American mass transit tries to do everything except attract riders with a reliable and efficient service. Bikeshare services are charged with reducing emissions and improving local air quality. Subway stations need to be architecturally striking. Buses are made to add union jobs. This drives up costs and reduces frequency, which makes buses significantly less attractive to use. It also fails at achieving its goals. California’s programmes to reduce carbon emissions by mandating electric buses actually RAISED them compared to a counterfactual of buses running on gas, because the electric buses were more expensive and less reliable, and made for services that were less frequent and dependable, so people just drove instead. Focusing on increasing the efficiency and reliability of transit would reduce emissions more, by switching people away from driving to using public transport. This has parallels with other policy areas. Trying to make electricity as green as possible has made electrification slower and more expensive, when moving people to heat pumps and electric vehicles would be a huge improvement in CO2 terms even if the electricity had been 100% generated by fossil fuels. Again and again, optimising for one core thing produces better outcomes across the board than trying to do everything all at once. New at Works in Progress, the everything theory of transportation.