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I'm guessing you are talking about small cities and/or most Southern cities?
yup, good guess.
each of them has bus service, that stops at the DMV, the mall, the Wal Mart, maybe a few other places. You stand on the side of the highway, with other poor people, with no well-defined "bus stop", maybe a sign if you are lucky.
Arlington Texas comes to mind. I lived there for about 4 months, and was shocked to find out that although the city has a population of 380,000, public transportation is non-existent. Whenever I would mention this fact to residents they didn’t see the point of public transportation, thought everyone should just by a car. City officials could care less about mass transit either, and were much happier to use the city’s tax dollars for building stadiums and other attractions, then becoming a member of DART (Dallas Area Rapid Transit) or TRE (Trinity Railway Express).
Any other cities out there with anti-mass transit mentalities
That sounds a lot like Castle Rock, Colorado (not quite as big, only 44,000 population). The RTD in Denver has repeatedly tried to provide bus service to that area. The city government provided funding for trial bus service. Lots of people rode the buses. Then voters rejected joining RTD. So they shut the service down. It's happened about two or three times, since the 1970s.
Go big or go home. Unless you're committed to building a large subway system with lots of stations and plenty of parking at said stations there's no point in spending money on it in my opinion. I can sit in the same traffic in a car as I can in a bus and have much more freddom about where I go.
Houston used to, until traffic got so bad they did build a light rail line. Columbus OH and Indianapolis, though the latter talks about rail someday. I would even say Detroit. Sure it does have some rail, but not too useful. At least there you don't have the issue that only the poor will ride it: just about the whole city is poor.
Go big or go home. Unless you're committed to building a large subway system with lots of stations and plenty of parking at said stations there's no point in spending money on it in my opinion. I can sit in the same traffic in a car as I can in a bus and have much more freddom about where I go.
Why would you want parking at subway stations? Isn't that kind of defeating the purpose of a subway system?
Go big or go home. Unless you're committed to building a large subway system with lots of stations and plenty of parking at said stations there's no point in spending money on it in my opinion. I can sit in the same traffic in a car as I can in a bus and have much more freddom about where I go.
Only Dense Cities will build Subway systems. Most cities will build Streetcars / Light Rail and Regional Rail. Parking at Subway stations defeats the purpose. Only Terminals should have parking and many Terminals do have parking.
Surprisingly the Duluth, MN (City 85-90 thousand) Metro (275,000) bus system is pretty good. College students (Duluth has 5 colleges and about 25,000 students) take the bus anywhere for free. They are planning a new Hub station in prep for the future high speed rail to connect with Minneapolis downtown. Bus shelters are heated and located along side walks (imagine that!) and they drop you off at the front door of shopping centers.
The city is also incorporating bike lanes and trails into it's comprehensive plan and adding side walks to streets that have not had them (why they never did is beyond me) in order to encourage more walking to shops (see if that works) and adding neighborhood park and rides. I think that is pretty good for a city this size.
I'm going to guess that the colleges are the key here. This seems true especially because you say that students ride free. Sounds as if the colleges have helped fund the bus system so that it's available to students. This seems to be true in other small cities with substantial college populations. Since many students don't have cars on campus, either the colleges contribute funding that supports a more extensive transit system than you usually see in small cities, or there is enough of a market for a transit system with all those students going car-free that an extensive fare-based system can be a success.
An extreme example of this is the five-college area in western Massachusetts. You have five colleges (UMass, Amherst, Hampshire, Smith, Mt. Holyoke) in three small towns in a rural area. The total population of the towns covered by the transit system is under 100k, with no single town over 30-35k, yet during school semesters they have busses running seven days a week, and running even late at night. Even over the summer they have service on weekdays, with hours into the early evening.
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