Sure badly built or unprioritized public transit infrastructure might suck, but busses and trains sure are amazing when prioritised, built correctly.

Many European cities combine well functioning train, bus and cycle infrastructure, which together makes it possible to go anywhere at any time for cheap.

I think it really just comes down to prioritizing to develop the infrastructure (costs money and requires political will to move away from car based infrastructure).

Also I don’t think a pod system would solve any of the problems of either cars or trains/busses and would be much more expensive…