romance of the rails, but they are generally cleaner and quieter than diesel buses, so in terms of overall ride quality they’re a step up. The main issue is with being able to route buses off the overhead line grid, but with advancing hybrid technology (say, pure electric drive with tuned-diesel onboard generation for off-grid service) it’s workable. Equipment costs for a hybrid bus would be likely significantly higher than for diesel buses (newish tech is never cheap), but off-grid operating costs would be lower, and on-grid lower still, likely enough to justify the expense. Electric power is generally more efficient than chemical and mechanical, so less overall emissions as well. It’s an idea, anyway.

just an FYI