Raise the Hammer

Although not every country in Europe is exactly the same my 2 cents would be that they do a few things very differently than us which caused their urban development to evolve in a completely direction than us and that makes most of the difference.

Many European cities never completely bought into the argument that, everyone should have complete access to all parts of the city and area by private automobile at all times. They realized that to have that mentality would force a complete change, visually and functionally in what they recognized as a city or urban area.

There society is older so its not as opposed to keeping old things around and less likely to force the new on everything and everyone, right now, A.S.A.P., immediately and before it goes out of style! They (Europeans) seem to be as a population, are just a little more willing than us, to wait until any new technology (especially transportation technology) can be adapted into the existing environment rather than, forcing the environment (including the built environment) to be changed wholesale to adapt to the new technology. The destruction of WW2 forced a good chunk of Eastern, Central and Western Europe to rebuild major cities from the ground up, they seemed to understand just because a technology is older doesn't mean its not useful. This rebuild allowed them to completely rethink how they wanted their cities to function and how they could actually do it, cheaply.

When you actually have people starving, really starving, like a lot of Europeans were at the end of WW2, its a lot easier to be sympathetic to the less fortunate in society. The population realizes to a much greater degree that, being poor may not actually be that person's fault and other things like changes in economies, technologies or a major war can just as easily force you to loose a job or several jobs, as well as destroy entire industries that may have existed for a long time. Thus, they do not mind as a group compared to us although, just like us, they do not like taxes, they are much more willing to pay for things like social services, healthcare and public transit.

Yes many European cities have some great public transit rail systems as well as their share of some industry wide spectacular public transit failures, the pre metro movement in Europe of the 60's70's and early 80's is great example of one big, massive industry wide oops. Europe has had great success with public transit as well as some massive mistakes but, throughout the latter half of the 20th and into the 21st century, they are willing to pay much more in taxes for public transit than we do. Many of the Regional rail Lines and "S Bahn's" (Like our GO system but much more) and the inter-city rail lines, including most of the high speed rail lines do not make money or just break even. Their meter of success is not always based on whether a system is completely profitable. They are much more leaned towards the access side than we are, in the old transportation access vs. ridership debate. They (Europeans) spend depending on the city, region and country anywhere from 2-6 times what we pay for public transit and regional rail or intercity rail systems. They are much more willing to force freight carriers to put passengers first (causing freight to cost more) where freight and passenger service use the same lines. To make up for that, if you are shipping anything more than 200 miles (320km)or more, it has to be moved by freight train not truck. Special (more expensive goods for the end user or customer) trucks with special licenses are allowed as the alternative to this. This removes a much greater percentage of heavy trucks from their highways compared to ours. So they don't have as much pressure as we do, to keep widening them as much. They do have overall higher population densities compared to us but its not as important as most think in generating revenue. Its been proven for a long time, regardless of the population density greater frequency is much more important when generating revenue for rail and transit systems. Yes, they have better transit but, they do pay more than we do, some places a lot more than we do. Yet for the most part they put up with it and get very upset when the government claws back services to save money.

Gas taxes also are much higher than ours thus forcing more long distance surface trips to the train or in some cases the airplane by design. They pay more than us for many things and they seem to like it for the most part, go figure. Yet the Germans, with some areas (due to extra regional gas taxes) having the some of most expensive gas in Europe period, they own almost as many cars per person as we do. They just are more selective about how and when they drive.