I agree about the public transportation thing; as a matter of fact, my daily driver is an Austin Capital Metro Ford E-350 van. But the sobering thing is that we have nine riders on our vanpool roster, but have trouble getting more than about four to ride on any given day, and I've never seen any correlation between ridership level and gas prices. I'm afraid gas prices will have to go considerably higher before people significantly alter their transportation habits.
The other challenging thing about public transportation is that while it was easy to build into cities that experienced their major growth before the development of the automobile, it's much more difficult to shoehorn an public transportation system (subway, light rail, etc.) into cities that "grew up" since the invention of the car. It's not impossible, just difficult and very expensive.
Wish I had a solution. At least we can, for a short time, anyway, take heart in the fact that adjusted for inflation, gas prices are still not quite at an all-time high, but they're getting very close.