>very different incentives to the market.

They are concerned about being elected, that's it. Hence why we have huge infrastructure bills coming to haunt us, pensions that are out of control (though dwarfed by infrastructure costs), and other passing the buck behavior.

That's not to say they're bad, do no good, etc. Just that their incentives are such that they can't enact good policy oftentimes or possibly even tell the truth to voters. Otherwise they lose power.

>Leaving parts of that plan (like parking) up to the whims of the market might seem a bit irresponsible.

In NYC, large portions of the subway system, Metro North, the PATH, Long Island Railroad, and New Jersey Transit and the Amtrak Northeast Corridor were built by private companies (or even multiple competing companies) to make a buck.

In the case of the subway, the city wanted control and fixed the price such that it wouldn't rise with inflation. A few decades of that and heavy car subsidies and suddenly the two companies go bankrupt and the city takes over.

Then the city demolished a whole bunch of useful elevated lines which even now are not fully replaced.

Then it continued to fix prices (even had an elected board to set prices, guess what voters wanted?) and now we have a huge backlog of deferred maintenance and outdated technology when we once were world leaders.

Most American cities have similar stories, it just is streetcars instead of subways. LA even used to have a bigger rail system than NYC, believe it or not.

Tokyo by the way continues to have multiple semi private companies run its rail and subway systems. Seems to work well. Same in Hong Kong IIRC and a few other Asian cities. Outside of Asia, many cities at least outsource running the systems to companies like Keolis (which is French), even if they fund expansion.

>For example; if a city makes design trade-offs favouring heavy long-term road use, but the market decides in the shorter term that office blocks are more profitable, then you end up with mismatched capacity

The best transportation policy is to not move at all or otherwise minimize trip distance and increase the density of connections.

Pre-zoning US cities were all mixed use, compact, and generally either gridded or (as in downtown Manhattan) grew organically with many connections (lots of narrow windy streets down there) as you see in many Old World cities.

Transportation costs were low; foot, bike, and transit were sufficient, even after the advent of the automobile.

If the city is ignoring this to promote cars it's a failure of city planning, not the market, when valuable land is used for valuable purposes. It's doubly a failure since it can use zoning to prevent these buildings from being built and / or eminent domain afterwards.

What that has to do with the market I don't understand.

>inadequate investment in infrastructure for cycling, walking, and public transport.

Businesses generally love walkers, hence why Fifth Avenue rents are so high. They'll pay for sidewalks for sure if they're not provided in front of their buildings if it's a place walking can be expected.

In Okinawa Japan where I lived it was a car centric place but they provided (possibly paid) parking with no legal mandates.

Historically most transit was built by private companies in the US, including the NYC subway (which was two companies originally, with the city owned IND later).

>Now you could argue that the market will step in and fix the parking problem, but that could easily take longer than an election cycle, and cost the local economy vast sums in wasted investment and lost opportunity.

The first subway line, using mostly pickaxes and other hand tools to excavate, took 4 years to build. We had a whole bunch of elevated rail lines and streetcars in NYC built by private funds. I'm sure with modern technology we could build faster than that.

So long as competition isn't heavily subsidized the market can work.

With transit cars were subsidized (even by transit itself; oftentimes they'd have to pay for some of all road maintenance on their routes) and most cities fixed transit prices driving them out of business.